The USL is set for a milestone vote on the adoption of a promotion and relegation system in its lower-division men’s soccer structure, sources briefed on the plans tell The Athletic. The sources, who were granted anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the vote before it takes place, are optimistic the vote will be passed, but it is not considered a certainty.
Owners will vote on whether to proceed toward the new competitive structure at the USL’s board of governors meetings, set to take place Aug. 9-10 in Colorado Springs, Colo. If enacted, the USL would be the first open professional league system in modern U.S. soccer history.
The vote will not be on a specific and finalized framework for promotion and relegation, the sources said. Rather, the topic up for a vote will confirm whether ownership at the leagues’ clubs has enough collective interest to merit further work toward implementing an open system among the USL’s professional competitions.
A USL spokesperson declined to comment when reached by The Athletic.
The upcoming vote culminates work that publicly began in earnest at the USL’s 2021 mid-year meetings, when the organization formally proposed working toward incorporating promotion and relegation between its second-division Championship and third-division League One.
MLS players are mediocre and a lot of it is the wages compared to European clubs. If the players were good enough to play in Europe and earn more, they’d move.
On the other hand, I don’t think there’s enough interest in football / soccer in the US that the clubs could actually be financially viable if they paid the wages demanded in Europe. Clubs in the UK can pay hundreds of millions in wages per year because they make hundreds of millions in revenue.
Having said that, I think MLS would be far more attractive to fans if the money paid for designated players was spread out and used to increase the overall wages for the whole team. Designated players may create buzz, but they almost never lead to significantly better matches. They may occasionally do things that end up on highlight reels, but the people who only watch highlights aren’t the ones who buy tickets and watch every game.
Having said that, I think MLS would be far more attractive to fans if the money paid for designated players was spread out and used to increase the overall wages for the whole team.
I want to agree with this (and there’s no question that it would produce better teams that might actually compete with the best of the Mexican league, etc), but the situation with Messi is going to be a powerful indicator of how much influence a perfect designated player situation can have on the league. It may be that Messi really does draw huge numbers of people, some of whom will become real fans, or it may be that the Messi crowds see all the mediocrity around him and decide to stick with whatever they were watching before.
The other position I would take with this is that the owners of MLS/USL should be thinking long term. Their target fanbase is people born in the last 10-15 years or earlier, who very likely play soccer themselves at some level, and whose families are likely to bring them to games. Keep the tickets relatively cheap (which they have done), keep the games at reasonable times (it’s a mix) and make sure as many teams as possible have something interesting to play for, for as much of the season as possible. Playoffs more or less mirror the race for Europe in the EPL, etc (although devaluing the team which tops the table in the regular season becomes a problem), but promotion/relegation add real stakes to the bottom of the table, and substantially more excitement to the top of lower leagues.
Or in other words, they should try to do the opposite of all the blatantly consumer-unfriendly things that teams in other American sports routinely do. They are selling an alternative product to what most Americans currently care about, with hopes of becoming a big thing with future generations. Lean into that.
And there’s a pretty good chance MLS never will measure up to the top european leagues. They have a ton of competition for national sports interest with the NFL, NBA, MLB, and NHL; getting on the same level as the lower two of those four would be an extraordinary accomplishment. But that’s okay, as long as they can develop enough local interest that they come to games, buy shirts, and keep money flowing that way. Any owner who jumped in hoping to cash out a multibillion dollar franchise some day will be disappointed, but I really do not care.
It may be that Messi really does draw huge numbers of people, some of whom will become real fans, or it may be that the Messi crowds see all the mediocrity around him and decide to stick with whatever they were watching before.
I can’t see how it would be anything other than option 2.
Messi is 36, he no longer can do the flashy dribbling he did at 20. Those are the things that won him Ballons D’Or and that built up his reputation. Even at his peak he spent a lot of his time walking around, not running. His sudden bursts of pace were exciting, but he was never really an “athlete”. The only thing he really still has left is his incredible touch and his ability to read the game. But, going against that will be that in every MLS game he’s going to have a much younger, much more athletic player stuck to him like glue. At PSG he was heavily covered, but his teammates were also a threat, so they couldn’t just focus on him. In MLS he’s it. So he’ll be smothered by 1 defender all game, maybe 2 of them. His time on the ball will be very limited. So, he’ll mainly have to be a passer of the ball from a range well beyond the goal. Passes aren’t nearly as flashy as dribbles or goals, and they’re harder for people who aren’t big fans to appreciate. In addition, a pass requires that you have a teammate to receive the ball. At PSG and Barcelona he had elite teammates who would make clever runs. In MLS he’ll have mediocre teammates with a poor first touch, poor reading of the game, and mediocre bursts of pace.
People who are knowledgeable will see a Messi in decline who is wasting his final years in a league that’s beneath his abilities. People who aren’t knowledgeable will see a player who isn’t living up to the hype, who maybe occasionally shows up in highlight reels for a great pass or goal, but who mostly stands around or walks. Not worth spending 90 minutes watching.
As for MLS competing with other leagues, in reality it shouldn’t compete with the NHL, or NBA because they’re largely winter sports. It will have some overlap with the NFL, but it’s an autumn / early winter sport. It’s really only baseball that fully shares a season with MLS. It also shares a season with car racing, etc. but I think that’s a pretty different audience. You would think that sports broadcasters would be eager for something to provide content for the time in the year when NFL, NBA and NHL were all off.
