Month: November 2017

pro soccer

A synthesized promotion/relegation system

Posted on by Beau Dure

For my latest effort at creating a promotion/relegation system that takes into account the various things that make U.S. soccer a little different, I’m borrowing from the following sources:

  • Eric Wynalda, for his insistence that the USA needs to sync its calendar with major European leagues to take better advantage of the transfer market.
  • Brian Straus, for his group-stage MLS playoff idea.
  • Mike Winograd, for his “guest team” promotion/relegation idea.
  • The NASL (current version), for its spring and fall season split.
  • Brazil, for the weirdest and wildest season of league soccer I’ve ever seen — 2000.
  • Me, for my old scheme of separating League and Cup.

And I’m using the following principles:

  • Opportunity. Let small clubs have a chance to compete and move up.
  • Stability. Don’t toss clubs into oblivion and let them cut their youth academies. (In fact, academies would be part of the Professional Club Standards, which would replace the Professional League Standards. More on that later.)
  • No lawsuits. We hope. So we’re not asking MLS owners to risk nine-figure investments on a bounce of the ball, we’re giving lower-division owners a chance to compete without buying a share of SUM, etc.
  • Balance between playoffs and regular season.

Here’s the plan:

FALL SEASON: LEAGUE PLAY

Start in late July (early August if we’ve just had a late international tournament) and play until early December.

Division 1A: A 12-team single-table division. We’ll assume this starts in 2019, so we’ll pick the 12 teams based on 2018 results. The winner is the MLS/Division 1 League champion.

Division 1B: Flexible format to account for expansion. In 2019, if MLS has 28 total teams, then this would be a 16-team format, so split it into two eight-team regions, playing two games against each team in the region and one against each team from the other. Each region’s winner would meet in a one-game playoff. At stake: a nice trophy and a guaranteed spot in next year’s Division 1A.

Divisions 2A and 2B: Regional. Maybe two Division 2A leagues and as many Division 2Bs as we can field. Pro/rel — specifics to be determined by the number of clubs involved. Any club that meets Professional Club Standards will play no lower than Division 2B.

Each team’s finish seeds them into the …

SPRING SEASON: CUP PLAY

Shorter. Roughly March 1-June 1. (Again, move that June date to account for an international tournament if needed.)

Pro Cup (should be named after someone important)

This is less of a league season and more of a Cup. It’s the national professional championship. And any professional club can win.

24 teams, determined by fall league season.

  • 8 from Division 1A
  • 8 from Division 1B
  • 6 from Division 2A
  • 2 from Division 2B

Clubs are seeded and then drawn into four six-team groups. Double round-robin, 10 games. Then a modified Page Playoff:

Round one

  • Game 1 – Group 1 winner vs. Group 2 winner: Winner to semifinal; loser to quarterfinal.
  • Game 2 – Group 3 winner vs. Group 4 winner: Same stakes
  • Game 3 – Group 1 runner-up vs. Group 2 runner-up: Winner to quarterfinal; loser out
  • Game 4 – Group 3 runner-up vs. Group 4 runner-up: Same stakes

Quarterfinals

  • Game 5 – Game 1 loser vs. Game 4 winner
  • Game 6 – Game 2 loser vs. Game 3 winner

Semifinals

  • Game 7 – Game 1 winner vs. Game 6 winner
  • Game 8 – Game 2 winner vs. Game 5 winner

Then the final.

Regional Cups

We’ll have four 1A clubs, several 1B clubs and a ton of 2A and 2B clubs. Divide them by region and have competitions similar to the Pro Cup. At stake: regional trophies and division status for the fall season.

These teams also will play the early rounds of the …

U.S. Open Cup

If you’re in the Pro Cup, you get a bye. If you’re not, you don’t.

Also, we’re starting a separate Summer Open Cup for clubs that play only in the summers. That replaces national NPSL and PDL playoffs, and it takes those clubs (or, more specifically, summer-only teams within a club) out of the Cup. Other teams may also enter, but we’ll have to make sure the competition starts in late May and ends before players go back to college.

(And yes, I dream of the day in which the Open Cup proper includes college teams.)

DIVISION STATUS

Division 1 and Division 2 status will be based on two things:

  1. Meeting the Professional Club Standards. These replace the Professional League Standards (though the D2 leagues, which can be branded, will be required to meet some basic criteria — obviously not including time zones). The PCS will have a basic list of 8-10 criteria, and a club will be required to meet 75% of them. That means “waivers” will neither be given nor necessary. If you have a smallish stadium but meet every other standard, you’re in. We’ll have one set of PCS for D1 clubs, another for D2.
  2. Elections will be held after each Cup season.
    1. D1: Clubs that meet D1 standards and have won either a League or Cup competition in the past two years can apply for D1. Any D1 club that finished in last place in its regional Cup must stand for re-election. The number of clubs that will be accepted is variable. There’s no required relegation to D2. (Maybe at some point we’ll add some criteria under which a club is automatically relegated, but the election should take care of it.)
    2. D2: It’s very rare that a D2 club would need to stand for re-election. If it still meets D2 PCS, it should generally still be in the mix. (The PCS could include a minimum payroll.) Amateur clubs can apply each year to move into professional ranks, and that’s not dependent on league finish — meet the PCS, run for election.

Status in D1A/D1B or D2A/D2B is partially determined by League play (top four D1A clubs and D1B champion will be in the next D1A) but mostly by Cup play.

QUESTIONS

Why is this so complicated? Why not just a straight up-and-down pyramid?

The same reason Congress will never pass a tax code that reduces your tax return to a postcard. It sounds like a great idea until you realize that you can no longer itemize deductions and the super-rich are paying nothing because they’re simply moving all their “income” to the Cayman Islands with no tax code to close the loopholes. Simple isn’t always better.

But why should care about protecting club owners’ interests? 

It’s not about protecting Merritt Paulson, Anthony Precourt, Drew Carey or the gaggle of celebrities behind LAFC — though, as mentioned above, it’d be nice to stay out of court and avoid lawyers asking pointed questions about why massive investments are suddenly worth a lot less.

It’s about encouraging professional clubs to form and stay professional — for the benefit of (A) their supporters, (B) professional-level players and (C) youth academies.

Why separate League and Cup? 

To give us the best of both worlds — the traditional single-table league and a playoff competition.

 

 

4
pro soccer, youth soccer

The myth of promotion/relegation and youth development (continued)

Posted on by Beau Dure

 

Yes, Twitter has 280 characters now, but that’s still not enough to get to the nuances here. Just be glad I’m not doing the “pro/rel zealots (PRZ) share the same callous attitudes toward athletes as the oligarchs in Rollerball” post.

Before I get into this, I’ll have to sum up once more:

  • No, I’m not “anti” promotion/relegation. I just see practical issues that make it difficult to implement at the top level in the USA at the moment. I see no practical issues limiting our ability to do it at Divisions 2 and 3, and perhaps a well-run league at those levels could attract enough attention that MLS would see the value in making it work.
  • I’ve come up with several plans for a full pro/rel pyramid and other opportunities to give lower-division clubs a chance to shine.
  • We have a bloody history of pro/rel discussion that inhibits rational planning. Even Peter Wilt, who wrote a pro/rel manifesto and is trying to start a league that would kick-start pro/rel in the lower divisions, is seen by the PRZ as a sellout. (Listen to our podcast interview.) And the main players in the discussion aren’t as easily pigeon-holed as we think — the NASL is improbably held up as a pro/rel standard-bearer, but they’re looking less likely to get it done (even if they somehow convince a judge to accept their appeal to be D2 again next season) than the USL.
  • There are pros and cons to pro/rel.

And that brings us to the point here: Promotion/relegation is as likely to be a detriment to youth development as it is to be a positive.

Put another: The evidence that pro/rel — not a deeper soccer culture, not better coaching education — is the driving force behind superior youth development does not outweigh evidence that pro/rel has no effect and may actually limit investment in academies.

Wipe the spit off your laptop, and let’s see why I say that.

Germany: Pro/rel didn’t make Bundesliga clubs form academies. The federation did. Here’s an excerpt from the must-read Das Reboot: 

The DFB made it compulsory for the eighteen top teams to build performance centres by 2001–02. ‘It was for their own good, but we had to force them to do it, to an extent,’ recalled Rettig. Money was the main obstacle: ‘How much will it cost? Is that really necessary?’, those were the reactions, says Schott. But there was also some resistance at the ideological level against fostering the elite. ‘Werder Bremen doesn’t want to follow the principle of selection,’ the former SVW general manager Willi Lemke, a Social Democrat politician, said in 1998. ‘We have a social responsibility! We are obliged to provide leisure activities for children.’

England: Dagenham and Redbridge was relegated to the fifth tier — out of the Football League and into the National League — in 2016. First order of business: Move its academy to Category 4, which is a technical way of saying they closed it and now only have apprentices/reserves.

Torquay is a yo-yo club between the fourth and fifth tiers. Its academy has come and gone more than once.

Other academies have closed in recent years: Wycombe, Crawley, Yeovil (since re-opened) and Brentford.

Even in the EPL, Huddersfield has announced it will go to Category 4 as well, and the media wonder how soon other EPL clubs will follow suit. The issue is that the big clubs simply snap up all the best players and make money by loaning them out, while clubs like Brentford grab players who fall out of the big academies.

In the meantime, we’re seeing pay-to-play operations pop up — some charging close to $100 a month (still cheaper than the typical U.S. travel club, of course) — to give players an alternate pathway. (We’re also seeing some hybrid school/training operations that are perfectly happy to send young English players to U.S. colleges.)

Quick digression: Solidarity payments / training compensation

Even this has pros and cons. The same NYT story linked in the last paragraph notes that as a club’s potential financial windfall rises, the system is “effectively handcuffing a boy to a club just when he is free to make his own decisions about his career.”

Other issues are at play in the USA. Would solidarity payments violate child labor or antitrust laws? Did Fraser v MLS include secret provisions that would never, ever allow such payments? And do clubs with no senior-level team qualify for such payments? I don’t know, and I’ve been discussing it with Steven Bank:

Perhaps the USA can make solidarity pay work somehow. It would seem fair, and it would make some money trickle down from the pros to the youth clubs.

But the bottom line is that the solidarity / training comp system doesn’t depend on pro/rel. Canada has no pro/rel, and unless everyone speaking on SiriusXM is wrong (apologies for not having another source at the moment), they participate in the system. The FIFA statutes aren’t always clear, but I certainly didn’t see anything that says “a club that cannot be promoted to its country’s top division is ineligible for training compensation.”

If you’re looking for a pro-pro/rel argument to grasp onto at this point, I have good news. I’ve already made it. Pro/rel can help deepen the soccer culture in this country, and a deeper soccer culture — along with some good investments — might mean our kids’ kids will grow up playing much more pickup soccer and futsal on their way to legitimate youth academies that will have popped up all over the country.

I’ve also made the case that the USA can do promotion/relegation better than England, and upon seeing the clubs ditching their academies upon relegation in more recent research, I’m more convinced this plan has merit. England has an artificial barrier to the number of clubs recognized as “fully professional,” even as fifth-tier clubs pay players and have a couple of full-fledged academies. That’s based on a 92-team “league” limit that exists only because of tradition, not because it makes the game better. If you have more clubs that could make the investment if they stay in the Football League, wouldn’t it be better for youth development if the Football League has more clubs? Maybe a fifth division, maybe two regional fourth divisions?

In the USA, spread over a much larger land mass, that argument carries more weight. If a club in a city of 200,000 people has a strong academy, we don’t want to lose that. Why force that team out of the fully professional leagues?

So for you tl;dr people out there — the preceding 1,000 words establish this: Promotion may indeed bring about better youth development. Relegation can hurt.

 

 

4
podcast, pro soccer, women's soccer, youth soccer

RSD18: U.S. Soccer presidential candidate Mike Winograd

Posted on by Beau Dure

He doesn’t have the name recognition of Eric Wynalda, he hasn’t been in the U.S. Soccer inner circle like Carlos Cordeiro, and he hasn’t been campaigning as long as Steve Gans. But Mike Winograd is an interesting candidate for the USSF presidency. He’s a former player, he helped launch a pro club, and he’s a lawyer who works on very big deals.

In our conversation (starting around the 10-minute mark after I ranted a bit about the NASL lawsuit and gave an overview of the presidential election), we talk about Winograd’s background and his plans, which he outlined in a prior interview at GotSoccer. His basic mode of operation: He wants to get everyone on the same page — or, as he puts it, rowing in the same direction.

Key quote: “U.S. Soccer should not be in the business of trying to ram things down people’s throats.”

Particular points of interest: How to get the WNT and MNT equal or equivalent, depending on what each team wants (35:00), and addressing cost barriers in youth soccer (40:00).

1
case studies, youth soccer

Youth soccer case study: England (yes, they pay, but less)

Posted on by Beau Dure

This is the first in a series of “case studies” examining how a particular club, country or other organization runs youth soccer. It’ll be limited a bit because I, like too many people who’ve come through the American education system, don’t have a lot of foreign language skills.

So, of course, we’ll start with England. Common language. Relatively easy to find information. Somewhat. Actually, I’m happy to crowd-source here. This is based on deep dives online and a couple of conversations, but if you can point me toward other information, I’ll update this post.

I’m trying to get beyond what’s supposedly obvious. We all “know” professional European clubs have academies, and the smaller ones make money selling players to the larger ones. And there’s no “pay to play.” Right?

Well, maybe.

Here we go …

THE EPPP

That’s the Elite Player Performance Plan, which changed everything in 2012. It’s a joint project of the FA, the Premier League, the Football League and the ever-popular “other stakeholders.” The major leagues stem from this plan, as do the three defined “phases”: Foundation (U9-U11), Youth Development (U12-U16) and Professional Development (U17-U23). It also defines the four academy categories — a Category 1 academy needs a full-time “Coach Developer” and sport scientist, while a Category 2 academy can make its Coach Developer part-time, to give just two of many examples.

Want more rules?

Training compensation is also spelled out in vivid detail, and please note the following: “in all the above cases, the Training Club held a valid licence to operate an Academy in accordance with these Rules (or to operate a Football Academy or Centre of Excellence in accordance with the Rules pertaining to youth development which these Rules replaced)” (ENPP 275.6). So if I’m reading this correctly (and my reading matches what I’ve heard elsewhere), clubs only get training compensation if they operate an Academy.

What’s an Academy? From my reading, it’s a club with a license to operate in one of the four categories mentioned below.

Which means, if the same standard applied (however inexactly) to the USA, Crossfire Premier might have trouble getting money on the Yedlin sale.

See the ENPP documents in 100 pages of glory from one of the links here.

THE TOP LEVEL

All pro clubs have academies that compete in special leagues.

Almost.

Start at the very top — England has 24 clubs that meet the Category 1 criteria, and they get two privileges:

  1. Wider recruiting. All clubs are limited to players who live within an hour of the club at U9 through U11, and they’re not limited at all from U17 onward. From U12 to U16, clubs are limited to players who live within 90 minutes — except if they’re Category One. These clubs have no geographic limit on full-time academy players.
  2. These clubs are in “Premier League 2,” a two-tiered (yes, with promotion/relegation) league for mostly U23 players. The Premier League site has a good page on the league format that includes the current two tiers: 15 Premier League clubs and nine Championship clubs. Also, their U18 clubs play in the U18 Premier League, which is divided regionally instead of by pro/rel.

Premier League clubs are also responsible for the education (school, not soccer) of all full-time scholarship players aged 16-19.

Category 2 clubs — most of the rest of the EPL and Championship along with a couple of League One and League Two clubs — play in the U23 Professional Development League and the U18 Professional Development League. One major exception: Huddersfield is moving to Category 4, which means it’s shutting down everything below U17. Also, Bournemouth as of a couple of years ago was the only Category 3 club in the EPL.

Category 3 has most of the rest of the clubs in England’s traditional top-four League tiers, plus a couple of fifth-tier (National League) clubs and even one from the sixth (York). Category 4, as mentioned above, is only U17 up. But both Category 3 and Category 4 play in the Youth Alliance.

I found three League clubs — Wycombe (returning?), Crawley and Brentford — that have closed their academies and, as far as I could tell, not re-opened them. It’s hard to say, though, because some clubs seem to close and re-open academies frequently. See Torquay, currently a fifth-tier club.  Clubs with no full-fledged academy may have “football education academies” for people age 16-19 looking to go to university in the UK or USA. Yeovil, now in League Two, closed its academy for a couple of years.

I only found two Category 4 clubs — Newport County and Dagenham & Redbridge. The latter moved to Category 4 after being relegated from League Two. The country certainly has more than two, but others don’t seem to advertise it — “Hey! We’re Category 4!”

Younger leagues

There’s also a “games programme” for U9 through U11 teams from Category 1 and Category 2 academies, then a separate one for Category 3 academies. Those leagues will not have published league tables, and travel should be (but isn’t always) less than one hour. Futsal is a big deal in winter. (ENPP 123-125)

In this “Foundation” phase, players may still play for school teams.

At the early “Youth Development” phase (U12 through U14), they still don’t produce league tables. Travel time is roughly limited to two hours.

At U15/U16, the games programmes are split into Category 1 and Category 2, and they still don’t produce league tables.

Another note on these age groups: The maximum number of players in each academy drops through the years: 30 in each year from U9 through U14, 20 in U15 or U16, then 15 per year. So a club could cut players and still have a U18 group developed entirely within the club. (Given the scope of recruiting, that probably doesn’t happen often.)

THE NEXT LEVEL

There’s also a National League U19 league for clubs that are non-League — in other words, not in the Football League but rather the National League.

Let’s try that again: There’s a National League U19 competition for clubs in the fifth and sixth tiers. Some clubs have multiple teams; some have none. I also counted 10-15 first- through fourth-tier clubs that entered a team either directly or through an affiliated program (“West Ham United Foundation,” etc.). The competition also has more than 20 teams from seventh-tier clubs (Northern Premier, Isthmian and Southern top tiers), more than 20 from the eighth tier, eight clubs from the ninth tier (Wessex, Hellenic, Spartan South Midlands, etc.), one from some sort of youth academy (FootballCV Reds) and one college team (Manchester Metropolitan University).

The latter shows the goal at this level. A handful of players will get a shot in a pro academy as a young adult. Others are aiming for education, perhaps with a scholarship in the USA.

One sample program here: Dartford FC, currently in the sixth-tier National League South. They’ve partnered with a school that’s literally next door to their home ground, Leigh Academy. They also have a pre-academy that reaches down to U7, with some players still playing for local club teams and others signed exclusively for the pre-academy teams. The site mentions prices — £30-50 per month plus playing kit costs for 1 1/2 to 3 training hours per week.

THE NEXT NEXT LEVEL

The Junior Premier League has an ambitious goal to be a bridge between the grassroots game and the pro game. Its clubs are a mix of pro academy affiliates and independent youth organizations.

REC-PLUS

It’s not quite the Wild West as it is in the USA. Leagues can apply to be recognized as an FA Charter Standard League. One interesting criterion: An FA Charter Standard League must be “linked” to another league — youth-to-adult, mini-to-youth, adult-to-vet, adult-to-adult (promotion/relegation).

To find a place to play, there’s a “Full Time” site with searches for leagues, clubs and teams. Then the clubs can try to find each other for friendlies through a non-FA site.

These clubs are diverse. You have Essex Road Giants, which was founded in 2013 to “get young children into football and off the streets” and planned a four-day trip to see all 20 Premier League stadia. Then Crown and Manor FC sounds a bit like Boys & Girls Clubs — “a safe haven for boys and young men” offering football, table tennis and other activities, where football players are required to go to at least one educational activity per week and parents better behave if they go to games. A more Americanized entry is Soccerscool FC, where you can get a franchise or take a “free taster class” before talking about prices. They use the “play-practice coaching method,” attempting to have the freedom and creativity of street football (soccer?) while developing technical skills.

Can you be in an academy and play in one of these leagues? Camden and Regent’s Park Youth League says if you’re with a Premier League or Football League academy, you can’t play, but if you’re with an academy in Steps 1-6 of the league system (fifth tier on down), you can.

Also note from that league: The age group cutoff is August 31, NOT birth year. That’s also true in the FA Youth Cup (see section 15j). So that argument that U.S. Soccer had to change its age groups to birth year because the “rest of the world” does it that way? Yeah, not so much.

“ORGANIZED PICKUP”

“Just Play!” is a national effort to do what more local U.S. clubs should do — reserve some field space, send out a coach just to organize things (and maybe identify some talented players), and just let players play in a low-stress environment.

The site is a searchable directory of these pickup sessions and local clubs. So it’s marvelously open-ended. I did a couple of different searches and came up with some youth clubs in Highbury and an organized weekly kickabout in Torquay.

COST

A couple of costs are already mentioned above. Here’s a sample of a few others that contribute to what a youth player is paying:

  • Pitch rental: For a “3G” pitch, rental is often anywhere from £50-180 per hour. If you have multiple small-sided games going on, you can split that cost. Those fees — plus league fees and referee fees — are unavoidable.
  • A grassroots team with a parent coach might max out at £15-25 per month, so you could play most of the year without breaking the £200 mark.
  • Some grassroots teams might charge a little more than £25 and/or have a sponsor, enabling them to pay a small amount for a coach.
  • The top end of JPL clubs might charge up to £60 per month.
  • Semipro (National League, not Football League) clubs may have their own ground, saving on one expense. But they may not pay all the coaching costs, so families may still be paying.
  • Independent training centers may charge around £40 per month.

All of this is obviously much lower than the cost of a typical U.S. travel soccer experience. The main mitigating factors appear to be (A) geography and (B) low pay for coaches.

Next case study: How can I do this more efficiently?

0
pro soccer

Dissecting the TFC-NYRB halftime kerfuffle

Posted on by Beau Dure

The video we have from the Toronto tunnel doesn’t tell us much. But let’s see what we can figure out:

0:17 — Is this a tent? It looks like footage from a wedding gone horribly wrong.

0:20 – Sacha Kljestan (NY No. 16) meanders into the frame along with phenom Tyler Adams (NY No. 4) and someone wearing No. 67, who is not identified on the Red Bulls roster. Is Adams old enough to be involved in this?

0:23 – Jozy Altidore (TFC) somehow is pushed back from the scene.

0:27 – A loud “Woooo!” Perhaps cross-promotion for the upcoming 30 For 30 on Ric Flair? (And yes, I’m embarrassed to recognize that sound.)

0:42 – How many people are in this tunnel? Bradley Wright-Phillips (NY) passes through like he’s just looking for the bathroom.

0:45 – Michael Bradley (TFC captain) is attempting to be the voice of reason with Jesse Marsch (NY coach) but is distracted by something behind him. Meanwhile, Toronto keeper Alex Bono wanders through as if to remind people not to mess with him because only goalkeepers can use their hands.

0:48 – Security guides Wright-Phillips away. Perhaps, as CCR once sang, there’s a bathroom on the right.

0:55 – Cameo appearances for NY’s Gonzalo Veron (No. 30) and Daniel Royer (No. 77).

0:56 – As Soccer America reported, Bradley appears to be yelling at Marsch, “Why are you here?” The rest of it appears to be directions to the visiting locker room. It’s been a while since I’ve been to BMO — are the tunnels that confusing?

1:00-1:45 – Some stereotypically polite Canadians have taken control and are trying to point the Red Bulls toward their locker room. Someone else is yelling the occasional f-bomb as if to deflate the notion of stereotypically polite Canadians.

1:45 – A kid who sounds like he’s about 7 years old yells, “This is OUR house!”

1:58 – A finger.

I still don’t know what Marsch was doing there.

 

0
pro soccer

NASL v USSF: Meet the nine people at issue in conspiracy claim

Posted on by Beau Dure

 UPDATE: The judge denied the NASL’s request for an injunction, and the independent actors within USSF were indeed a key factor: 

Also, the Board is certainly demonstrating some independence now, seeking a special meeting on “U.S. national team coach hirings,” though it appears USSF CEO Dan Flynn has convinced everyone to wait until the regularly scheduled early December meeting, given the multitude of things USSF is handling at the moment. See Michael Lewis’ stories on the request and the delay.

ORIGINAL POST …

Expanding on a point I made 12 days ago …

If you believe U.S. Soccer’s lawyers, the NASL has to prove that nine members of the U.S. Soccer Board of Directors are conspiring to keep down the Cosmos and whoever else is still in the league.

From Brian Straus’ SI story on the suit:

conspiracy

The nine in question would be the U.S. Soccer Board of Directors minus the following:

  • The Recused: Sunil Gulati (former MLS employee), Don Garber (MLS commissioner), Carlos Bocanegra (MLS player-turned-technical director), John Collins (USL counsel; at-large Board member), Steven Malik (owner of North Carolina FC, currently but reportedly not much longer an NASL member)
  • The One in Favor: John Motta (USASA president, former USSF VP)

Which leaves …

Carlos Cordeiro, vice president: A former Goldman Sachs man brought onto the board in 2007 when it reorganized to include independent directors (people who don’t come onto the board through their various affiliations — state associations, USASA, U.S. Club Soccer, MLS, NWSL, etc.). He defeated incumbent Mike Edwards to become vice president in 2016, and just today (Nov. 1), he announced that he will run for president.

Chris Ahrens, Athletes Council: The 2012 Paralympian is also an adapted PE teacher. His upbeat Twitter feed deserves more followers.

Angela Hucles, Athletes Council: Needs no introduction to women’s soccer fans who remember the 2008 Olympics, in which the longtime utility player suddenly turned into a goal-scoring machine in Abby Wambach’s absence. She’s also one of those overachievers — broadcaster, U.S. Soccer Foundation Humanitarian of the Year, former Women’s Sports Foundation president, etc.

(Athletes are required by the U.S. Olympic Committee to have 20% of the vote, so they have three on the 15 Board slots. The third is Bocanegra’s.)

Richard Moeller, Adult Council: Vice president of the USASA, which governs adult (mostly amateur but with a smattering of semipro teams) soccer in the USA. He’s also the president of the Florida State Soccer Association. He is not the Rich Möller who coaches in Maryland.

(Motta, the USASA president, is the other Adult representative. Note that the Pro Council had no voters — Garber and Malik are its two reps.)

Jesse Harrell, Youth Council: Chairman of U.S. Youth Soccer and a longtime administrator from South Texas. Also a State Farm agent for nearly 35 years.

Tim Turney, Youth Council: Past president of the Kentucky Youth Soccer Association.

Donna Shalala, independent director: Remember the Clinton Administration? She was in that — Secretary of Health and Human Services. She went on to be president of the University of Miami for 14 years and left to run the Clinton Foundation. She suffered a stroke in 2015 — perhaps not coincidentally, she missed several Board meetings. And this tweet after the apocalypse in Trinidad was interesting:

Val Ackerman, independent director: I’ve only met two of the nine people listed here. Hucles is obvious — I covered that team. I met Ackerman in, of all places, the USA TODAY cafeteria. She was president of the WNBA at the time. Now she’s the commissioner of the Big East.

Lisa Carnoy, independent director: The newest Board member joined in August. She’s a banking executive and vice chair of the Board of Trustees at Columbia, which happens to be where Gulati teaches and where the soccer field is named for key USSF accuser and Cosmos owner Rocco Commisso.

It’s worth mentioning that Gulati has been involved in the search for each independent directory. By USSF bylaws, the president serves on the Nominating and Governance Committee. If you go back through Board minutes, you’ll see that Gulati (and others) worked with consulting firms to find people for these spots. You can also see that ethnic and gender diversity were key factors — the Board has never had a white male independent director — which seems only sensible given the general lack of diversity in the Board’s other positions.

Many of the same Board members — Cordeiro, Ahrens, Harrell, Turney, Shalala and possibly Ackerman (who joined either just before or just after that vote) — participated in the vote to approve the NASL’s provisional Division II sanctioning for the 2017 season.

Also worth noting: The Pro League Task Force, which makes recommendations on sanctioning, is currently composed of Cordeiro, Ahrens and USSF CEO Dan Flynn.

If you want some professional analysis of all this, check out Steven Bank’s epic Twitter thread. The impression I get is that the judge isn’t seeing a concerted action to do anything other than deny the NASL the Division II sanction it hasn’t earned. But I’m not the least bit sure about that, and there’s certainly a chance that the judge wants to hear more. Would she issue the injunction just to toss the NASL a lifeline until everything else can be heard?

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podcast, pro soccer

RSD17: Adding tiers to the U.S. soccer cake, with NPSL’s Jef Thiffault

Posted on by Beau Dure

Jef Thiffault is the managing director for the NPSL, an elite amateur league that’s been sometimes pulled into promotion/relegation discussions. But he used to work for MLS and SUM.

Mind blown yet?

It’s actually an encouraging discussion that gives the impression that we have some smart people in U.S. soccer, toiling far away from the courtrooms and big-league boardrooms. And we might see a sea change in elite amateur competition that just might spill upward to the pros.

Interview begins around the 10:30 mark after I give a long introduction and rant a bit about the NASL and so forth.

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