Month: December 2017

pro soccer, us soccer

Modified promotion/relegation in action

Posted on by Beau Dure

pyramid

UPDATE:

Jonathan Tannenwald got me thinking about this post today when he started musing on MLS approaching a semi-balanced schedule next year when Nashville comes in:

Nice and simple. Which my proposal below is not.

But my proposal accomplishes a few important things:

  • It creates opportunity for clubs to move up.
  • It provides a cushion for clubs that drop down, thereby increasing the odds that their youth academies will survive.
  • It aligns the USA with the transfer windows and season calendar used in the rest of the world (except Brazil, Bolivia, China, Canada, Japan, Iceland, Ireland, Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, parts of Scandinavia, several Eastern European countries and several African nations, but that’s only a couple billion people, so who cares? I mean, Russia went to a winter schedule, and we all admire the sense of fair play that governs sports and politics in Russia these days, right?)

It did get me thinking, though, and I wonder if this might simplify things a bit:

Fall Division 1: Two 12-team regional conferences playing 22-game double round-robin. (If that seems short, look at the calendar. See below, where I proposed a 10-team top division. We’re basically squeezing these games in 17 weeks, at least in a World Cup year.) Winners are regional league champions, each claiming a CONCACAF berth.

Spring MLS Cup: Twelve teams play a single round-robin (11 games). So each team can have an equal number of home and away games (and so we can kick off in southern cities), every team’s first game will be at a neutral site. From here, the top six qualify to a simple knockout tournament, with the top two getting byes. (Yes, I’m finally backing off from my beloved Page playoff. Maybe.) Winner is MLS/D1 champion and claims a CONCACAF berth if it doesn’t already have one. (Then it passes down to finalist or highest-placed semifinalist.)

Spring pro/rel tournaments: The other 12 teams from D1 join six teams from D2. Form three six-team groups that play double round-robins (10 games). The top three teams in each group claim a spot in D1 that fall. The last-place teams go to D2. The other six are randomly drawn into two-leg series; winner in D1, loser in D2.

As a reminder: Clubs that meet Premier standards can’t be relegated below D2. Clubs that meet Professional standards can’t be relegated below D3.

ORIGINAL POST:

You’ve read the plan and the reasoning behind it. So how would it look in practice?

Let’s plug in some clubs, based on results (where relevant) and historical ambition …

FALL 2018 (kicking off July 29, two weeks after World Cup final, and scheduling top divisions around international breaks: Sept. 3-11, Oct. 8-16, Nov. 12-20) 

Division 1 (Premier clubs: 10-team single table, 18 games, final games Dec. 16)

  • Toronto FC
  • NYC FC
  • Chicago Fire
  • Atlanta United
  • Columbus Crew
  • Portland Timbers
  • Seattle Sounders
  • Vancouver Whitecaps
  • New York Red Bulls
  • Houston Dynamo

At stake, besides the league championship: The top four clubs are guaranteed a spot in Division 1 next fall, and the top eight advance to the National Cup. (Put another way — two clubs drop straight into the promotion playoffs, and another four might join them.)

Division 2 (Premier and Professional clubs)

12-team single tables at this point. The eight teams in italics are Professional rather than Premier clubs, which means they could be subject to relegation while the Premier clubs are not.

The top finisher in each region advances to the National Cup. The two runners-up play a playoff for a space in the National Cup.

WEST EAST
Sporting KC New England Revolution
San Jose Earthquakes Philadelphia Union
FC Dallas Montreal Impact
Real Salt Lake Orlando City
Minnesota United D.C. United
Colorado Rapids Miami (Silva or Beckham)
Los Angeles Galaxy FC Cincinnati
LAFC Nashville (MLS bidders)
Sacramento Republic North Carolina FC
Detroit (MLS bidders or City FC) New York Cosmos
California United Indy Eleven
San Diego 1904 FC Jacksonville Armada

Division 3 (Professional clubs)

USL-1 West USL-1 East NISA/NPSL Pro W NISA/NPSL Pro E
San Antonio FC Louisville City FC Omaha Chattanooga FC
Rio Grande Valley FC Tampa Bay Rowdies St. Louis Little Rock Rangers
Phoenix Rising FC Ottawa Fury FC Milwaukee Torrent Asheville City SC
Reno 1868 FC Richmond Kickers FC Arizona Charlotte
Oklahoma City Energy FC Saint Louis FC Napa Valley 1839 Atlanta Silverbacks
Tulsa Roughnecks FC Charleston Battery Grand Rapids FC Miami
Colorado Springs Switchbacks Pittsburgh Riverhounds Kalamazoo FC Syracuse FC
Real Monarchs Swope Park Rangers Midland-Odessa FC Albion SC
LA Galaxy II Bethlehem Steel Detroit City 2 Birmingham Hammers
Seattle Sounders 2 Toronto FC II Hartford City FC
USL-2 West USL-2 Northeast
Vancouver Whitecaps 2 Rochester Rhinos
FC Tucson Jacksonville Armada 2
Fresno Fuego New York Red Bulls 2
Portland Timbers 2 Michigan Bucks
Orange County SC Harrisburg City Islanders
Des Moines Menace Thunder Bay Chill
LAFC Reserves Long Island Rough Riders
Sacramento Republic 2 Indy Eleven Reserves
California United 2
San Diego 1904 FC USL-2 Southeast
Charlotte Independence
Orlando City B
Charlotte Eagles
Carolina Dynamo
Tobacco Road FC
North Carolina FC 2
Miami Reserves
FC Cincinnati Reserves
Nashville Reserves

Maybe that would be simpler if we could merge everything and go strictly regional, but we’ll live with that for now. The league winners will need to have a playoff to determine teams for the National Cup.

Now let’s assume all of these clubs finished in the order listed above. That leads us to …

SPRING 2019 (Cup play and playoffs, kicking off in March, observing international break March 18-26 and ending before pre-Copa international break June 3)

National Cup: Top eight from Division 1, top two from Division 2, two from Division 3. Drawn into two six-team groups. Group winners and runners-up qualify for playoffs. In each group, the bottom team of the three italicized teams drops to the last phase of the D1 promotion playoffs. (We’ll say Kansas City and New England here.)

GROUP A GROUP B
Toronto FC NYC FC
Atlanta United Chicago Fire
Columbus Crew Portland Timbers
Vancouver Whitecaps Seattle Sounders
Sporting KC New England Revolution
Chattanooga FC Louisville City FC

D1 promotion playoffs: Every other Premier club. Group winners advance to face bottom relegation-eligible teams from the National Cup for the last spots in the Fall 2019 Division 1.

GROUP A GROUP B
San Jose Earthquakes Philadelphia Union
Los Angeles Galaxy Real Salt Lake
LAFC Orlando City
Montreal Impact D.C. United
Colorado Rapids Miami (Silva or Beckham)
FC Dallas Minnesota United
FC Cincinnati Nashville (MLS bidders)

D2 promotion playoffs: We still have eight spots in Division 2 for Professional clubs. (Reserve teams are not eligible.) Two of them will go to the D3 clubs that reached the National Cup. For the remaining six, we’ll have two six-team groups. The eight clubs from the previous D2 are automatically invited, along with four clubs from D3.

WEST EAST
Sacramento Republic North Carolina FC
Detroit (MLS bidders or City FC) New York Cosmos
California United Indy Eleven
San Diego 1904 FC Jacksonville Armada
San Antonio FC Tampa Bay Rowdies
Omaha Little Rock Rangers

Regional Cups: Every other professional team plays in a regional group that also includes amateur teams that apply. Maybe even college teams. They’re already playing spring friendlies.

So let’s see how this meets the criteria set out in the last post:

OPPORTUNITY: Plenty of it. Division 1 is fluid. Clubs that don’t meet Premier standards can still go up to Division 2.

DEVELOPMENT: The requirement is that all these clubs have academies, so … yes.

STABILITY: Lots of movement here, but not that much risk. Clubs can only fall one division.

SIMPLICITY: No. I’ll get back to work.

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us soccer

Shocking allegation starts post-Gulati era

Posted on by Beau Dure

Sunil Gulati will not run for re-election. It’s the right decision, one that frankly should’ve been made before the late November deadline for organizations to rescind their nominations for the presidency.

But let’s take a close look at that story, particularly this quote:

Gulati, born in India, was the subject of some racist commentary on social media, but said that didn’t play a significant factor in his decision.

I must be muting the right people now, because I didn’t see any of that. I switched to the browser I don’t normally use and tried to find something.

It was a while ago, but on Oct. 13 (by far the highest volume of tweets mentioning him — that was day Gulati held a conference call and Bruce Arena resigned), he did indeed get at least three tweets that would qualify as racist. One suggested Trump should deport him (also noted Oct. 10). One used a word that seems to be a regional answer to Mexico’s “p—” chant. Another made reference to curry.

And some of it was simply abusive:

https://twitter.com/dario27soccer/status/937244498211495937

It gets worse. I’m not going to repeat one allegation. Let’s say it had nothing to do with soccer or business or economics. Another one still thinks “gay” is an insult. And there are another couple of invitations to remove himself from the living.

This one might be the strangest:

https://twitter.com/TitanFan98/status/917994413627985920

Or maybe this:

A lot of people simply asked him to resign — hundreds of tweets in the hour after the apocalypse in Trinidad, then another burst when news broke that the Italian federation president was stepping down.

And the usual stuff from people who don’t understand that this isn’t a paid position:

https://twitter.com/mikemce9/status/930282941107855360

https://twitter.com/IVXXd0pe/status/920155909657001984

This one’s especially muddled:

Also, I sometimes wonder if people think we’re living in a fascist country (hey, we’re getting closer) in which the federation and other authorities also dictate the media coverage:

Here’s a palate cleanser from someone who ran against Gulati a couple of times (and won once):

That search as a whole, though, was a reminder that there are a lot of really stupid hate-mongers on Twitter.

And that’s just Twitter. Other platforms may have carried more racist abuse, but when I think racist abuse and sheer hate, I think Twitter.

Here’s a more pertinent quote to dissect:

“Look, the general perception in the soccer community versus the people who vote in elections may be different right now,” Gulati said, referring to the various state soccer associations and administrators who will vote in the presidential election.

“But the loss to Trinidad was painful, regrettable and led to a lot of strong emotions. And to be honest, I think at this point, that’s overshadowed a lot of other things that are important. So fair or not, I accept that and think it’s time for a new person.”

All of this is true. If I were advising Gulati on PR, I’d drop the “fair or not” clause. And I wouldn’t have responded to this point:

Cordeiro’s entry was the most dramatic, given his relationship with Gulati — and it was clear that Cordeiro’s choice affected the relationship between the longtime friends.

“It was an interesting set of discussions with Carlos,” Gulati said in a quiet tone. “That’s all I’m prepared to say about that.”

So it’s not the most graceful exit for Gulati. He still maintains higher ground than his Twitter accusers, but that’s a very low bar. Even the people on Twitter who use their real names rarely have any perspective or understanding of what Gulati has done. It’s not really logical to blame Gulati for undoing all the progress made over the past decade without noticing Gulati was in place while all that progress was made.

And the bulk of the job — er, volunteer position — has little to do with the men’s or women’s national teams. Here’s what he says about the other candidates:

I think several of them would be in for a pretty big shock about what the job is — it’s not just about national teams. It’s about 4 million registered players, referees, medical safety, grass-roots stuff. It feels like that stuff gets ignored sometimes.

It’s definitely more drudgery than the Twitterati realize. Read back through the minutes of USSF Board meetings, and you will be bored. I also wouldn’t want to be the one trying to figure out what to do with the country’s pro leagues — Neil Morris and I basically figured it’s nearly impossible to avoid lawsuits down the road.

But I think Gulati, perhaps in one final comment that shows he hasn’t been listening to the right people, is selling the other candidates short. Steve Gans, who embarked on a listening tour before announcing his candidacy, is talking about a youth summit to try to quell the factionalism at the grass roots. Paul Caligiuri is talking about ODP, id2 and the Development Academy. Eric Wynalda spent the weekend at an adult soccer tournament. Kyle Martino, Mike Winograd and Paul Lapointe have ideas for every aspect of the game. And Carlos Cordeiro certainly understands the scope of the job — he’s vice president, and he has done the heavy lifting on the budget for many years.

We’re seeing a productive exchange of ideas. We need Cordeiro and maybe Kathy Carter to come in and give their views as well.

So can we agree that we’re not going to let Twitter ruin this election?

 

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pro soccer, us soccer

What are the goooooooals of a promotion/relegation system in the U.S.?

Posted on by Beau Dure

As I was leaving the country (for unrelated reasons), I asked aloud on Twitter — how would you set up a promotion/relegation system in the USA? Here’s a sampling:

RESPONSES

Traditional pyramids

https://twitter.com/clementismyname/status/933112931964907521

https://twitter.com/Jimmyg_3/status/933147312389591046

https://twitter.com/TheKerberGarett/status/934114018205294592

(That’s basically a pyramid with large D1 and D2, then a mammoth regionalized D3.)

Top tiers only

https://twitter.com/atlemar/status/933081919419400192

https://twitter.com/ajvsell/status/933082802433806337

Somewhere in between

https://twitter.com/IncubateLV/status/933415432827977728

Outside the box

https://twitter.com/NefariousJoe/status/933107239031783424

TAKEAWAYS

Here’s how I interpret what I’ve heard here and elsewhere:

  1. There’s an appetite for pro/rel to make things interesting.
  2. People are open to a modified pro/rel system.

Let’s work on that, first by defining some goals. (I’ve done that before, but the conversation has progressed since then.)

GOALS

OPPORTUNITY: Encourage the growth of the professional game so as many communities as possible would have a direct tie to the pro leagues

Or “open access,” if you like.

The minor-league baseball model won’t really work for soccer. A baseball player might take a few years of seasoning before breaking through to the majors, and you can honestly say the players you’re seeing in Rookie or Single-A baseball could make the majors someday. The soccer timeline is more accelerated. It’s a rare player (not unheard-of, but rare) who’s in the fourth tier at age 19 and then makes the Big Show.

DEVELOPMENT: Grow a large, stable national network of pro-affiliated youth academies

Note that I’ve never seen any suggestion to prevent an existing youth club from forming a professional team and being the Richmond Kickers of their region. I’d think that would be encouraged.

STABILITY: Minimize risk — not for the protection of billionaires but for community supporters and their youth academies

(Yes, this would include not letting clubs move. You want a pro club in Austin? Sell your damn club in Columbus and start/buy a new one in Austin.)

SIMPLICITY

This is apparently the counterargument against my most recent plan. It’s really not that complicated, but OK, I’ll play ball.

So how do we do all this? Here’s what I’ll suggest:

COMPONENTS

Have divisional club standards with some flexibility

The basic idea here is to kill the waiver process and replace it with a system that allows clubs to compete if they can’t meet one or two of the standards. It’ll make more sense if I write out an example:

A professional club is required to have a youth system meeting Development Academy standards (to be defined in another post!), a stadium with basics like locker rooms and lights, and a sufficient full-time business staff. Also, the ownership group must meet financial (viability) standards.

An premier club (a level above simply “professional”) is required to have a stadium seating at least 10,000 people, along with further stadium, staff and ownership requirements.

At each of these two levels, require clubs to meet at least three of these five:

  1. A stadium seating at least 5,000 for pro, 15,000 for premier
  2. A grass field of at least 110 yards by 70
  3. Average attendance in the prior three seasons of 1,500 for pro, 10,000 for premier
  4. An affiliated pro or elite amateur women’s team — either as part of the club itself or through a partnership with a team in the same market
  5. At least one finish in the top 90 percent of the club’s primary league in the last four years

Have a relegation *floor* beyond which a club cannot be relegated (unless it fails to meet standards)

If you’re a premier club, you stay in a premier league — assuming we have enough clubs, that would be the top two tiers.

If you’re a professional club, you stay in a professional league. Might be D3, might also be D4 if we have a lot of clubs.

The distinction between “pro” and “amateur” will be determined by financial reality

Quit griping. Quit telling me your local amateur club would be worth eleventy billion dollars if only it had the opportunity to be promoted to MLS. That’s baloney. Your local amateur club can go pro next year for far less than eleventy billion dollars. Call Peter Wilt. Call USL. Call NASL. Even MLS might still hear you out for the round of expansion after the next round of expansion.

And quit telling me about “the rest of the world” having an uninterrupted pyramid from its megaclubs all the way down to East Piddlington School Old Boys of the Farthingsworth Southwest Northern County Premier League Third Division. In England, the beacon of promotion/relegation, the swinging door between the pro and amateur ranks is a recent thing — and as it currently stands, it’s one that means your club might shut down its academy if it has a bad season at League Two. That’s why I argued a while ago that we’d be better off keeping an open-ended third or fourth tier rather than limiting it to, say, 24 teams — and that was before I dug into English academies and found they were considered quite expendable when a club was relegated out of “League football.”

The Netherlands have been prying open that door rather carefully. Spain’s pyramid is so wide (80 clubs in third tier, 360 in fourth tier) that there’s probably a place for a fully professional club in an upper tier. Other countries have plenty of standards to meet at some point on the pyramid. Even in England, they’re reinstating the wall between full professionals and other clubs in the women’s game.

If you have a lot of money, sure, you can form a club like AFC Wimbledon and climb into the pro ranks. It’s hard to imagine any country in which a club with such a spending advantage over amateur clubs would not be able to go pro.

The farther down the pyramid, the more regional you get

Said it on Twitter today — I’ve never understood the U.S. fascination with making its lower divisions “national.” In Spain and Italy, the third division is regional.

The reason for going national is to have a national TV deal. That’s always going to be a tough sell for a lower division. These clubs are going to make most of their money at the gate. That means regional rivalries help — note North Carolina FC’s excitement about playing Charleston, Charlotte and Richmond in the USL.

Align with the international calendar (even though it doesn’t actually exist)

The OCD pedant in me cringes when I hear talk of the “international calendar.” The major European leagues run from fall to spring. Other European leagues do not. Most South American leagues play two seasons per year. Brazil’s national season is May to December.

Then there’s the transfer window, which is the time in which a player may be transferred to a club within the country in question. (Free agents can sign whenever.) Transfer windows don’t have to overlap for a transfer to be made, which is why you hear very little about the transfer windows in countries from which MLS has been importing (Costa Rica, Argentina, etc.).

But yes — as Eric Wynalda often says, there’s a disadvantage to having your season aligned differently from the Euro leagues. Clubs generally want to do their major makeovers between seasons and then tinker a bit during a season, so it’s easier to make bigger deals when the two countries in question have the same offseason.

Caveat to previous component: Let’s not make fans sit outside a lot in Toronto or Boston or other northern venues in the middle of winter

We’re going to need a six-week winter break. At least.

Strike a balance between rewarding regular-season excellence AND offering up an engaging playoff 

This is something MLS simply isn’t doing right now. Too many teams in the playoffs. Too many interruptions in the playoffs.

THE PROPOSAL

OK, I’ll simplify the previous proposal.

Leagues (playing from July to December)

  • Division 1 (MLS?): Premier clubs only. Single table, 12 teams, balanced schedule, best season record determines league champion.
  • Division 2 (MLS2? New brand?): Premier and professional clubs. Probably two regions, maybe three someday. Premier clubs can’t be relegated further than this.
  • Division 3 (many, including NISA, USL and hopefully a lot of new regional leagues): Professional clubs only. These leagues can have promotion/relegation with them. It’s up to them. If you have a 30-team league in the Northeast or SoCal, you’ll probably have pro/rel. If you have 10 teams in a large, sparsely populated area, maybe not.

Does that mean we have pro/rel among Divisions 1-3? Yes, but it’s not based strictly on league performance. The top eight teams in Division 1 are guaranteed a return to Division 1 the next year. Everything else will be decided in …

Cup play (March to May)

National Cup: Top 8 from Division 1, top 3 from Division 2, champion from Division 3. Play in two six-team groups. Top two from each group make playoffs.

D1/D2 playoffs: Bottom 2 from Division 1, maybe 10 from Division 2. Top two wrap up D1 status for the fall.

Regional Cups: The rest of the D2 clubs join all the D3 clubs.

So that’s a start. Still plenty to work out, particularly whether new clubs in D1 or D2 have to pay expansion fees.

 

 

2
podcast, pro soccer, us soccer

Mediating the NASL/USSF dispute (abridged)

Posted on by Beau Dure

In case you haven’t managed to listen to all of my conversation with journalist/mediator Neil Morris, here’s a quick summary of how we proceeded with our mock mediation of the NASL v USSF lawsuit:

NASL proposal (again, this is fictional — just me playing the role)

  1. Give us three years guaranteed years of Division 2 designation as long as we maintain a minimum of eight teams.
      • Alternate option: Remove the division standards entirely.
  2. Freeze the Professional League Standards at the 2014 edition until 2026 with the exception of removing the time-zone standard
  3. Steve Malik removed as Pro Council representative, Rocco Commisso on Pro Council AND give him full access to SUM/USSF relationship

USSF counterproposal (again, fictional)

  1. Remove the distinction between Division 2 and Division 3. We’ll have Division 1 standards and professional standards, but any further distinction is up to the leagues.
  2. Freeze the PLS and remove the time-zone standard (actually, when we remove Division 2 from the PLS, then that’s a moot point), but we’ll only freeze until 2020.
  3. Changing the Board as the result of a lawsuit is a nonstarter. That’s not how boards work.
  4. Lose the NASL brand name, which we consider toxic given its history, and open merger talks with NISA.

Neil, speaking as a mediator and not a soccer journalist/analyst, sees a few problems with trying to force action upon those who are not party to the suit. USL could object to the removal of D2. Peter Wilt is under no obligation to talk with NASL. (In the real world, he probably would, but the point is that we can’t speak for him in this mediation.)

Another idea: Neil thinks granting the NASL a two-year grace period at Division 2 makes sense, and not just because it’s a compromise between the reported USSF proposal (one year) and NASL (three years).

If these ideas were exchanged in the real world, they might prod everyone toward a resolution of the current issues. Unfortunately, as we discuss, this isn’t likely to be the last USSF lawsuit no matter what they do. Impose an “open system”? OK then, MLS owners would surely haul you to court. Deny NASL the chance to become Division 1 in a few years if they manage to stick around? Yeah, we might see you in court again. Allow NASL to become a competing Division 1? Again, would MLS owners stand for that?

The only way these issues are going to get a long-term solution is if every stakeholder sits down and hammers out a solution that everyone can live with. And even then, you might stop someone new from coming in and suing down the road. We simply live in a litigious society that isn’t going to hand over total control of one sport to the federation, even if it were perfectly run to the satisfaction of 99% of Americans.

Listen to the podcast for all that — if you’re in a hurry, skip to the hour mark, where Neil and I assess the hourlong conversation we just had.

In thinking further about it, I’m leaning toward the following as a long-term plan that satisfies supporters (and those of us concerned about youth development) as well as owners and lawyers …

  1. Replace the Professional League Standards with Professional Club Standards. By all means, still keep some policies for leagues on refereeing, drug testing, an arbitration process for disputes, etc. But no more of this “75% of teams in a league must be owned by a gazillionaire” or “75% of teams must be in cities that had 1 million people before climate change forced everyone inland” stuff. The Club standards would focus on fields, stadium size, etc. Perhaps instead of a waiver application process, we could have a list of five items that must be met and five items of which a club must meet at least three. (Youth academy standards would absolutely be part of this.)
  2. Open the pyramid with some caveats. That’s the next post, and it will include some of the things people tweeted to me in the last 10 days. (No, I didn’t forget. Things have just been haywire.)
1
podcast, us soccer, women's soccer, youth soccer

RSD21: U.S. Soccer presidential candidate Eric Wynalda

Posted on by Beau Dure

Eric Wynalda has played in multiple World Cups, Germany, MLS, etc. He’s been a successful coach and commentator.

Yes, we talk about promotion/relegation. In fact, we did it first just so you single-issue types can listen and then bail out. If you want to hear about EVERY issue facing the next USSF president — well, we got to maybe half of them. There are lot of issues. In rough order, we talk about:

1. What’s different or similar between the concerns of the Twitterati and the concerns of the typical state or national association.

2. Whether people are nervous to speak up about the USSF power structure.

3. Women’s soccer: The new collective bargaining agreement and the NWSL.

4. Youth soccer: Has the federation done too little? Too much?

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