Tag: nasl

soccer

Indoor soccer and the remnants of outdoor, through SI’s eyes

Posted on by Beau Dure

I recently came across a classic Frank DeFord piece on the MISL — Show, Sex And Suburbs — and got curious to see what else Sports Illustrated had written about the heyday of the indoor game and the nadir of U.S. outdoor soccer.

Fortunately, SI’s vaults are open (to subscribers, at least), so I was able to trip through history.

Here we go …

July 9, 1979: Watch Out! The Sky Is Falling: The Houston Hurricane jump-started its outdoor season with a successful run indoors.

Houston Forward Kyle Rote believes the indoor experiences did more than just instill self-esteem in the Hurricane players. “Eight of our 11 outdoor starters played indoor, and we gained a lot of technical skills, particularly the Americans,” he says.

Feb. 18, 1980: They Get Their Kicks On A Hockey Rink: Bob Rigby offers up what might be the first mention of the phrase “human pinball” while SI contrasts the surging indoor game with the fading outdoor game.

Foreman also finds a chauvinistic satisfaction in the arrangement. “We felt that people wanted to see American kids, their own kids, playing,” he says. “The NASL hasn’t done much for them. We wanted to be the league where no American would wind up holding Beckenbauer’s warmup jacket. …

No wonder that some of the most talented young Americans are now signing up with the MISL instead of the NASL and finding themselves beneficiaries of the early stages of what could develop into a bidding war between the two leagues. Professional-quality U.S. soccer players are still in woefully short supply. Ty Keough, 23, a talented defender, signed with the MISL’s Cincinnati franchise when he graduated from St. Louis University in ’78. He now plays with the Steamers–Cincinnati being defunct–but last summer he was loaned to the NASL’s San Diego Sockers. He is now considering offers for the coming outdoor season. “I’m happy I signed in MISL,” Keough says. “I get a lot of game time and I can be choosy about NASL offers. I’ve got a steady income.”

(The story also has a Joe Machnik sighting.)

Feb. 15, 1982: Stan the Fran, Free Spirit: Even with the NASL and the Cosmos still going, SI found a good story in Stan Terlecki, who had challenged Polish authorities and found a home in Pittsburgh.

Did you hear about Brezhnev calling all the top Soviet scientists together, Terlecki asked, and telling them how disappointed he was that the U.S. had beaten Russia to the moon? He proposed that the U.S.S.R. land a cosmonaut on the sun. One scientist had to tell Brezhnev that this was impossible because of the sun’s great heat. His boyish face beaming. Terlecki looked around the table to make sure everyone was ready for the punchline: ” ‘No problem.’ Brezhnev says, ‘we will land at night.’ ” Terlecki roared, and the group spent another 15 minutes cracking Brezhnev jokes. By the time the check finally arrived, everyone had defrosted.

May 21, 1984: 19th Hole: One of several letters in response to a story on the NASL reads as follows:

I was dismayed by the article by Clive Gammon, which purports to explain the many reasons for the near demise of the NASL. Gammon is another of the closed-minded “experts” who put the blame on everything from the players to the owners to artificial turf. What they can’t admit is the simple fact that outdoor soccer fails in the U.S. because it’s boring. While the NASL plods along with talk of “world sport,” the Major Indoor Soccer League has spruced up the staid European game and made it fun to watch. We Americans shouldn’t be ashamed of our preference for excitement. Our heritage is one of innovation.

The original story will be an uncomfortable read for NASL enthusiasts, scoffing at everything from the goofy rules to ignorant owners while labeling its non-Beckenbauer players as listless shadows of themselves or second-division European fodder.

June 18, 1984: The Blast Had One At Last: The Baltimore Blast, coached by one Kenny Cooper, won its first MISL title.

Most ebullient of all, though, may have been lame-duck team chairman of the board/director Bernie Rodin, who, after helping found the MISL six seasons ago, had just seen his final game as an owner. Last March Rodin sold the Blast to a local businessman, Nathan Sherr, for $3 million, effective June 15. “I’m the only original owner left in the league,” Rodin said, grinning. “I helped write the rules for this sport. It’s an incredible feeling. Like being Abner Doubleday, only I’ve got one thing Abner never had. A team that won the championship.”

March 4, 1985: Not In It For The Kicks: All about Ricky Davis, the U.S. national teamer playing indoor out of necessity. And there’s a club vs. country undercurrent worth reading — not just the difference in the outdoor and indoor games but a looming schedule conflict.

The situation in general:

At the moment, this is where U.S. soccer happens to be. Fans have turned from the outdoor NASL—its 1985 season, with three living franchises, down from 24 in 1980, is in grave jeopardy—and are flocking to the MISL. The league is headed toward an attendance record for the second consecutive year; at present St. Louis is No. 2 on the list with an average of 12,829. Davis reportedly earns $100,000 a year from the Steamers, yet the indoor game that affords him so much fame and fortune may also be a barrier to the fulfillment of his dream.

Let’s be serious. The possibility that the U.S. might win the World Cup in 1986 is too remote even to consider. But the U.S. could win a berth in the final 24-nation field.

And you just have to read this part …

That lesson, along with his ever-improving skills and wholesome good looks, has made Davis the most visible symbol of the American game. “Davis has replaced Shep Messing as the pinup boy of soccer,” says Baltimore Blast coach Ken Cooper.

“True, but I have a better body,” says Messing, who once helped publicize soccer by posing nude for Viva magazine. Such a thing would be unthinkable for Davis, whom U.S. national team coach Alkis Panagoulias calls “a magnet and a model for American youth.”

“Put it this way,” says Messing. “The difference between Ricky’s image and mine is that I do Skoal chewing tobacco commercials, and he does Ivory soap.”

June 9, 1986: Dynasty With An Asterisk: The dazzling, fractious San Diego Sockers win their fifth straight indoor title between the NASL and MISL.

Any boring, bovine team is an endangered species in the MISL, which has been a slaughterhouse for 17 franchises in its eight-year history. The league held firm with 12 teams this season, and playoff attendance rose to an average of 11,985 per game from 8,509 last year. Things should get even better next year, when a new franchise in New York, the Express, will join the league with co-owner Shep Messing in goal.

But the game is the thing, and it has evolved into a good one as more players have come in from the outdoors. “The game is streaks away from where it was four years ago,” says Newman, an indoor coach since 1980. “It takes a soccer player to play this game, and we’ve started getting some really good ones.”

Oct. 27, 1986: Alive But Barely Kicking: A look at the post-NASL landscape, with Paul Caligiuri, John Kerr and David Vanole scraping by.

The NASL’s major sin was trying to make soccer a national sport without developing a foundation for the future. After an over-the-hill Pele gave the fledgling American game a star, naive owners continued to pay exorbitant amounts to so-called world class foreign players whose name recognition was zero and whose motivation to perform was possibly even less. Meanwhile, American talent remained undeveloped. ”Everyone thought Pele was a messiah,” says Cliff McCrath, coach of the Division II champion Seattle Pacific. ”It wasn’t his fault, but in my opinion, Pele was our executioner.”

The scars run so deep that the idea of launching another national outdoor soccer league anytime soon seems absurd.

March 9, 1987: The Shirtless Wonder Tatu Scores With Goals and Discarded Garments: Starts by drawing a distinction between the Dallas Sidekicks star and the Fantasy Island sidekick.

Tatu is a promotional dynamo. He makes unpaid appearances at the birthday parties of his youngest fans, puts on soccer clinics, coaches a youth team, makes instructional films, poses for posters and signs autographs until the last kid has gone home happy. ”Tatu Toffee” is the latest Baskin-Robbins flavor to hit the Big D.

”I am determinated to make our game work in this country,” he says.

Other players are among Tatu’s biggest fans. They take no offense at his protracted postgoal celebrations, possibly because they are used to seeing people involved with indoor soccer lose their shirts. Recently the New York Express, whose projected success was thought to be the key to landing the MISL much needed national exposure, went under. Before Tatu came to Dallas three years ago, two soccer franchises had failed in the Metroplex.

”He’s not doing the shirt thing to put it in your face,” says San Diego Socker defender Kevin Crow, who often marks Tatu. ”He’s doing it to put people in the stands. Everybody is for that.”

I could not find anything about the MISL (then rechristened MSL, just to confuse everyone) folding. An AP story from 1992 has the news of the league’s final collapse and says its existence had been threatened each of the preceding years since 1988. Andy Crossley’s blog Fun While It Lasted rounds up several MISL teams’ histories, and David Litterer’s American Soccer History site has several essays on indoor soccer history.

But the SI pieces are particularly interesting — relics of a time in which indoor soccer had a lot of believers. And the outdoor game was all but dead in this country.

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soccer

MLS, USA and Canada 2022: One vision

Posted on by Beau Dure

One vision of how professional soccer could look in eight years:

The 2022 MLS season kicked off with all 24 teams for the third straight season. The teams are divided into two conferences. Each team plays its conference rivals twice and then each team from the other conference once, for a total of 34 games.

The league is also in its third year under a new collective bargaining agreement. The 2020 edition replaced the salary “budget” (which most people called a “cap”) with a “luxury tax,” akin to what has been seen in Major League Baseball for years and was adopted by Germany’s Bundesliga in 2016. “Designated Players” still exist and are partially exempt from the salary accounting. If the team’s adjusted salary expenditures exceed $10 million, they pay into a revenue-sharing pool.

With MLS already ditching limits on free agency in the 2015 CBA, the league now operates under the same rules as the Bundesliga and several other European leagues. Mexico’s league, conversely, fell on hard times in 2017 when the broadcasting consortium carrying 12 of the 18 teams’ games broke apart.

The newer teams include SCSC Wanderers, the Southern California team that replaced Chivas USA in 2016. The New York Cosmos joined in 2017, having returned to the team’s traditional home of New Jersey by purchasing the former Red Bull Arena, now called PeleArena.

Without a doubt, the league’s biggest turnaround story was in Miami. The stadium was built near sea level and was quickly and permanently flooded by the rising Atlantic Ocean. An infusion of cash led to a clever reclamation of the land, and a desalinization plant hums quietly next to the stadium. Fans access the stadium via a colorful pontoon bridge that revitalized the rundown oceanfront. Real Salt Lake fans still tease Miami fans about borrowing the tune of their traditional song, but they respect the perseverance of fans who march to games singing, “If you believe, then you walk across the bridge …”

Miami and the NWSL benefited from the same generous sponsor — a former Stanford women’s soccer player who developed a combination vaccine for Ebola and all strains of the flu. She has set up global health nonprofits with much of her money but also bought a 50% share of Miami Mariners FC and set up a unique sponsorship endowment for the NWSL, which has 16 teams and high-rated weekly games on ESPN2. Portland Timbers/Thorns owner Merritt Paulson was so moved by her generosity that he paid to have all NWSL stadiums’ turf replaced with grass.

Back to the competitive aspects of MLS — MLS Cup is now contested solely by the winners of the East and West conferences. The other rounds of the playoffs were eliminated in 2018 as other Cup competitions took pre-eminence.

The early rounds of the U.S. Open Cup are now contested largely in the six-week break of the MLS and NASL seasons for the World Cup, Copa America or Gold Cup. Amateur and low-level professional teams play knockout games for the first three weeks, with many games broadcast as shoulder programming for the major international competitions. The NASL teams join in Week 4, then MLS teams in Week 5.

The top eight amateur teams in the Open Cup play a one-week tournament in mid-August for the revamped U.S. Amateur Cup. This is the only national amateur competition, as the PDL and NPSL — before they merged with the USASA in 2019 — realized they were cheating a lot of players out of playing time by cutting short the regular season to have national playoffs. College players are able to stay with their teams longer because the revamped fall/spring NCAA schedule starts in early September rather than late August.

Elite year-round amateur teams have joined low-level professional teams in USL regional leagues with promotion and relegation. The amateur teams are still eligible for the Amateur Cup, while the pro teams have a late-October national championship — the Peter Wilt Cup, named after the new FIFA president.

Canada, which oversaw the formation of three successful regional pro/am leagues in the late 2010s, has a similar system. U.S. women’s amateur competition is also similar.

The other important U.S. cup competition is the Disney Cup in February, drawing together the MLS Cup champion, the MLS Cup runner-up, the next-best MLS team, the NASL Soccer Bowl champion, the Peter Wilt Cup winner and the Open Cup winner. They play in three-team round-robin groups, with the winners advancing to the final and runners-up advancing to a third-place game. The top team that isn’t already qualified for the CONCACAF Champions League earns a berth in that competition.

Youth development took a major leap forward in 2018, when U.S. Soccer president Robb Heineman successfully lobbied FIFA to clarify its rules on transfer payments so that any U.S. youth club is due a transfer fee for the signing of any player. Wilt’s leadership helped pave the way for that much-needed change along with the re-awarding of the 2022 World Cup to Australia.

The Development Academy now includes women’s competition, and World Club Champion Lyon made headlines early in 2022 by paying an international-record $7 million transfer fee for Sky Blue Academy prospect Rylie Rampone. That fee helped to stabilize the finances at partner club NYCFC, which had been reeling when Manchester City’s ownership pulled back after the world’s oil ran out in 2020.

Within MLS, there is some movement toward promotion/relegation, with the biggest stumbling block being adequate compensation for those who have paid either the initial start-up costs of the league or paid expansion fees. The league is talking with its broadcast partners to pay enough to make such a system feasible and broadcast some lower-division games. But pro/rel talk also has split the NASL, which had to institute a formal salary cap after a group of oil magnates started a team in St. Louis and immediately spent twice as much on players as the rest of the league combined. That team folded when … well, again, the world ran out of oil.

So that’s one vision of soccer in the USA and Canada in 2022. If you disagree with any part of it, of course, you’re a corrupt individual with no imagination. (Inside joke.)

In any case, the comments should be fun. Have at it.

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soccer

U.S. Open Cup: Top 14 teams and upset history

Posted on by Beau Dure

Through May 23, 2014, lower-division teams have beaten MLS teams 66 times. (MLS teams have won 160.) And based on a whole lot of spreadsheets, we can declare one particular lower-division team the most accomplished team in the Open Cup.

The PDL is 38-87 against non-MLS pro leagues. But other amateur leagues are less successful against D2 and D3: 10-72.

For purposes of these upset lists, I haven’t separated D2 from D3. To my surprise, D2 (A-League/USL-1/USSF D-2/NASL) is 38-12 against D3 (D3 Pro/USL-2/USL Pro) since 1997. But the difference today is debatable. The Cup gives us scant evidence: Since 2010, when USSF D-2 split from the USL, D2 and D3 are 3-3 against each other. But against MLS teams, NASL teams (6-9, 40%) are more successful than USL Pro teams (9-21, 30%).

That’s assuming I didn’t miss anything in copying and pasting all the results from 1996 to 2014 from TheCup.us, cleaning up the data for easy sorting and searching, writing formulas to take each league name into account, etc.

Here is, to the best of my knowledge and spreadsheeting ability, a list of every U.S. Open Cup upset since MLS teams joined in 1996:

[gview file=”https://duresport.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/u-s-open-cup-history-formatted.pdf”%5D

As with the FA Cup, once a top-tier team gets to the later rounds, it gets a bit more serious about the competition. That shows when we look at the quarterfinalists and semifinalists:

[gview file=”https://duresport.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/u-s-open-cup-history-rounds.pdf”%5D

In typical soccer fashion, I’m going to take a whole bunch of data and then make a subjective judgment. I added up all the wins and all the runs, then ranked each team’s accomplishments based on how much they overachieved. In other words, a PDL team beating a couple of pro teams is roughly equivalent to an MLS team reaching the final.

Here goes, in reverse order:

14. Carolina RailHawks (USL-1/USSF D-2/NASL): 13 wins in seven years (through 2013). 1-time semifinalist. 4 wins over MLS teams.

  • 2007 (USL-1): Semifinalist. Beat Chicago Fire.
  • 2012 (NASL): Beat Los Angeles.
  • 2013 (NASL): Quarterfinalist. Beat Los Angeles and Chivas USA.

13. Columbus Crew (MLS): 19 wins, 1 Cup, 2-time runner-up, 1-time semifinalist.

  • 1998: Runner-up
  • 1999: Semifinalist
  • 2002: Champion
  • 2010: Runner-up

12. Kansas City Wizards / Sporting Kansas City (MLS): 18 wins, 2 Cups, 1-time semifinalist.

  • 2002: Semifinalist
  • 2004: Champion
  • 2012: Champion

11. Harrisburg City Islanders (USL-2/USL Pro): 15 wins, 5 over MLS teams.

  • 2007: Quarterfinalist. Beat D.C. United.
  • 2009: Quarterfinalist. Beat New England (away).
  • 2010: Quarterfinalist. Beat New York Red Bulls.
  • 2012: Quarterfinalist. Beat New England and New York Red Bulls.

10. Wilmington Hammerheads (PSL/USL-2/USL Pro): 15 wins, 2 over MLS teams.

  • 2003 (USL Pro): Quarterfinalist. Beat Atlanta Silverbacks  (A-League) 2-1, beat Dallas Burn (MLS) 4-1.
  • 2006: Round of 16, again beating Atlanta 2-1.
  • 2009 (USL-2): Quarterfinalist, beat Carolina RailHawks (USL-1) on PKs after 3-3 tie, beat Chicago Fire (MLS) 1-0

9. Mid-Michigan Bucks / Michigan Bucks (PDL): 12 wins. Two wins over MLS teams; total of nine wins over pro teams.

  • 1997: Beat Wilmington Hammerheads (D3 Pro) 3-2 away.
  • 1999: Beat Austin Lone Stars (D3 Pro) 3-2; beat Minnesota Thunder (A-League) 2-1 away.
  • 2000: Beat New England Revolution (MLS) 1-0 away. Lost to Miami Fusion (MLS) on PKs.
  • 2003: Beat Long Island Rough Riders (PSL) 2-1.
  • 2006: Beat Pittsburgh Riverhounds (USL-2) 2-0; beat Cincinnati Kings (USL-2) 2-1.
  • 2012: Beat Pittsburgh Riverhounds (USL Pro) 1-0 away; beat Chicago Fire (MLS) 3-2 after extra time.

8. Richmond Kickers (USL top leagues/USL-2/USL Pro): 22 wins. Champions in 1995, the first year of the pro era and the year before MLS launched. 1-time semifinalist.

  • 2000 (A-League): Beat Colorado Rapids.
  • 2001 (A-League): Quarterfinalist
  • 2004 (A-League): Quarterfinalist. Beat D.C. United.
  • 2007 (USL-2): Quarterfinalist. Beat Los Angeles.
  • 2011 (USL-2): Semifinalist. Beat Columbus and Sporting Kansas City.

7. Dallas Burn / FC Dallas (MLS): 27 wins, 1 Cup, 2-time runner-up, 4-time semifinalist.

  • 1996: Semifinalist
  • 1997: Champion
  • 1998: Semifinalist
  • 2002: Semifinalist
  • 2005: Runner-up
  • 2007: Runner-up
  • 2011: Semifinalist

6. Los Angeles Galaxy (MLS): 23 wins, 2 Cups, 2-time runner-up, 2-time semifinalist.

  • 2000: Semifinalist
  • 2001: Champion
  • 2002: Runner-up. Also won MLS Cup.
  • 2003: Semifinalist
  • 2005: Champion. Also won MLS Cup.
  • 2006: Runner-up

5. Charleston Battery (USL top leagues/USL-2/USL Pro): 29 wins, 1-time runner-up, 2-time semifinalist.

  • 1999 (A-League): Semifinalist.
  • 2004 (A-League): Semifinalist. Upset MetroStars (MLS) in round of 16, beat Rochester (A-League) in quarterfinals. Fell to Chicago (MLS) in extra time, just missing the final.
  • 2007 (USL-1): Quarterfinalist.
  • 2008 (USL-1): Finalist.
  • 2009 (USL-1): Quarterfinalist.
  • 2010 (USL-2): Quarterfinalist.

4. D.C. United (MLS): 32 wins, 3 Cups, 2-time runner-up, 4-time semifinalist.

  • 1996: Champion. Also won MLS Cup.
  • 1997: Runner-up. Also won MLS Cup and Supporters’ Shield.
  • 2001: Semifinalist
  • 2003: Semifinalist
  • 2006: Semifinalist. Also won Supporters’ Shield.
  • 2008: Champion
  • 2009: Runner-up
  • 2010: Semifinalist
  • 2013: Champion. Had worst record in MLS.

3. Seattle Sounders (A-League/USL-1/MLS): 30 wins, 3 straight Cups, 1-time runner-up, 2-time semifinalist.

We’ll treat the A-League/USL Sounders and the MLS Sounders as one entity here, mostly because the club’s commitment to the Open Cup never wavered.

  • 1996 (A-League): Quarterfinalist
  • 2003 (A-League): Quarterfinalist
  • 2007 (USL-1): Semifinalist
  • 2008 (USL-1): Semifinalist
  • 2009 (MLS): Champion
  • 2010 (MLS): Champion
  • 2011 (MLS): Champion
  • 2012 (MLS): Runner-up

2. Chicago Fire (MLS): 34 wins, 4 Cups, 2-time runner-up, 3-time semifinalist.

  • 1998: Champion. Also won MLS Cup. Club’s first season.
  • 2000: Champion. Also lost MLS Cup final.
  • 2001: Semifinalist
  • 2003: Champion. Also won Supporters’ Shield, lost MLS Cup final.
  • 2004: Runner-up
  • 2005: Semifinalist
  • 2006: Champion
  • 2011: Runner-up

1. Rochester Rhinos (A-League/USL-1/USL Pro): 33 wins, 1 Cup, 1-time runner-up, 1-time semifinalist.

  • 1996 (A-League): Runner-up. Upset Tampa Bay Mutiny in extra time (quarterfinals), upset Colorado Rapids 3-0, lost final to D.C. United.
  • 1999 (A-League): Champion. Four straight wins over MLS teams. 1-0 over Chicago Fire, 2-1 (ET) over Dallas Burn, 3-2 over Columbus Crew and 2-0 over Colorado Rapids.
  • 2004 (A-League): Quarterfinalist
  • 2005 (A-League): Quarterfinalist
  • 2009 (USL-1): Semifinalist

NOTEWORTHY RUNS/HONORABLE MENTION

1997: San Francisco Bay Seals (D3) beat two MLS teams (Kansas City Wizards, San Jose Clash) to reach semifinals.

2003: Fresno Fuego (PDL) beat Utah Blitzz (PSL) and El Paso Patriots (A-League) to reach  round of 16, losing to LA Galaxy in quarterfinals. Came back in 2014 with win over Orange County Blues (USL Pro).

2005: Minnesota Thunder (A-League) beat PDL’s Chicago Fire Premier, won a wild 6-4 game in extra time over Real Salt Lake, then beat the Colorado Rapids and Kansas City Wizards (away) to reach semifinals. The year before, the Thunder beat the Los Angeles Galaxy. That’s four wins over MLS teams.

2006: Dallas Roma FC (USASA) beat PDL’s Laredo Heat on PKs, then USL-1’s Miami FC 1-0, then Chivas USA on PKs, falling in fourth round.

2006: Carolina Dynamo (PDL) beat two pro teams: Richmond Kickers (USL-2) in second round, Seattle Sounders (USL-1) in third, setting up Dynamo-Dynamo matchup vs. Houston. As a pro team, reached quarterfinals in 1996.

2007: New England Revolution (MLS) made a rare run in the Cup and won it all. Next best runs: final in 2001, semifinal in 2008.

2012: Cal FC (USASA) beat Wilmington Hammerheads (USL Pro) 4-0 away and Portland Timbers (MLS) 1-0 away.

TEAMS WITH 10 OR MORE WINS

34 Chicago Fire (2nd in the ranking above)
33 Rochester Rhinos (1st)
32 DC United (4th)
30 Seattle Sounders (3rd)
29 Charleston Battery (5th)
27 Dallas Burn / FC Dallas (7th)
23 Los Angeles Galaxy (6th)
22 Richmond Kickers (8th)
19 Columbus Crew (13th)
18 Kansas City Wizards / Sporting KC (12th)
16 MetroStars / New York Red Bulls
15 Harrisburg City Islanders (11th)
15 Wilmington Hammerheads (10th)
14 New England Revolution
13 Carolina RailHawks (14th)
12 Mid-Michigan Bucks / Michigan Bucks (9th)
12 Minnesota Thunder
12 San Jose Clash / Earthquakes
11 Carolina Dynamo
11 Des Moines Menace
10 Charlotte Eagles
10 Portland Timbers

Corrections? Comments? Commiseration for staring at spreadsheets for so long? Share below.

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The NASL and the periodic restatement of facts on promotion/relegation

Posted on by Beau Dure

prorelHow did a three-part Empire of Soccer interview with NASL Commissioner Bill Peterson start an epic Twitter beatdown?

Well, it helped that in the first part, he talked about promotion/relegation, the concept that governs most soccer leagues (and other leagues) worldwide, including a lot of U.S. amateur leagues. (I still don’t know whether my indoor team was relegated last season.)

Dan Loney responded with the blog post “Not a Sane League.” That brought out the usual mix of people with an interest in promotion/relegation — some well-intended dreamers who are curious to see if it could work here, plus the people who think promotion/relegation has been kept down by an evil mix of MLS executives, journalists paid off with access or possibly money, and possibly the NSA. I don’t know — I’ve lost track.

That led to the epic Twitter match between Loney and the leader of the accusatory gang. It was mostly off-track, centering on the assertion that the U.S. soccer community has covered up a colorful history in which the old ASL was bigger than American football. Loney showed evidence to show otherwise and demanded that his combatant defend his point, which he completely failed to do.

All of this demonstrates two seemingly contradictory things:

1. There are a handful of somewhat reasonable and capitalized people who think promotion/relegation may be possible in our lifetimes.

2. The people who make the most noise about promotion/relegation online make it really difficult to have a reasonable discussion about it.

For those who are new to the discussion, welcome. Please allow me to bring you up to speed. Read this post for some prior talks, and then please consider the following:

1. Bids for Division I sanctioning were taken in 1993. I have done a fair amount of research on this period for my book and out of curiosity. I know of no effort to have promotion/relegation at that time.

I do, however, know of a bid that had multiple-point scoring like indoor soccer on steroids, and it would have limited players to specific zones and then shuffle them around between periods. This is where soccer stood in the USA in 1993.

2. MLS owners have sunk billions of dollars into this league as it stands now. Municipalities have helped MLS teams build stadiums. The team values and revenue projections that convinced them all to invest in this are predicated on the notion of being in the first division. Many of these investments have been made in the past 10 years — in 2002, the league was down to three owners and had few facilities. People tend to get angry, maybe even litigious, when you get them to pony up tons of capital and then change the rules.

So if you plan to take over USSF and force leagues to have promotion/relegation, bring the lawyers.

3. I have spoken with many team owners and officials in lower divisions. Many of them have relegated themselves. Many owners prefer to play in the fourth-tier PDL than the third-tier USL PRO or second-tier NASL. Why? It costs a whole lot less.

A couple of organizations — Seattle, Portland, Vancouver, Montreal, perhaps Orlando down the road — have made the leap from lower divisions to MLS. They did so over the course of a few years. They brought in owners with deep pockets. They worked out stadium deals. They built up a front office staff. These are not things you do in three months.

4. Promotion/relegation developed in other countries when they had too many teams for one division. In England, the Football League went through its early years occasionally kicking out and adding a new team or two, but a second division wasn’t added until it merged with the Football Alliance. In England and many other countries, leagues developed after clubs had already built their names through Cup competitions.

5. Soccer history in this country has not been ignored as part of a conspiracy to … um … I don’t know exactly how this conspiracy is supposed to work. Seems to have something to do with trying to make people think nothing existed before MLS. Strange argument to make when a bunch of MLS teams are named after their NASL predecessors, or when U.S. Soccer is devoting a lot of resources toward celebrating its centennial this year. (Bill Clinton wrote the preface to the book, so if you like broadening your conspiracy theories, you can now include Whitewater.) Personally, the only reason I don’t often wear my Fall River Marksmen shirt (from Bumpy Pitch) more often is that I’m fat and I don’t fit into it that well.

Several people have made extraordinary efforts to keep U.S. soccer history alive through many dark decades. It’s not as if the NASL of the 70s paid tribute to the ASL of the 20s and 30s. We needed the efforts of Colin Jose, Roger Allaway, Sam Foulds, Jack Huckel, David Litterer and David Wangerin to bring it all to life, even as the National Soccer Hall of Fame ran out of money. (This was all summed up in a terrific story this week.)

The main lesson that can be drawn from those histories: Soccer has had a couple of opportunities to gain a firm foothold in the USA, and it fell apart through in-fighting over petty crap. Kind of like we could end up doing now if we try to upend 20 years of progress in pro soccer.

6. This might be the most important point: There is no evidence whatsoever that a lack of promotion/relegation is what’s holding back pro soccer in the United States.

The point gets muddied here because promotion/relegation is sometimes considered part of an “open system” in which clubs are free to spend what they want. That’s what we see in Europe, though “Financial Fair Play” rules may introduce some limits, and Germany’s Bundesliga is having tremendous success while refusing to break the bank.

But most soccer owners in the USA in recent years have set out to minimize risk. The NWSL, USL, NPSL, WPSL and APS are designed to keep costs down, and they’re not running the risk of losing revenue by being kicked down the pyramid against their will. That’s why MLS had such rigid cost-containment rules for its first decade and change. Only now, in the post-Beckham era, is that starting to change.

If you’re looking for the NASL to change all that, you may be disappointed. For all the bluster of the New York Cosmos and the lack of an official salary cap at the moment, they aren’t spending crazy money. I’ve been told by an insider (anonymous source alert, though maybe he’ll step forward) that the NASL is operating with “less risk, lower operating costs.”

Meanwhile, MLS is spending with confidence — on stadiums, on youth academies, on players like Clint Dempsey. And the league has managed to do so even as the explosion of cable and new media has made it possible for U.S. fans to see every English/Welsh Premier League game (I plan to make “Ew-pull” stick) and every trick Lionel Messi has at his feet.

Would an “open system” help U.S. (and Canadian) teams develop into superclubs that can hold their own with the Man Uniteds and the Barcelonas of the world? Maybe when MLS and NASL owners have seen enough returns on their investments that they’re willing to risk spending more and seeing their teams relegated. The best-case scenario for the NASL, which is probably not the most probable scenario, is that the league thrives to the point at which it, too, meets the criteria for a Division 1 league. And then — maybe — we could talk about merging MLS and the NASL as the Football League and Football Alliance did in England.

Is that likely? Probably not.

But it’s more likely than creating a thriving U.S. league system by taking over U.S. Soccer and starting an “open system” from scratch or trying to force existing leagues to abide by drastically different rules.

And by pointing this out, I’m part of the conspiracy. And I’ll surely attract obnoxious comments. I’d encourage people to ignore those comments and relish the fact that, this weekend, you can see European games on several networks and then check out your local MLS, NWSL, NASL or USL team. If you’re over age 25, you remember when soccer was something that barely existed above the college level, and you have to marvel at the progress.

Simply put: There’s never been a better time to be a soccer fan in North America. And it’s all been done without telling people who step up to risk their money that they need to take risks that are even less likely to pay off than the ones they’re already taking.

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U.S. Open Cup second round, collated scoreboard

Posted on by Beau Dure

Headlines (see glossary below):

– The NPSL is out. Georgia Revolution fell 3-2 in the “Battle of Atlanta” against the NASL Silverbacks.

– The USASA is out, though Dearborn took Dayton (USL Pro) to extra time before falling 4-1.

– PDL upsets so far: Reading over Harrisburg (USL Pro), Ocean City over Pittsburgh (USL Pro), Des Moines over Minnesota (NASL), Tucson over San Antonio (NASL)

– Tampa Bay Rowdies (NASL) won the first head-to-head matchup between pro teams, winning the Tampa Bay derby 2-1 and forcing perennial Open Cup power Seattle Sounders to fly cross-country to face them next week. Other MLS teams with long trips: Los Angeles, San Jose, Colorado, Dallas. The NASL’s Atlanta and USL Pro’s Wilmington have long trips the other direction.

– Local derbies in the third round: Richmond-D.C., Columbus-Dayton, Philadelphia-Ocean City, L.A. Blues-Chivas USA

Final scores (home teams listed first):

USL PRO vs. AMATEUR (8 PDL, 2 USASA)

Richmond (USLP) 4-1 Icon FC (USASA), final
Richmond – D.C. United (again)

Dayton (USLP) 4-1 Dearborn (USASA), final (extra time)
Columbus – Dayton

Reading (PDL) 1-0 Harrisburg City (USLP), final (apologies for having it wrong earlier)
New York (Red Bulls, not FC) – Reading

Ocala (PDL) 1-2 Orlando City (USLP), final
Orlando – Colorado

Charlotte (USLP) 3-0 Seattle Sounders U23 (PDL), final
Charlotte – Chicago

Ocean City (PDL) 1-0 Pittsburgh (USLP), final
Philadelphia – Ocean City

Rochester (USLP) 1-0 GPS Portland Phoenix (PDL), final
Rochester – New England

Austin (PDL) 0-2 Wilmington (USLP), final
Portland – Wilmington

Los Angeles Blues (USLP) 5-1 Ventura County (PDL), final
Los Angeles Blues – Chivas USA

Portland Timbers U23 (PDL) 0-1 Charleston (USLP), final
Charleston – San Jose

NASL vs. AMATEUR (4 PDL, 1 NPSL)

Georgia Revolution (NPSL) 2-3 Atlanta (NASL), final
Salt Lake – Atlanta

Carolina Railhawks (NASL) 3-1 Carolina Dynamo (PDL), final
Carolina Railhawks – Los Angeles

Fort Lauderdale (NASL) 1-1 Laredo (PDL), Fort Lauderdale wins 7-6 on PKs
Fort Lauderdale – Dallas

Minnesota (NASL) 0-1 Des Moines (PDL), final
Kansas City – Des Moines

San Antonio (NASL) 2-2 Tucson (PDL), Tucson wins 4-3 on PKs
Houston – Tucson

USL PRO vs. NASL

VSI Tampa Bay FC (USLP) 1-2 Tampa Bay (NASL), final
Tampa Bay Rowdies – Seattle

Glossary:

The divisional structure in the USA/Canada is:

Division 2: NASL, North American Soccer League. (Not the one that featured Pele and so forth in the 70s.)

Division 3: USL Pro, the top flight of the United Soccer Leagues

PDL: Premier Development League, the USL’s summer amateur league. Mostly college players.

NPSL: National Premier Soccer League, an independent amateur league, also operating mostly in summer.

USASA: U.S. Adult Soccer Association, a national body administering most local and regional leagues.

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Indoor soccer: Not given enough credit?

Posted on by Beau Dure

Bill Archer started the “legacy” talk a couple of days ago with a good piece on Pele being trotted out to stir up interest in any vaguely New York-ish soccer endeavor, though I was disappointed in the lack of a shoutout to the Simpsons’ “Crestfield Wax Paper” segment.

Then I happened upon this piece on the reborn Dallas Sidekicks, tying together the history of the decorated indoor team. That included a line that will make soccer purists spit in horror:

The success of the Sidekicks is one of the main reasons soccer is now the most popular youth sport in North Texas.

I wasn’t aware of it, but the Sidekicks’ most remarkable season is documented in this wonderfully ’80s film. Haven’t seen this much feathered hair and heard this much synth music since a-ha ruled the airwaves.

When that film was made, outdoor soccer was pretty much dead. (I did enjoy seeing Eddie Radwanski, who went back outdoors with my local Greensboro/Carolina Dynamo.) The MISL was all there was, and it wasn’t doing badly. Did the Colorado Rapids have that many people greeting them at the airport when they arrived home from MLS Cup?

And just what is indoor soccer’s place in keeping the game alive?

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NASL splits season — ready to re-open some old arguments?

Posted on by Beau Dure

The NASL is ditching most rounds of the playoffs and switching to a split-season format in 2013, Brian Quarstad reports.

Brian sees it as a cost-cutting measure, saving teams the cost of reserving venues and players for playoff games in which they might not participate. At the NASL level, that’s probably true.

But I recall someone suggesting a split season in MLS as a means to bring some sense to the playoffs, give teams a long break for the World Cup or other tournaments, and maybe even appease Eric Wynalda in his quest to appease Sepp Blatter on the nonexistent clause in the “international calendar” that says all leagues must play fall-to-spring schedules regardless of climate.

Usually, we fret about the MLS playoff format during the MLS playoffs. Shall we beat the rush this time?

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The ups and downs of promotion and relegation

Posted on by Beau Dure

Long the province of cranky conversations in the virtual soccer community, promotion and relegation leaped into the news in recent days with a couple of pieces of bad reporting:

1. An English executive of some kind, Richard Bevan, claimed that some overseas owners of Premier League clubs want to scrap promotion and relegation. American-owned Aston Villa responded: “Put up or shut up.” Neither happened. Liverpool’s John Henry has now weighed in with his own denial.

Let me back up with a disclaimer: My love/hate relationship with Britain (probably 80% love) can be summed up like this – Britain invented many things I love in the arts, sports, sciences and intellectual thought. That includes Monty Python, the Beatles, the Comedy Store Players, soccer, antibiotics, economic theory and (eventually) the notion that a capitalist country should find a way to take care of its least fortunate.

But don’t let anyone tell you it’s not provincial, especially in sports. They’re miffed that the rest of the world doesn’t play the same sports they do. Some people even prefer the “awkwardness” of the UK version of The Office to the full-fledged character development and creative situations of the American version. They’ve spent decades thinking there’s something wrong with the way South Americans play soccer. They STILL think the 1930 U.S. World Cup semifinalists were all Brits, no matter how many times Roger Allaway and company smash that myth into pieces.

So we shouldn’t be surprised when the bad old Americans are seen as overlords who want to turn the Premier League into the NFL. They really should be more worried about people who want to form a pan-European NFL of their own.

2. Meanwhile, in Korea, the soccer powers that be want to start promoting and relegating. Here’s the problem: They tried that just a few years ago, and the lower-division teams didn’t want to move up.

That’s not unusual. In the USA, teams have often preferred to move down or stay down. The USL’s sprawling three-tier system of 15 years ago is now a scaled-back third-division pro league with scores of teams opting instead for fourth-division amateur status. Some clubs, like the well-rooted D3 Richmond Kickers, have no desire to bounce back up to a division that would require cross-country travel every other week. (Yes, I’ve asked.)

Teams also aren’t that likely to see a giant leap in revenue with each step up the pyramid. Consider other U.S. sports. I saw Greensboro’s minor-league hockey team move from the brutish ECHL to the flashy AHL, a big step up the ladder that brought much more talented players to the Coliseum. Attendance dropped.

***

Continue reading →

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How and how not to change the U.S. soccer landscape

Posted on by Beau Dure

(Yes, I’ll get to WPS, magicJack and even promotion/relegation in this post. But it needs some background.)

The United States has been a graveyard of soccer leagues. The reasons are many: The scattered population and ensuing high travel costs, the cultural antipathy toward a game that wasn’t invented here, and the dominance of the Big Three and a Half team sports.

Another reason is that it’s nearly impossible to get everyone on the same page. Plenty of people have their own ideas on how to run a soccer league, and inevitably, the leagues, teams, players and fans get caught in the crossfire of egos. Let’s spend wildly on players! Let’s go indoors! Let’s go indoors but change the scoring system! Let’s blast music during the game! Let’s confine players to a particular region of the field and give them ankle bracelets so they don’t veer outside that zone!

(If you don’t find my summary here or in Long-Range Goals sufficient to make this point, read David Wangerin’s Soccer in a Football World. And note that he has another book out on the USA’s missed opportunities.)

Though the state of U.S. soccer in 2011 is a bit better than it was in 1988 or 1960 — or just about any year you could find prior to World Cup 1994 — we still have plenty of people who are convinced they know better. “X, Y and Z failed,” the argument goes, “so I must know better.”

Continue reading →

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Shots on goal in U.S. games, April 13-17

Posted on by Beau Dure

Home teams first, ranked in order within each league. Make of it what you will.

MLS (median=6; mean for season thru Saturday’s games was 8.39)
New York 9-3 San Jose
Portland 5-5 Dallas
Houston 7-1 New England
Toronto 1-6 D.C. United
Chicago 3-3 Los Angeles
Vancouver 2-4 Chivas USA
Portland 4-2 Chicago (not including one own goal each way)
Columbus 4-2 Kansas City
Salt Lake 2-3 Colorado
Toronto 3-1 Los Angeles
Philadelphia 3-1 Seattle

(Incidentally, in 1998, the average shots per game was 12.98)

WPS (median=13.5)
Atlanta 4-11 Sky Blue FC
Boston 4-8 Western NY

NASL
No idea. So far, they’ve had eight games, 16 goals and 52 saves. So that’s 68 shots on goal (8.5 per game).

USL PRO (median=7.5; adding saves plus goals)
Dayton 3-5 Charleston
Wilmington 4-4 Rochester
Richmond 4-3 Rochester
Charlotte 1-5 Orlando

RANDOM GLOBAL GAMES (median=8.5)
Bolton 5-10 Stoke
Catania 5-9 Lazio
Arsenal 5-5 Liverpool
Pumas 6-4 Queretaro
Deportivo La Coruna 4-5 Racing Santander
Montpellier 3-5 Marseille
Bayern Munich 4-3 Bayer Leverkusen (in 4-1 Bayern win?)
Borussia Dortmund 5-2 Freiburg
PSG 5-2 Lyon
Fiorentina 4-2 Juventus

So … guys? The thing with the net at the end of the field? Yeah. Soccer balls go in there.

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