Tag: promotion/relegation

soccer

A quick word on pro/rel

Posted on by Beau Dure

Yes, I know. We should be done with this topic for another few years at least.

But every once in a while, I come across some sincere conversation about this, picked out from the ritual abuse and accusations that I’m part of the Cabal from The Blacklist, and The Director and I are censoring message boards and making people disappear so we’ll never have promotion and relegation in our lifetime.

And a quick post will be better than 100 tweets that send my unfollower count soaring.

So here goes …

This is what Minneapolis City SC is trying to do. Supporter ownership, building up from the grass roots.

We have to say at the outset that this isn’t what we see in the league everyone touts as the anti-MLS — the English Premier League. That league has grown through megabillionaires coming in and pouring money into clubs as vanity projects. In Germany as well, Hoffenheim leaped through the ranks when one of its former youth players struck it rich in software and decided to put his money back into his football club.

The good news is that U.S. clubs can build at the grass roots and still move up the pyramid without the risk of being sent down. They would eventually run into some difficulties with the USSF professional league criteria, but if they can demonstrate that they have the finances to make it through a season without folding (the main reason these criteria exist, and I think most NASL-watchers say it has resulted in more stability), perhaps they can apply for a waiver to the “single rich owner” criterion.

That’s the system we have now. Portland, Orlando, Seattle, Minnesota, maybe Sacramento or San Antonio … they can all move up without the risk of being sent down. Then they feel free to invest in facilities and players, both on the Designated Player end of the career path and the academy end.

That quest for security isn’t unique to the USA. If Reading could maintain EPL status, it would have a bigger stadium now. They’ve put it on hold when they’ve been relegated.

Nor should we feel inferior because we don’t have a full amateur-to-pro pyramid. England needed nearly 100 years before it had automatic pro/rel between the League and Non-League football. (England needed about 10 years to have automatic pro/rel between its two pro division, then about another 30 before a third tier was added.) The Netherlands is just tiptoeing into pro/rel between amateur and pro ball in the 2010s.

So how can we make pro/rel happen in the USA? Here are a couple of possibilities and their pros and cons:

1. Force MLS to do it. A non-starter. You’ll spend the next 20 years in court.

2. Start a second “First Division” league that has pro/rel. Also carries a legal risk and a lot of financial risk. Advocates think this move would force healthy competition between MLS and this new league. I’d argue that any U.S. league will have a tough time competing for eyeballs with the big Euro leagues and Liga MX, and diluting the available resources (players, sponsorships, etc.) will just make it worse.

We get back to something important: MLS has reached this point — 20 teams with an average attendance over 20,000, new youth academies, and quite a few players who are a lot of fun to watch — by minimizing risk.

In any case — this is feasible if someone applies. The Federation isn’t going to sanction something that doesn’t even exist on paper and has no capital behind it.

3. Gradually persuade MLS owners that it’s a good idea. Notice I said “owners.” Please forget any notion that when Don Garber retires, everything changes. Garber is employed by and speaks for the owners. It’s not up to him. He’s not the one with anything to risk.

And here’s a hint: Yelling at people that they’re part of some conspiracy and that they all actually hate soccer is not a good way to persuade them.

So how about some ideas that don’t start from the top down?

4. Try it in lower divisions first. Then you can build up interest. Plenty of amateur leagues already do it — trace Open Cup teams back to their leagues, and you’ll often find they’re in a regional “Premier League” with lower tiers beneath.

So maybe we could try this in the NASL, USL and NPSL (the PDL is set up to be a summer league for college-eligible players, and there’s nothing wrong with staying there for those clubs that choose it).

Except … they don’t seem all that interested in actually doing it.

So the bottom line is this … you shouldn’t be yelling at me about it. You can yell along with Eric Wynalda, but as much as I like and respect Eric, that’s not going to bring about any change, either. You can yell at the rest of the media, but they’ve blocked you — not because they don’t think it’s fun to talk about pro/rel, but because the people who’ve been talking about pro/rel for the past 15 years are abusive serial harassers.

You could try yelling at Timbers owner Merritt Paulson or Sounders co-owner Drew Carey. I’ve never seen people doing that — does anyone have any examples of that happening?

Why don’t you try engaging with the NASL’s Bill Peterson? His latest position is “explore options when we get closer to 20 teams.” But they still haven’t taken anything close to a concrete step. They’re really no different than MLS — they want to be totally stable before they take a serious look.

You might actually be best off trying to get the USL to do it. They already tried a bit of it in the past, but the teams couldn’t or wouldn’t pull it off. They have enough teams to make it work.

“But … the USL is part of the conspiracy!” The USL is doing what it can to survive and grow. If you really think there’s some MLS/USL cabal with no interest in the game other than persecuting the New York Cosmos, then maybe you can tell the USL they could steal the NASL’s thunder by going pro/rel now!

So there you have it. That’s my latest effort to speak with some people who seem sincere about looking for a way to make this happen — people who might actually look at the obstacles I point out as “something you have to consider” rather than “evil roadblock I’ve conjured up because I’m part of the conspiracy.”

And if we get more sincere, serious, rational people in the discussion, who knows what’ll happen? We know years of screaming hasn’t gotten us anywhere. Why not try something different?

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soccer

Yet another promotion/relegation idea you’ll all ignore

Posted on by Beau Dure

Imagine there’s no NASL. Imagine there’s no USL. The brand names and any baggage associated with them are gone.

Instead, you have the U.S. Pro League. (OK, I’m not good at coming up with names, but I think it should be something generic, and “the Football League” is taken. Maybe just get the sponsor’s name: “The Bud League” or something like that.)

This would be the league that fills the USA’s D2 and D3 designations.

And yes, it would have promotion/relegation.

With caveats. The MLS reserve teams would stay in D3, which would be largely regional. But the top D3 teams could move up to D2, and the bottom D2 teams would drop.

Here’s what we accomplish with this system:

  1. We have a clearly defined top level of play below MLS for clubs that aren’t quite ready for MLS but maybe a little too big to consider “LA Galaxy II” a rival.
  2. That top level of play is defined by how well a club is doing at that period in time. The 1999 Rochester Rhinos would clearly be in that top level. The 2015 Rochester Rhinos might not. (Or maybe they would — they’re leading their USL division at the moment.) If my beloved Wilmington Hammerheads put together a good run, they get to run with the relatively big dogs.
  3. We get a chance to experiment with pro/rel at the highest level possible before we consider doing with MLS, which has, it bears repeating, invested hundreds of billions of dollars to jump-start professional soccer in this country. (I took out the “hundreds of.” Not sure it would add up to that much. But I think 10 figures is safe. MLS had lost $250 million at one point — lost, not just spent — and it’s still investing at a loss today.)

After a couple of years of this system, perhaps we ease into some pro/rel with MLS. I’d suggest doing it the same way England did for years — not with full-fledged pro/rel but with elections.

A few things I’d suggest:

  1. U.S. Pro League clubs have the option of declaring themselves promotion candidates. That would mean, over a two- or three-year period, they have to meet certain criteria for Division 1.
  2. MLS can put certain underperforming clubs (“underperforming” in many senses — financial, lack of academy development, etc.) on notice that they risk being voted out.
  3. When you have a year in which a promotion candidate is in the top three of USPL and an underperforming club is in the bottom three of MLS, you have an election. Could have multiple clubs involved in a given year.

So this way, you’re not simply tossing down a club that’s having a bad year and decided to experiment with young players and new tactics in its last few games. A relegated club will be one that clearly deserves it. A promoted club, conversely, will be up to MLS standards.

Eventually, perhaps, you move into simpler pro/rel — three up, three down. But then you’d do what I think the Premier League desperately needs to do, forming a second tier of the top league so that the drop is not so perilous.

That said, maybe we make the drop “not so perilous” in the first place by offering up a good revenue stream — shares in Soccer United Marketing. An MLS promotion candidate would be expected to buy a share in SUM, which would entitle it to the revenue it produces whether the club is promoted on not.

This isn’t the first pro/rel idea I’ve suggested, and no, I’m not really sure why I do it. We’ve established there’s no pleasing the contingent within the pro/rel advocacy subset that defines itself has smarter or hipper than thou. If we suddenly re-created the German league structure in the USA, they’d probably become rugby fans.

But it’s fun to kick around ideas every once in a while. Have fun with this one.

3
soccer

The NASL, NPSL, and why there’s no pleasing pro/rel advocates

Posted on by Beau Dure

If you read all my tweets and replies on Twitter, you may have noticed that I’ve eased up a bit on ignoring the crowd that pushes for promotion and relegation in U.S. soccer. It’s intentional. I think we’re starting to see some ideas that go beyond shouting anti-MLS slogans. And given the scarcity of MLS content I’m writing these days, it’s almost like tripping down Memory Lane, like going back to a high school reunion and chatting amiably with the guy who was a total jerk and bully the whole time.

Wait a minute. Scratch that. That guy still doesn’t get it. Hope he gags on the hors d’oeuvres.

And that’s kind of how it is in the pro/rel world. Today’s conversation was a perfect demonstration.

Start with this intriguing story:

https://twitter.com/Rborba23/status/631482183895674882

So the NPSL, the mostly amateur league that shares unofficial fourth division status with the PDL and recently drew more than 18,000 fans for its final in Chattanooga, would work something out with the NASL, which has long (well, at least in Bill Peterson’s tenure) made noises about wanting promotion/relegation in U.S. soccer.

Easier said than done, of course. The NPSL uses mostly young amateur players, many of them in college. So most of their teams are bound by NCAA restrictions on how they can assemble their teams, maintaining amateur status, and wrapping up the season early so kids can dash back to their college teams for preseason. Then you add U.S. Soccer’s onerous second-division standards (one owner has to have $20 million, which has always struck me as absurd), and you can see a few hurdles.

But if you really want to see promotion/relegation make the transition from “hot-button Internet cult shoutfest issue” to “something that might actually happen,” you’d think this would be good news. And so, consistent with what I’ve said earlier about the best path to pro/rel being a strong NASL forcing a merger, I said the following:

I even went back and dug up my own pro/rel plan:

And so we all joined hands, sang a few songs of praise, and talked about the details of what a future U.S. pro landscape might look like.

Oh, wait. No, we didn’t.

One hint of the problem was a tweet that came in just as I was writing mine:

And indeed, the man who has devoted the last 6-8 years of his life tweeting about pro/rel fantasies was not happy with a proposal to actually talk about actually doing it.

(That said, the NASL tossed cold water on this idea itself:)

But to be fair, he has long insisted that leagues shouldn’t go it alone, and that the federation should drive it. I don’t see why, personally, but he is indeed consistent.

And so is the vitriol I received from elsewhere:

When I have my midlife crisis and form a Husker Du cover band, I might call it “Antiquated Zealotry.”

https://twitter.com/American_red13/status/631487748260646912

(And yes, I made a typo. At this point, I was tweeting about as quickly as I could type. That’s not good.)

https://twitter.com/TheSoccerDcn/status/631488195440607237

So he’s not reading what I’m tweeting, he surely didn’t notice that the last substantial piece I wrote about MLS was ripping the league for its stance in collective bargaining, and yet he feels he can sum up my opinions. OK.

Yeah, he clearly skipped my proposal on Brazilian-style state leagues. And my tweet on the NASL/NPSL thing.

I get all this flack from the pro/rel crowd for a few reasons. First, I’ve pointed out a few inconvenient truths on the matter:

1. Soccer was an ignored and often despised sport in this country through much of the 20th century, giving the rest of the world a bit of a head start. Read Offside: Soccer and American Exceptionalism or the definitive U.S. soccer history Soccer in a Football World for the full story. 

2. The people willing to take the risk to do professional soccer at a strong but sustainable level had to appeal to investors by minimizing risk (I wrote a book that mentions all this, a bit), hence the “single entity” system and cost containment.

3. More investors have bought into MLS with the implicit understanding that they are buying into the USA’s first-division league.

4. Many investors have bought into lower-division leagues with the implicit understanding that they’re aren’t going to jump up to a Division I or Division II budget if they win too many games.

5. Promotion/relegation would be cool, but it’s not necessary. Barcelona isn’t Barcelona because they fear relegation. They fear losing the championship to Real Madrid. As they should. Real Madrid is the club of the old corrupt monarchy. But that’s another rant.

And so on — see all the previous posts.

Second, I have actually engaged with a lot of these people and continue to do so even as most journalists — you might say the saner, more intelligent journalists — have cut off contact.

(I once had someone tell me I should take it as a compliment that these folks go after me instead of Big Name Journalist X because they find me a lot smarter and better than Big Name Journalist X. I’m really not. I just have bad compulsive behavior, as illustrated here:)

But let’s get back to today’s conversation, summing up as follows:

Me: “Hey, neat promotion/relegation idea.”

Them: “Shut up, you MLSbot antiquated zealot turnip walnut.”

The underlying lesson from this conversation:

There is no pleasing the promotion/relegation zealots.

You might say it’s just me, and no matter how many schemes I put forward, no matter how many times I say I really could see the NASL building up with a pyramid that forces a merger with MLS down the road, they won’t listen.

But no. It’s not just me.

These are the people who have to be different. They have to feel superior. They’re the ones who saw R.E.M. have hit songs and make real videos and smirked, “They’ve sold out.” They’re the ones who only like the U.K. version of The Office — not that they’ve ever seen any of the U.S. episodes past Season 1.

Their greatest fear is that someone will do exactly what they want. Because then they’d have to find another cause.

Like Jason Street when he was paralyzed or Tim Riggins when he finished school, they would lose their identity.

And that identity is more important to them than the cause itself.

They know we aren’t likely to see MLS integrated into a promotion/relegation system for all the reason I’ve listed above and more. So they’re safe.

And that’s why, even as we see occasional glimmers of reason in the national pro/rel discussion, we’re a long, long way from any of this being taken seriously.

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soccer

Brazilian style (leagues) in the USA?

Posted on by Beau Dure

The United States is, in addition to all the things mentioned in my soccer culture post, a nation of tinkerers. We want to fix things or improve them.

That’s not to say Europe is bereft of innovation — they’ve certainly done a better job of, say, integrating alternative power sources.  But when it comes to sports, we’re far more likely to take things that already work and rethink them. The NFL changes rules more often than I shop for shoes. Wake up an NHL fan who was cryogenically frozen in 2002, and he or she might not make sense of the standings.

In soccer, we’ve often been a laboratory — sometimes with FIFA’s assistance or insistence, sometimes not. Shootouts. Bonus points. For old-time USL/USISL fans, the blue card.

These days, all our ideas veer toward the more traditional. Shootouts are gone. Overtime is gone. As much as I would love to see what League One America rules look like in action, it’s not going to happen. We debate single table and single entity, and we even the occasional promotion/relegation idea that’s nearly workable. (It just needs some way to even things out between clubs that made megamillion investments and those who would play their way in. I’m not a big fan of giant expansion fees, either, but you do have to consider that we’re trying to build the same infrastructure in 20 years that has been built in other countries — where soccer is the dominant sport — over a century or more.)

So here’s an idea borrowed from Brazil with a bit of a twist to solve a couple of uniquely North American problems …

Regional leagues running part of the year.

In Brazil, clubs play in state leagues for the first few months of the year before shifting to national competition. The state pyramids and the national pyramid are mostly separate — a team could theoretically be in the first division nationally and a lower division in its state league. (I can’t find a current example, though.)

The climate in the USA and Canada won’t let us play year-round as they do in Brazil. A regional league in the spring and national leagues (MLS, NASL, USL) in the summer and fall won’t leave enough time.

But we have an interesting window for regional leagues — the international break that we currently aren’t taking in MLS.

This year, CONCACAF’s Gold Cup runs through most of July. National teams will assemble a couple of weeks before that, so figure on about a five-week window. MLS will muddle through without its CONCACAF internationals. In other years, we have the World Cup or the upcoming pan-American Copa America. (Yes, I know the winter Qatar World Cup will mess everything up, but let’s ignore that for the moment.)

During that stretch, suppose we suspended the national leagues and played regional leagues?

And yes, I’m talking about leagues with promotion/relegation. Why not? These leagues wouldn’t affect the structure of MLS. A club with a 5,000-seat stadium that couldn’t play in MLS could still compete with MLS clubs in a short regional league system.

So we solve several problems:

1. MLS finally gets a full international break.

2. Players who aren’t on international duty get to keep playing.

3. Stadiums still get meaningful games, and not just the one-offs of the Open Cup. (Incidentally, this is the year an NASL club wins the Open Cup. MLS teams will be weakened for the fifth round and quarterfinals, and it’s clear the NASL really wants that trophy.)

4. Lower-division teams get to test themselves against the big pro clubs, albeit weakened versions of those clubs. They should be able to sell a few tickets for those games, too.

5. “Summer league” teams in the PDL and NPSL get more interesting competition.

6. Pro/rel fans get to see pro/rel leagues. Maybe it’ll open the door for national pro/rel down the road, maybe not.

Five weeks doesn’t give us a lot of time, so we’re probably talking about four teams playing a double round-robin or maybe seven teams playing a single round-robin.

A couple of sample leagues with the initial divisional setup (based mostly on last year’s standings, so I haven’t verified to see if all these clubs … you know … still exist):

TEXAS/OKLAHOMA LEAGUE

Division 1: Dallas (MLS), Houston (MLS), San Antonio (NASL), Oklahoma City (USL)

Division 2: Austin (PDL), Laredo (PDL), Tulsa (NPSL), Oklahoma City (NPSL)

Division 3: Corinthians San Antonio (NPSL), Dallas City (NPSL), Midland/Odessa (PDL), Houston Dutch Lions (PDL)

Division 4: NTX Rayados (USASA), Liverpool Warriors (NPSL), Fort Worth (NPSL), Houston Regals SCA (NPSL)

CASCADIA LEAGUE

Division 1: Portland (MLS), Seattle (MLS), Vancouver (MLS), Edmonton (NASL)

Division 2: Kitsap (PDL), Victoria (PDL), Washington (PDL), Tacoma (NPSL)

Division 3: North Sound (PDL), Spartans (NPSL), Khalsa (PCSL), USASA team

MID-ATLANTIC LEAGUE

Division 1: D.C. United (MLS), Philadelphia (MLS), Carolina (NASL), Richmond (USL)

Division 2: Harrisburg (USL), Baltimore (PDL), Reading (PDL), Carolina (PDL)

Division 3: King’s Warriors (PDL), Gate City (NPSL), Virginia Beach (NPSL), Maryland Bays (USASA)

I’m not sure about including reserve teams here, given the already-weakened senior squads. If they play, I’d limit them to Division 3 or lower.

Within a couple of years, maybe we’d see some amateur teams establish themselves in D2. Maybe an MLS coach will be grousing about relegation to D2, and we’ll all yell at that guy to win a few games and get back up.

Maybe it’s a crazy idea. But if there’s a negative other than giving up a couple of MLS games when the teams are missing their internationals, I don’t see it.

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soccer

Promotion/relegation in England: The big drop

Posted on by Beau Dure

England’s vaunted soccer pyramid is a relatively recent phenomenon, at least in expanded form.

“League football” — the professional tiers, back in the days in which the FA maintained a clear distinction between “amateur” and “professional” — expanded to four tiers in the early 1920s. The League continued the practice of making its bottom clubs stand for re-election, while clubs from the “Non-League” ranks could apply to take their places.

After World War II, the door was nearly deadbolted. Four teams joined the League in a small expansion in 1950, then only seven more teams joined in the next 36 years. Six teams lost their spots; one (Accrington Stanley) resigned its League place midseason. Some teams from the patchwork Non-League landscape would run year after year and be denied. (Click the bottom divisions at footballsite.co.uk for year-by-year vote counts.) Two teams admitted in this period (Wigan, Wimbledon) reached the top division.

Here’s how everything changed:

1979: The Alliance Premier League collects the top non-League teams, putting forward only one candidate each year for Football League election rather than the vote-splitting five, eight, 10, umpteen each year. And yet, it doesn’t get any more teams promoted.

1986-87: The APL is renamed the Conference, and it gains one automatic promotion slot (assuming the first-place club meets League standards, which wasn’t a safe assumption).

2003-04: The Conference gets a second automatic promotion slot, this one settled in a playoff.  The next year, Non-League soccer gets a full reorganization. The divisions are called “Steps” — the Conference is Step 1, Conference North and Conference South are Step 2, three leagues are Steps 3 and 4, then a whole bunch of feeder leagues are at Step 5. Raise your hand if you actually say “Step 3” rather than “seventh tier.”

So now we’re in the modern era, with the Conference as de facto fifth professional division and you can rest assured that the Wessex League Premier Division is two divisions ahead of the Leicester Senior League Premier Division.

Perfect time to do a little research to see how teams have fared as they pass through the League/Non-League gateway, right?

Naturally, I overcomplicated it. Every answer led to more questions. Some of the clubs that have gone down and/or up were reconstituted and may or may not be considered a new club. Digging back to see how far some clubs have climbed means figuring out which step the Kent League and Kent County League were in a given year.

But I came up with a few factoids of interest out of my muddled spreadsheets:

Dropped from first tier to fifth since 1987: Luton Town, Oxford United.

– Luton Town, the first employer of U.S. national team goalkeeper Juergen Sommer back in the early 90s, was in the first tier for a decade ending in 1992. Three successive relegations, the last prodded by a 30-point penalty for financial irregularities, saw the club drop from the Championship (2nd tier) to the Conference (5th). They were a nearly perennial playoff team in the Conference before winning their way back to League Two last year.

– Oxford United fell more slowly. The club last played in the top tier in 1988, last played in the second tier in 1999, last played in the third tier in 2001, and spent 2006-10 in the Conference. They’re back in League Two.

Other top-tier teams to drop out: Bradford Park Avenue, Carlisle United, Grimsby Town.

– Bradford Park Avenue is one of the the grand old names of English football, but that’s really all it is. The original club was in the top division just before and after World War I but was in the lower tiers from 1950 to 1970. The club finally folded in 1974. A phoenix club claiming the old history started in 1988 and was promoted three times to reach the sixth tier. It dropped twice more but is now back up in Conference North (sixth tier).

– Carlisle United barely qualifies for this list, having spent one season (1974-75) in the top tier and one season (2004-05) in the Conference.

– Grimsby Town was in the Football Alliance for its whole run: 1889-92. Like most Alliance clubs, it was assigned to the Second Division when the Alliance merged with the League. It had a couple of runs in the top division, most recently in 1948, and one season (1910-11) out of the League entirely. Relegations in 2003 and 2004 dropped them to the fourth tier (League Two), and their century of League football ended in 2010.

Dropped from second tier to fifth since 1987: Bristol Rovers, Cambridge United.

– Bristol Rovers was a perennial third-tier club with a couple of spells in the second tier, the last from 1990 to 1993. In 2001, they fell to the fourth tier (Division 3, then League Two). They went back up in 2007, back down in 2011 and finally out of the League in 2014. (They’re almost a sure bet to make the playoffs.)

–  Cambridge United was one of the few teams to make it up into the League via election in the postwar years, getting the golden ticket in 1970. They had a couple of spells in the old Second Division, placing fifth in 1991-92 to come close to being in the Premier League in its first season. Then came a couple of drops, one bit of back-and-forth movement, then relegation to the Conference in 2005. The club also went into administration but stabilized in the fifth tier for nearly a decade before earning promotion via the playoffs in 2014.

On the way up: AFC Wimbledon, Crawley Town, Dagenham and Redbridge, Fleetwood Town, Yeovil Town

– AFC Wimbledon is the club you might know, rising out of protest when the original Wimbledon moved to Milton Keynes. The new club was promoted five times in nine seasons, up from the ninth-tier Combined Counties League through two Isthmian League divisions and two Conference divisions up to League Two.

– Crawley Town spent decades in the Southern League, worked its way up to the Conference in 2004, then shot up with back-to-back promotions in 2011 and 2012 to reach League One.

– Dagenham and Redbridge formed in a 1992 merger in the Conference, dropped to the Isthmian Premier League in 1996, then returned for a long spell in the Conference before moving up in 2007. They’ve had one season in League One, the rest in League Two.

– Fleetwood Town is the bullet team of English football. They formed as Fleetwood Wanderers in 1997 but quickly changed to Fleetwood Freeport, playing in the 10th tier in the North West Counties Division One. The rest of the story: Promotion to the NWC Premier in 1999, changing the name to Fleetwood Town (previously used by two defunct clubs) in 2002, then going up in 2005, 2006, 2008, 2010 and 2014. The leagues: Northern Premier League First Division, Northern Premier League Premier Division, Conference North, Conference, League Two, League One.

– Yeovil Town was a founder member of the APL in 1979 and bounced between the fifth and sixth tiers until earning promotion to the League in 2003. They moved up to League One in 2005 and got all the way up to the Championship for one season (2013-14).

Gone since 1987: Aldershot Town, Chester City, Darlington, Halifax Town, Maidstone United, Newport County, Rushden and Diamonds, Scarborough

The good news? Most of these clubs have had phoenix clubs return in their place.

Here’s one of the spreadsheets in case you’d like to dive into more detail or tell me something that needs correcting:

[gview file=”http://www.sportsmyriad.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/England-div-movement-Clubs-in-out-1950-.pdf”%5D

Sources:

http://www.rsssf.com/tablese/engall.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Football_Conference

http://www.fchd.info/indexa.htm (and all the other index pages)

http://www.thepyramid.info/stats/updownyear.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_English_non-League_football_system#1979

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_former_Football_League_clubs

And the wonderful site by the late, great Tony Kempster: http://www.tonykempster.co.uk/

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The final word on the Soccer Culture Wars, more or less

Posted on by Beau Dure

This post is not a reversal of my retirement from the Soccer Culture Wars. I would see it as encouragement to others to join me in retirement.

We’ll need to be clear — the Wars include some reasonable debate topics, especially those related to Jurgen Klinsmann, someone I would see as an underachiever at this point in his reign as U.S. Soccer national team coach and semi-official overseer of all things. But they also include promotion/relegation discussions that devolved into personal attacks around 2009 or so, and there they remain.

So the past couple of weeks have seen a confluence of SCW activity that I hope will actually bring about an end to things.

My retirement — not that I had been particularly active for some time — was based in part on conversations that reminded me how irrelevant these conversations really are. And then, as if soccer wanted to spite me one more time, a couple of well-intentioned people took such topics seriously.

It’s coincidence, of course — Sean Reid has been working on the book Love Thy Soccer for years and had no plans to publish it at the same time that Howler magazine published Kevin Koczwara’s piece on Ted Westervelt, the man who believes we can get pro/rel in this country if we just get on Twitter at scream at anyone perceived to be part of the status quo. It’s just bad timing for those of us who are resolving to ignore Ted and his circle of demons once and for all.

Let’s be clear — Love Thy Soccer is a book worth reading. It’s an expansive five-year survey of the good and bad of American soccer. I haven’t made it through the whole book yet, but what I’ve read is terrific except for the flaw of taking Westervelt seriously. There’s a chapter on promotion/relegation that relies heavily on Westervelt and brings up one person (Phil Schoen) to give the “con” argument. If you want to do a real pro/rel discussion, it needs to look a bit more like John Oliver’s climate change “representative debate,” in which he brought out 96 people to join Bill Nye against three climate-change deniers, thereby representing the actual scientific consensus on the matter:

Howler’s decision to do a Westervelt profile is a difficult one, and I wish editor George Quraishi would be a little less dismissive of those who disagree with it. That said, I think it turned out pretty well. I know Dan Loney was quite annoyed with his unwanted role in the story, and Loney decided to subject Koczwara and Quraishi to a constant barrage of Twitter harassment to see how they liked being on the receiving end of such nonsense as Westervelt and company perpetuate. But I view it the same way I would view a story on the woman marrying Charles Manson — I don’t expect to sympathize with her, but there could be some value in knowing what drives her to such action — in other words, asking what the hell is wrong with her.

And Koczwara is a terrific writer. Until I searched his name, I didn’t even realize he had written a piece about hockey enforcers that I loved six months ago. Loney’s objection notwithstanding, I think he did a good job handling this sensitive story, neither piling on with cheap shots nor letting Westervelt appear more sympathethic than he deserves to be.

But there is a danger in giving fringe voices a mainstream platform. Just look at cable news, where Ann Coulter and James Carville take turns poisoning our political system. Or other aspects of our postmodern media, where climate-change deniers and even creationists are often on equal footing with the “side” that actually has the plurality of facts.

Some people who are new to all this might not realize how far on the fringe these people are. But thankfully, they decided to demonstrate it on Twitter yesterday:

Wow. That’s quite a statement, isn’t it? It’s curious (um, wasn’t pro/rel invented by a bunch of white dudes in England?) and inflammatory.

And some people, by all available evidence not “white,” had fun with it …

https://twitter.com/FriendlyFAUX/status/535821761095671809

(By way of disclaimer, Francis used to work for MLS.)

https://twitter.com/FriendlyFAUX/status/535824240478781440

Comedy aside, this is still a rather serious allegation. Perhaps Kleiban would care to explain?

I’m not sure whether he’s referring to me, Brown or someone else. I’d ask him to tell us which person he’s addressing and why he thinks that person is “disingenuous,” but he has apparently taken the position that his points are too brilliant to explain.

And the larger point here is that Westervelt and company were eager to jump onto this non-discussion.

https://twitter.com/MLSFanBoySays/status/535933256022376448

(A comment from Pothunting appears to have been deleted.)

Then, subtly, the position started to change. Oh, we’re not really talking about pro/rel, even though it was explicitly mentioned in Kleiban’s tweet. It’s about the U.S. power structure, leaving Brown wrestling with the accusations of the absurd.

https://twitter.com/FriendlyFAUX/status/535979008467681280

https://twitter.com/FriendlyFAUX/status/535992738249179136

And it continues this morning:

https://twitter.com/FriendlyFAUX/status/536177021182050304

https://twitter.com/FriendlyFAUX/status/536178628762271744

https://twitter.com/FriendlyFAUX/status/536182511286882305

That would be the same Soccer Morning that gave Westervelt a chance to call in and demonstrate that he’s a reasonable person, incidentally.

Here’s the thing: This is not unusual. This has been happening for YEARS. This is why most people in soccer — writers, administrators, etc. — no longer engage with these people. Read the Howler story for more on that.

The argument goes as follows: Anyone who points out the realities about pro/rel in the USA is one or more of the following:

  1. An upholder of the status quo and therefore an apologist for everything that’s wrong with U.S. Soccer — failure to win the CONCACAF Champions League, “pay to play” travel soccer (which, in the real world, MLS is trying to address), etc.
  2. A paid spokesman of MLS and the shadow conspiracy behind it that seeks to make money off soccer without making it better.
  3. Nonexistent. I’ve actually met Dan Loney, as have other people, but we’re all not trustworthy, apparently. In comparison, the Obama birther conspiracists seem sane. At least they admit Obama exists. (I do wish Howler hadn’t said “puppet” in the headline on the Westervelt piece — most people on Ted’s hit list have visible real names, while his “allies” include a few anonymous accounts.)

For the record, I’ll go through these allegations about myself. I don’t think anyone disputes my existence — I’ve led a rather public life with bylines in many major news organizations. I wrote a few fantasy columns for previous MLSNet management more than 10 years ago, and my book was written with MLS’s cooperation but no backing from the league. (I didn’t even let a guy pay for my lunch.) Currently, I have no season credential to cover MLS, and I haven’t been paid to write about the league for years.

My main project these days is a book on youth soccer. And that book will challenge the status quo on several fronts. Then again, it will also challenge soccer coaches with a God complex who think they have the answers to everything and refuse to hear evidence to the contrary.

If promotion/relegation happened in the next 5-10 years, it would surely be a net gain for me financially. I could write a sequel to Long-Range Goals and show how things have changed. I could probably sell a few freelance stories.

And no, I wouldn’t be selling out any principles in doing so. My position on promotion/relegation is actually one that can’t be wrong as such. Here it is:

  1. It would be cool. (Debatable)
  2. It is not feasible right now at the top divisions because the game’s investors have already taken on a lot of risk and are not in a position to take more at this time. (Only slightly debatable — and if it turns out investors are able to take that risk at some point, it’s still true because of the qualifiers “right now” and “at this time.”)
  3. It’s already in place in many amateur leagues (fact) and could be used in other lower divisions (speculative).
  4. It would not be a panacea for everything that ails the U.S. soccer talent pool. (Probably the most contentious part of my position, but it’s well-supported.)
  5. I hope we see it down the road, in part because it would be a symptom (not the cause) of a strong domestic game.

(The full recap would be here, here and here.)

So three things could happen in the next, say, 20 years:

  1. Pro/rel does not come to the USA’s top divisions. I was right.
  2. A major pro/rel attempt is made, but it fails. Also right.
  3. Pro/rel comes to the top divisions and works. Right again.

Maybe it’s not the bravest position, but I don’t care. I don’t have any interest in crusading one way or the other and winning a pointless debate on Twitter that won’t move the needle on pro/rel’s feasibility one bit. On pro/rel, I’m just a reporter.

I think there’s a place in this country for fans to tell U.S. Soccer they’d like to see pro/rel. I did an interview recently with a grad student writing a thesis in which he tries to overcome the actual factors against pro/rel (they’re mostly financial and logistical) and come up with a system that works. The advice I’d have for such people is this:

You’re going to be judged by the company you keep.

This is real. It’s why people who have had an interest in lower-division soccer sometimes have trouble taking the NASL seriously. (It’s also amusing to see the pro/rel folks talking up the NASL’s strength and setting themselves up as fountains of historical knowledge while forgetting how many USL/A-League teams have made great runs in the Open Cup. One day, an NASL team will win the Open Cup — just as the Rochester Rhinos did in 1999. MLSSoccer.com recognizes the Rhinos, but it doesn’t fit the “NASL = newfound second-division strength” narrative of the pro/rel zealots, nor does the fact that the USL actually dabbled in pro/rel and found that it didn’t magically make everything better.)

So there you have it. When it comes to the Soccer Culture Wars, the pro/rel zealots aren’t leading some sort of movement. They’re just typical Twitter trolls, spewing hate to feel better about themselves. For those who are new to this discussion, you had a chance yesterday to see their true colors — false accusations of everything from payola to racism. We know who they are.

And that’s why I have no interest in continuing to participate. We can talk about the real issues in U.S. soccer — the upcoming MLS collective-bargaining talks, whether Klinsmann is a mad genius or simply mad, what the NWSL needs to survive and thrive past the crucial third year, and why youth soccer has devolved into an arms race of parents who think they need to invest massive quantities of time, money and gas to their kids can realize their potential.

Peace out.

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My retirement from the soccer culture wars

Posted on by Beau Dure

The unexamined life is not worth living, Socrates is alleged to have said in Plato’s telling of the story. Shortly thereafter, Socrates said his last words: “I drank what?”

If you prefer more modern fare, picture Jules at the diner near the end of Pulp Fiction. “I had what alcoholics refer to as a moment of clarity.”

I had a couple of moments like that yesterday. It all started innocently enough — a well-intentioned but ill-advised campaign from a few soccer media types (not including me) to tweet roughly the same thing about the MLS playoffs fed the conspiracy theories in certain quarters of Twitter that all reporters who cover MLS are the soccer equivalent of pro wrestling broadcasters. We’re part of the “show,” in certain circles.

Of course, that conversation spread to well-trod pathways of discussion. And as I mentioned in my latest dispatches from the soccer culture wars, we’ve seen evolution at play among the culture warriors. We have reasonable strains and unreasonable strains.

Yesterday’s conversations brought out some reasonable people. It also brought out some of the most virulent people in the conversation. Like Ebola, they aren’t particularly contagious, but they’re intent on wreaking as much damage as possible.

So when I found myself patiently explaining to someone that the USA does indeed have a considerable number of journalists who cover MLS for outlets other then MLSSoccer.com, I asked myself: “I drank what?” I’m not sure what sort of conversation I can really have with someone who deals in such absolutes (insert “Sith lord” joke here) that all journalists who cover MLS are part of the league structure, and England has only “independent” media.

Oh … right. Those guys. Or those who pay for interviews.

Anyway, after talking offline with a couple of people yesterday, I no longer think such conversations are necessary.

Were they ever necessary, or at least productive? Years ago, perhaps. And recently, I had started to think we needed to talk about these things because the culture wars were seeping off Twitter and into the mainstream of sorts. The New York Times and the NASL have taken a few fringe elements seriously. The soccer mag Howler is doing a piece on He Who Shall Not Be Named (a well-known Twitter persona who asks journalists questions along the lines of “When did you stop kicking your dog?”). So these discussions are getting into the public forum. And a basic function of journalism, one that’s being forgotten these days, into keep inserting facts into the public forum and to challenge incorrect information. It’s why PolitiFact is such an important news outlet.

But so much of the discussion in the soccer culture wars has little to do with the actual issues at hand. We’ve discussed pro/rel to death. We all talk about single entity, but I’m not sure anyone understands it other than MLS executive Mark Abbott.

Much of it is just character assassination. It’s not fun to leave such things unchecked so that someone just joining the discussion on Twitter hears and, at least initially, believes that mainstream reporters are all puppets of Don Garber. But what’s the point in talking with someone who refuses to listen to things I know, first-hand, to be true?

https://twitter.com/duretalk/status/528213669696782336

Some people, often but not always young, have legitimate questions about how MLS came to be the way it is and why it’s staying that way for the foreseeable future. For them, conversations about promotion/relegation, single entity and other idiosyncrasies are new. Unfortunately, some of them find and fall under the influence of the fringe elements online. Some of them resist such lunacy, and they’re actually fun to talk to.

But Twitter, along with many open discussion forums, just isn’t a good venue for that conversation. As I’ve said a few times, the well has been poisoned.

I personally don’t need to be involved in it, for the following reasons:

1. I’ve said everything I know. It’s either in my book, Long-Range Goals, or on my blog.

2. I’m not even doing much on MLS these days. I spent much of 2013 working on a book about the Washington Spirit. I’ve written about various topics for OZY, a general-interest site I’d recommend checking out even if I didn’t write for them. And I’m working on a book on youth soccer.

3. For all the Twitter hoopla, we’re getting no closer to fundamental changes in how professional soccer operates in the USA and Canada.

If the NASL chooses to seek out the tinfoil fan base with a few encouraging words about pro/rel and some sort of MLS ankle-biting, that’s their decision. NASL’s gonna NASL. Those issues aside, the NASL has some terrific talent from the playing field to the club offices, and all I can do is wish them well. And maybe point out that the good crowds at Indy are probably there not because they’re making a grand statement about soccer business models but because (A) they like soccer and (B) Peter Wilt knows how to run a soccer team.

Within U.S. soccer circles, very little has changed. We’ve had umpteen new MLS owners in the past decade, and still Don Garber, speaking on behalf of the owners that hired him, says an absolute “no” to promotion/relegation. MLS is going to try to improve by investing in youth soccer to increasing degrees and trying to attract better and better players.

So if you’re looking for one legitimate issue of conversation that isn’t just idle talk, it would be the upcoming CBA talks. The salary cap will go up, but how much? Will players get more freedom, perhaps full-fledged free agency? Will the allocation system, already far removed from the days of centralized planning from the league office, drop out of existence? Those are interesting topics, and you may find me talking about them here or on Twitter.

But promotion/relegation, which I’ve already steered away from? The evils of MLS? Corporate manipulation of the now-sprawling and diverse U.S. soccer media?

Yeah. I’m done. I’ve had that moment of clarity or examined my life or whichever reference you prefer. And I’m not drinking the hemlock or the Kool-Aid or anything else.

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Dispatches from the U.S. soccer culture wars

Posted on by Beau Dure

From Tarkus to Fury, the artistically inclined people among us have sketched out portraits of conflict that just keeps going and going, eventually devouring the war-weary veteran and the new enlistee alike.

(At least, I think that’s what Tarkus is about. I get lost somewhere in the middle of Keith Emerson’s fourth keyboard solo.)

And so it goes with what Charles Boehm has succinctly labeled the Soccer Culture War.

Some people are willing, even enthusiastic participants. Some aren’t, but they feel some twisted sense of duty.

Like a lot on conflicts, the root is more rhetorical than real. Deep down, most of the warriors all want the same thing — good soccer in the United States. But fragile identities and defensiveness make us easy to call out.

(Yes, The Simpsons riffed on that scene last season, one of the more esoteric pop-culture references in show history.)

Let’s look at the issues and the opinions:

Promotion/relegation is something U.S. professional soccer …

  1. … really needs to do as soon as possible, and we shouldn’t take MLS seriously in the meantime.
  2. … should work toward in 10 years or so, and it would make us all feel a lot better about MLS if we knew it was in the future.
  3. … may be in position to consider in 10 years or so, but it really doesn’t affect how we feel about MLS at the moment.
  4. … can never consider. Ever.

Most people fall in the “2” or “3” category. But I think most of the online battles take place between the “1” and “3” groups, with the occasional rant from a “4” and some interjections from the “2” group.

The single-entity structure in MLS …

  1. … is proof that this is just a bunch of NFL owners trying to squeeze money out of a sport they don’t care about it, and it inhibits clubs from competing about anything.
  2. … is something the league may have needed in the first decade or so but needs to hurry up and dismantle.
  3. … is something from which the league has gradually moved away and should continue to do so by eliminating its vestigial restrictions on player movement.
  4. … (OK, honestly, I have no idea what the “4” group would be here.)

Again, the loudest group is “1.” You can have productive discussions between “2” and “3.”

Soccer fans in this country are as likely or more likely to watch European or Mexican soccer than MLS because …

  1. … MLS has single-entity and no pro/rel, which obviously makes all its players stink like an overflowing hog waste lagoon.
  2. … MLS isn’t quite doing enough to improve the quality of play. It can’t catch the EPL in the foreseeable future, but it needs to make a few strides.
  3. … these overseas leagues have generations of history and giant fan bases that allow them to spend freely on players and/or bring them up through well-established academy programs, and soccer is better entrenched in those countries as the top sport by far. (Which is not the case in, say, India, China, Australia, etc.)
  4. … they’re snobs who feel the need to differentiate themselves to feel superior to others. They used to be able to do that by being soccer fans in a country of baseball and gridiron fans, but now that the soccer fan base has grown, they have to be part of a more elite subset.

Again, I’m probably a “3,” but I see the “4” group’s point. And “2.”

People who watch MLS …

  1. … are ignorant tools who are content with mediocrity and don’t want anything better.
  2. … support the domestic league despite its faults, and it’d be great if they could also demand more change.
  3. … feel that the only way the league will improve will be if it’s stable and bringing in more money to invest in players and academies.
  4. … are patriotic Americans.

See the pattern? The “2” and “3” groups differ only in the details.

The NASL …

  1. … is the home of true American soccer because the commissioner says he wouldn’t mind seeing pro/rel at some point, and it’s only a matter of time before they start outbidding MLS on players (even though no one has shown much interest in doing that beyond the occasional fringe player).
  2. … is an interesting league that may provide just a bit of competition to keep MLS on its toes.
  3. … is a second division, no different from the old A-League (which actually did experiment with pro/rel but didn’t get very far), that is valuable because it put professional soccer in more cities and allows some owners to test the waters before moving to MLS.
  4. … has delusional fans.

“4” is certainly an extreme generalization. “1” is pretty ridiculous and doesn’t mesh with the way NASL teams are actually acting.

The U.S. soccer media …

  1. … is totally in the pocket of MLS and the USSF. Or scared to lose their credentials. Or just idiots. Nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah.
  2. … needs to take a harder look at what’s holding back MLS and U.S. Soccer.
  3. … are diverse and rapidly growing, from independent bloggers to mainstream media reporters who now have soccer as their primary beat (or only beat) rather than a secondary or tertiary thing … or even something they used to hide from editors.
  4. … are just great.

I don’t think “4” actually exists. “2” has valid points. “3” is absolutely correct. Just consider Sports Illustrated — a few years ago, Grant Wahl covered soccer and college basketball. Now he’s one of a handful of soccer specialists.

And finally, the most recent flare-up …

Jurgen Klinsmann’s fretting over U.S. players returning to MLS …

  1. … is right on! Go, Jurgen! And how dare Don Garber oppress him by disagreeing!
  2. … is a legitimate concern, perhaps inelegantly expressed but still valid.
  3. … misses the mark because the players in question found better situations in MLS than they had in Europe, and players should always seek out the best situation rather than simply assuming the top European leagues are better.
  4. … proves that he’s clueless. Fire Klinsmann!

To sum up … if you find yourself most often associated with one of these groups, you are …

  1. … a tinfoil-hat conspiracy theorist who is probably on my “block” list on Twitter.
  2. … reasonable. Perhaps easily offended from the occasional interaction with a “4,” but you can be talked back into a productive discussion on the issues.
  3. … too reasonable. Get over yourself and argue with the rest of us.
  4. … too cynical, having been through too many of these arguments.

The people who’ve been around the longest tend to be “4.” We’ve discussed a lot of these issues since the old days of the North American Soccer mailing list and the launch of MLS. And the “1” list dominated conversation for too long.

I think the “2” group is growing. They skew younger, asking legitimate questions about why MLS and U.S. Soccer are the way they are. Show them the answers, and they’ll understand but continue to seek ways to push everything toward Eurotopia.

The “3” group needs a nap.

One day, we may have pro/rel in this country, and we may see little difference between the way MLS operates and the way the Bundesliga operates. (My guess is that the Bundesliga will lead the way in pushing “Financial Fair Play” so that its teams don’t explode in spectacular fashion.) But if that happens, it won’t be because of someone unreasonably screamed for it on Twitter.

Milhouse: We gotta spread this stuff around. Let’s put it on the internet!

Bart: No! We have to reach people whose opinions actually matter!

That said, I think some good could come of talking through all these issues. MLS has a history of talking with and listening to its supporters. So if you’re for that, go ahead.

If you’re screaming at me, of all people, now four years removed from USA TODAY and with no major pro men’s soccer platform, I’m just going to block you. Life’s too short for all these wars.

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The rise of the U.S. soccer media

Posted on by Beau Dure

What was the “soccer media” in 1996, when MLS first launched?

For the most part, it was Soccer America, Michael Lewis, Grahame Jones and a handful of people who managed to make soccer at least part of their beat work. At some news organizations, journalists managed to get some soccer coverage into their job descriptions alongside their other responsibilities — writing on other sports, copy editing, online producing, etc. IIRC, one “beat writer” was also his newspaper’s librarian.

From this pool of young, energetic people pushing the constraints of the 40-hour (ha!) work week to cover the sport we love, we got a lot of good content. ESPN had Jeff Bradley, whose connections were unmatched (yes, note the last name) and who had the writing skill to turn his passion into good prose. Sports Illustrated ran Grant Wahl’s insights online whenever he had a few spare moments. The Washington Post actually had a couple of voices — Steven Goff covering D.C. United, Alex Johnson writing “World of Soccer” online.

Being “The Soccer Guy” in your news organization was a good thing if you didn’t mind a little extra work. Knight Ridder Tribune let me crank out a weekly MLS column and other content. USA TODAY didn’t mind my soccer columns and original reporting.

But still, soccer stories were so unusual that a lot of us flocked to BigSoccer, where people would share links to the rare finds. BigSoccer, in the early 2000s, was the hub of soccer discussion online in the wake of the decline of the old North American Soccer mailing list. We didn’t have Twitter or a blogosphere.

Eighteen years later, things are a little different. Wahl is one of several soccer people at Sports Illustrated — Brian Straus, the hardest-working man in soccer journalism, joined him a while ago. ESPN first bought Soccernet, the go-to source for so much European soccer news in the early years of the Internet, then rebranded it ESPN FC, all with a strong cast of contributors.

The independent soccer media always survived as a labor of love. Now it’s thriving at sites like SB Nation.

The official site (disclaimer: I wrote a few fantasy columns for the management before the management before this one) has grown into a robust portal of soccer coverage, from personality-driven podcasts to tactical analysis far beyond anything we’ve seen here.

And that’s just print/online media. In the mid-90s, I always made sure my VCR would pick up the weekly hourlong Premier League recap that popped up on Home Team Sports (now Comcast Sports Net of the D.C./Baltimore area). Today? I’d watch Match of the Day on NBCSN, but I’ve usually seen it all already on a full morning of viewing.

So you can see why I was a bit surprised when I read a promotion/relegation piece that offered many supposed benefits of going pro/rel in the USA, while not addressing any of the reasons why that hasn’t been feasible to this point. Among the more interesting ramifications of going pro/rel:

– No more reliance on big, fast and strong players. (Because every relegation-threatened EPL team and all the League One strugglers play fluid, attractive football, right?)

– An open market rather than centralized soccer development. (Because Germany’s top-down approach funded by the FA is so much more of an open marketplace than having multiple elite youth soccer clubs in every region picking and choosing the best practices of U.S. Soccer, U.S. Youth Soccer, U.S. Club Soccer, AYSO and other alphabet-soup organizations, right?)

And then the fun one: “More expertise in our soccer media.”

That’s right — add in pro/rel, and you’ll get the same sycophantic, sexist, pressbox-cheering, transfer rumor-inventing “experts” you get in other parts of the world. Yay!

OK, that’s a generalization. But such journalists absolutely exist in the rest of the world. We’ll get them here soon enough. No need to rush.

Meanwhile, without pro/rel, we the soccer media have managed to expand exponentially. A few people are bound to know what they’re doing.

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English soccer: Everybody’s got problems

Posted on by Beau Dure

One of the joys of visiting England and taking in the soccer scene is that you realize how wonderful it is — and how different it is from the conventional wisdom of those who think the version in the USA and Canada can’t compare.

//embed.gettyimages.com/embed/484830989?et=tqY28UfaRD9EhZDfTlahKQ&SeoLinks=off&sig=mw82OwQnz4UXufBEPxJNXV890yJnqzfq0nVmoDq7CHw=

My trip to Reading’s Madejski Stadium and my happy purchase of When Saturday Comes at non-import prices reminded me of a few things …

1. English soccer doesn’t turn its back on kids. Reading had a small “family stand,” but honestly, the whole place is family-friendly. The ample concession stands had plenty of options for young ones, along with the beer that has to be consumed in the concourse. Outside the stadium, mascots roamed about, and kids could take a few kicks to see how fast or accurate they were.

At halftime, a youth team piled onto the field and split in two. On each half of the condensed field, players took turns taking a pass from a coach and taking a shot against a goalkeeper. They called this exercise “American-style penalties.”

2. English supporters aren’t all that demonstrative. The Rose City Riveters posted a thoughtful piece on women’s soccer supporter culture, lamenting that their percussion and chanting wasn’t enough to turn all the kids at Sky Blue’s Yurcak Field into authentic supporters.

First of all, give the Riveters full credit for turning the Proclaimers’ classic tune into a chant about hauling a drum 3,000 miles. That’s beautiful. And it would fit right in at the Madejski, where Reading supporters answered Leicester City supporters’ boasts about being promoted to the Premier League with a reminder that Reading holds the record of 106 points in the Championship — one that Leicester can’t quite catch. (A couple also yelled that Leicester will be back in the Championship again after one season up, and if Leicester doesn’t come up with some skill to match its speed, they’ll be right. The ball goes inside the touchlines, guys.)

Drums? Maybe one. Tifo? Nah — Leicester had a couple of banners that said “Leicester City” just so you’d know which stand was the away stand. Standing? Against the rules.

American and Canadian fans really shouldn’t be self-conscious about their supporters culture. We’ve taken bits from everyone — chanting from England, drums and tifo from elsewhere, sawing giant logs from … well, that’s unique. And that’s good! D.C. United’s supporters groups set the standard in the early days, and now everyone’s adding a twist.

3. You don’t need Liverpool or Man City to have an entertaining match. Leicester City will be in the Premier League next year. Reading is still trying to scratch its way into the playoffs. But these teams are far from fantastic. Didn’t matter. Maybe it wasn’t terrific TV, but it was a fun game to watch in person.

And the next time I read some “I tried to give MLS a chance by watching D.C. United play New England, but it wasn’t as good as Liverpool-Arsenal” piece, I’m going to be either violently ill or just plain violent. I went all the way to England and watched a Championship game because I couldn’t get Premier League tickets (a little sad, given that I was staying within walking distance of Arsenal), and I enjoyed it. You can get in your bloody car and go to a live soccer game. If you only have an NASL or USL Pro team within driving distance, go to that. Get over yourself.

4. England has some crap-ass owners. You think MLS teams are alone in trying to make money? Consider Blackpool. WSC has a shocking piece about Blackpool supporters’ protests against their majority shareholders, the Oyston family. They’ve paid themselves an awful lot of money. They’re making loans from the club to “various loss-making companies owned by the Oyston family,” the story reads. Investment in a new training ground? Forget it.

Now consider this — MLS teams don’t have a century of stability on which to draw. Blackpool shared in Premier League TV money a few years ago. MLS is still building its infrastructure from scratch and still recouping the money sunk into the sport in the mid-90s and early 2000s. So you can excuse MLS owners for trying to pull out of the red. What’s Blackpool’s excuse for squeezing pennies?

5. English clubs’ youth pipelines are clogged. From WSC: “Following the departure of Emmanuel Frimpong this January, just two players from Arsenal’s 2009 Youth League and Cup double-winning side remain contracted to the club.”

6. Debt-ridden clubs face extinction. WSC tells the sad story of Bashley, a non-League club that may be next in a “swathe of winding-up orders” as HM Revenue & Customs pursues footballing debts.

7. The Bundesliga is lopsided. Bayern Munich ran away with it this year. Ratings are dropping. Oliver Kahn suggested “US-style play-offs” to make things more interesting. (WSC story: “Competition time.”)

8. The Championship teams are bickering over Financial Fair Play. Is everyone actually adhering to it? Can a team playing under FFP in the Championship turn around the next year and compete in the Premier League?

None of these problems will kill the game. The point here is that simple solutions don’t solve everything. You can’t just “be like England” and expect issues of finances and fairness to go away. MLS is struggling with the balance of parity and excellence. So is everyone else.

We’ll address MLS a little later this week. It’s a CBA year, you know.

WSC has several other good reads, including one in which a Scottish university team now has the opportunity to win promotion into the professional ranks. Tempting to wonder what would happen if Akron had that opportunity, isn’t it?

 

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