Let's Wildly Speculate About Stuff!

The USL had its mid-season meetings in San Antonio this past week, and out of those meetings comes a bombshell report (sub req) from The Athletic about potential future changes to the league. There’s a paywall here, so we won’t give the game away, but the highlights are these: USL is looking to implement a system of promotion and relegation between the USL Championship and USL League One, and to move to the so-called “European” calendar, i.e., a fall to spring schedule. They are also looking to introduce a new cup competition. In a word, whoa.

At the moment, this appears to be just a statement of intent, basically a plan to plan. There’s nothing concrete, at least not in The Athletic’s reporting. But he schedule change is at least very plausible. I’ve always thought that it is practically inevitable that American soccer leagues will eventually abandon the summer schedule. While I imagine they are all still hesitant to challenge the NFL and college football directly, as American soccer and American soccer leagues grow, it is going to be important to line up, for instance, with international breaks. Promotion and relegation seems like a decent way to get a foothold in newer markets, where investors might be willing to make the smaller financial outlays necessary to start a League One team knowing they may eventually reach the Championship, rather than plunking down millions up front to start in the top league. And the moves seem designed to distinguish the USL from the MLS, which it certainly would do.

So, again, whoa. This is obviously a story that has a lot of developing to do. The changes, in their broad outlines at least, are something we at the Blog support. (We also reached out to the Roots to get their stance on the report, but the club has no comment.) But as with anything, the devil may well be in the details. There are a lot of potential moving parts here, so these are the things we’ll be watching and following up on as (or if) this story continues to unfold.

Lots of change is coming to the USL regardless. As the Louisville Courier-Journal wrote about the USL at the end of last season, “if there has been a constant” for the USL, “it has been churn.” More churn is on the horizon: MLS is pulling its affiliated clubs out of the USL and forming its own developmental league. Four new clubs, including Monterey Bay FC, are set to join the USL Championship in the coming years. But the proposal out of the mid-season meetings will ratchet this up a notch or two.

At the moment, there are 31 teams in the USL Championship and 12 in League One. But 11 of those teams are owned by MLS clubs, and another 5 have MLS affiliations. Reporting around the new MLS developmental league does not typically differentiate between those two groups, but the press release on the MLS website discusses only "MLS club-owned and operated teams." We now know that all but 4 of the eventual departures will happen next year, and the remainder will likely happen in 2023. But USL also has five teams set to join the Championship and four to join League One, according to Wikipedia, and has announced its intention to add even more.

So, to recap: The two USL divisions that would be involved in the pro-rel scheme are currently at 43 members. They will soon lose between 11 and 16 teams (down to 27 to 32), but are set to add 9 more (up to between 36 and 41, assuming all goes according to plan). To have a robust set-up, and be equipped to compete with MLS, the guess here is the USL will need at least 48 teams in these two divisions, although the league’s approach to expansion thus far suggests they’ll probably aim even higher. Where this expansion occurs, and how it is managed, will probably be key to the success of the plans discussed this week in San Antonio.

The stadium. As we reported yesterday, the USL also sees the expansion of stadiums as something key to its growth. Setting aside the scheduling conflicts and controversies that have plagued Roots’ current campaign, the Laney College football field holds about 5,000 spectators. Is that going to be enough for the USL in the coming years?

Even if it is, would Roots be able to coexist with the Laney College athletic programs if the USL switched to the European calendar and added cup competitions? One imagines that it would be difficult for the stadium to really accommodate all of that. As we’ve learned this season, installing a soccer pitch is no mean feat. Is it feasible to constantly change the Laney turf from association football to American football? What about scheduling around Laney’s other athletic programs or events? Roots, of course, just announced that they will play two rescheduled matches in Livermore, given scheduling conflicts at Laney.

And there is another variable here, too: The Athletics. The Oakland City Council approved a plan for a new A’s ballpark at the Howard Terminal location, but apparently it isn’t a plan the A’s themselves are on board with yet. The general consensus here at RootsBlog is that the A’s already have one foot in Las Vegas, which is really disappointing for the Town, but may hold an opportunity for the Roots. The Roots’ current success at Laney makes clear just how important a downtown stadium would be (or, at least, one near a BART station). But there is simply not that much room in downtown Oakland to build a soccer stadium. If the A’s Howard Terminal plans do fall through though, I know a place we might find the requisite space.

Professional Soccer in the Bay Area. We know that MLS would not mind a second team in Northern California, as they tried to attract Sacramento a few years back. We also know that Monterey Bay FC is about to join the USL. In the event these leagues go head to head, then, at the moment there would be 3 USL teams and 1 MLS team in the region. Is MLS fine with that, or will they continue the search for another NorCal franchise? If so, do they look at Sacramento again, or one of the other existing franchises, or do they look for a ground-up expansion candidate? Will the USL try to essentially supplant MLS in the Bay?

I’m sure I don’t have to point out that there is one major NorCal municipality not currently represented in the ranks of American professional soccer: San Francisco. What SF does have, however, are two USL League Two teams with decently long pedigrees: SF Glens and SF City. Would either league try to entice one of these clubs to make the jump? SF Glens seems unlikely, as they have an affiliation with San Jose Earthquakes. SF City, on the other hand, at least presents itself as upwardly mobile. Might they have the ambition to step up?

(I should note: There are several NorCal teams in America’s other fourth-division league, the NPSL, including teams in Napa, Turlock, Walnut Creek, and Davis. Any one of them might be enticed to make the jump as well, but I’m frankly not as familiar with them.)

Of course, as with Oakland, one issue in SF is a stadium. MLS requires soccer-specific stadiums of new entrants, and USL has been looking at expansion candidates who can pair a stadium with an entertainment complex. There is probably even less available real estate for a new stadium in SF than there is in Oakland, and certainly there are no entertainment complexes (unless you count the Wharf, I guess). Glens’ current home, Boxer Stadium could in theory be upgraded, but that neighborhood would probably raise twelve different kinds of hell. Candlestick Park remains empty, but the city would almost certainly rather build housing there. The Bay Area is a great market for professional soccer, though, and it will be interesting what kind of equilibrium the two leagues settle on here.

Can the USL supplant MLS? This is really the big question. USL has been seen as sort of the AAA league in the current set up, but the people in charge plainly have bigger ambitions. The new proposals are pretty clearly aimed at putting USL on at least equal footing with MLS. And you can see the genius in some of this. Pro-rel means fans in double the number of markets are tuned in to the league. Expanded cup competitions allow for rivalries to really develop. And the schedule switch means USL isn’t playing second fiddle to MLS when it comes to TV contracts. (Though it is playing second fiddle to American football for most of the fall at least.) If these moves pay off, does USL become the premier American soccer league? Is the threat of that shift significant enough to prompt a counter-move from MLS? I’m excited to find out, personally.