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Regardless of where people stand on details of the US Soccer system today, I& #39;d have to imagine that overwhelmingly nearly no one believe that having 3 mens pro league systems makes sense or that all 3 will comprise an eventual endgame.
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There are a couple of ways this could be resolved.
1st Option: The leagues continue to wage an inefficient war – resulting in more dead clubs, more burned investors, more wasted resources, more tribalism, more supporters & communities spurned. Until one or two stand victorious.
1st Option: The leagues continue to wage an inefficient war – resulting in more dead clubs, more burned investors, more wasted resources, more tribalism, more supporters & communities spurned. Until one or two stand victorious.
2nd Option: Someone shows an ounce of leadership to pull parties together to create a cohesive and coherent league system and a sustainable path for the future.
Does the 1st option yield some positives? Sure. USL got more creative and better at execution because of NASL. NISA failed and had a terrible model, but learned from NPSL Pro to create a better set of ideas that might be able to be implemented more broadly.
But at some point the innovation yielded from zero-sum competition has diminished returns and increased corpses.
None of MLS, USL, NASL, NISA have it right. None. Some have some parts right. The game as a whole doesn& #39;t have it right as evidenced in the greed vs. a different greed (and corruption) battle we& #39;ve witnessed in a very overt way in Europe this week.
And stateside, we& #39;re heading down the exact same path for the women& #39;s side. And the amateur side is an absolutely nonsensical mess. (And youth? Perhaps where it& #39;s the worst.)
We& #39;re so insecure and so afraid of losing it that we continue, paralyzed, down this path. Supporters are afraid of losing a club. We fear high-net-worth individuals pulling out. Journalists fear losing access or weakening a still fragile system.
There have been massive leaps and bounds over the last decade. Indisputable infrastructure being built and things being learned. A (slowly) widening interest in the sport domestically. But the efforts and resources expended will continue to inefficiently yield loss.
Someone needs to start some conversations. Show some leadership. Because there& #39;s very few ways this goes. And right now we are defaulting into the one that results in the most loss.
