Introducing 500 Words Per 90/USL Expansion into Division 1

I’m starting a new Substack because I want to write more, and I figure that I might make it easier for people to read it. I’ve tried a couple different platforms, most recently Medium, but I find myself in a bit of a strange spot. Anything that I want to put a lot of effort and thought into - primarily posts about soccer analytics or New York City FC - tends to already have a home on American Soccer Analysis or the Outfield. At the same time, the various thoughts that I do have about soccer that wouldn’t go there at most get turned into drafts in Google Drive, waiting for the day where I think about them more completely.

Enter 500 Words per 90. This is a chance for me to write my semi-complete thoughts about all kinds of different topics, without necessarily turning each of them into a mini research paper. It’s an opportunity for me to exercise my writing muscle and get better at communicating ideas with the brevity and impact necessary for understanding. I don’t anticipate many people will want to read it, but I figure that if they do, a newsletter is a pretty good way to distribute it rather than trusting in the fickle whims of social media algorithms.

There’s not going to be a specific focus for this newsletter; sometimes it might be about global soccer, or youth national teams, or a prospect that I find particularly interesting. It might be about analytics or tactical ideas that I have yet to fully explore, but still want to note and share. It might be to highlight and respond to something interesting that I’ve been reading. It might be about none of that and something out of left field. 500 words is my aspirational target; sometimes, it might be more than that, sometimes, it might be less.

I always start new projects with optimism - that’s ADHD for you - and sometimes I even do finish them. I’ve gotten better at it as I’ve gotten older and if there’s anything I’ve learned, the power of routine and consistency is the biggest factor in being productive. Inspiration can only last so long.

On a USL First Division

USL recently came out with an announcement that they were taking a Bold Step by launching a Division 1 league in the USA. This is naturally making the rounds as a Big Story; like anything US Soccer related, it tends to be a Rorschach test for your feelings about MLS and about promotion and relegation. That’s unfortunate, because the announcement really doesn’t have anything to do with either.

I’m pretty happy with the USL. My local team, North Carolina FC, is in USL Championship and the quality of play is very good. From the outside it appears to be a well run and ambitious league. They are well situated geographically to make a jump to Division 1; they have 21 teams that already operate in a metropolitan area of over the required 1 million in population, along with 3 that are in metro areas of above 900K. The stadium requirements might be more difficult. The division 1 standards are 15000 seats, and there isn’t a single purpose built soccer stadium in USL that meets that standard. The only teams that do meet that standard rent from non-soccer stadiums. That’s a pretty major hurdle that could take as much as a decade to figure out.

The bigger question, to me, is why Division 1 sanctioning even matters. I doubt that if I polled the thousands of youth players and parents that operate under the NCFC umbrella the majority could accurately say which league NCFC operates in - much less what division that is and the requirements to move up to Division 1. I’m not sure that the label matters to broadcasters and advertisers who are more concerned about eyes on the product. It seems like an awful lot of effort and expense to do something which may not move the needle all that much, and might actually put clubs in a place where they have to take financial risks with unclear rewards.

I’ve seen two theories. First is John Morrisey over at USL Tactics; his claim is that this sets the stage for a 3 tier promotion and relegation pyramid that USL has been eyeing and discussing for a while. That would be a bold step, but the reality is that relegation introduces a lot of risk to a system that has chugged on fairly stably for the last decade or so. Is the return worth it?

CJ Coreschi thinks that this is a step to drive the value of USL higher and scratch at MLS’s heels ahead of an eventual merger. I don’t think that is likely to happen, and I’m not convinced that it’s a real bonus for either MLS or USL. While it might be nice for USL to gradually take over everything sub-MLS, build functional lower level soccer in the USA, and then be absorbed into a single all conquering pyramid, it just feels like there’s too many interests going too many directions for that to work out.

Here’s what I do hope for out of this development. The reality is that the gaps between leagues in the USA are massive, too great to be easily overcome. You’ll get X/Twitter fantasists and rabble rousers who insist that there’s tremendous talent in USL and that if the competition was truly open, USL teams would routinely beat MLS teams. They’re wrong. We saw FC Cincinnati assemble what was essentially a USL All Star expansion squad and get worked over so badly they took years to recover.

But it doesn’t end there - the gaps between USL League One teams and semi-pro (USL2, NPSL, etc) teams are equally massive, if not more so. There are essentially two competent professional organizations, each separated by a gulf between each other and every other league in the pyramid. While all leagues have been improving and roughly keeping pace with each other, those gaps aren’t getting any smaller. A Division 1 USL might, if successful, begin to close the gap with MLS enough so that a market develops where there is movement of players and coaches between the two. On the bottom end, hopefully enough USL 2 teams can fully professionalize to join the 3rd division and strengthen the connection between amateur, semi-pro, and pro soccer. Add that to the possibility of NCAA soccer professionalizing and all of a sudden the pyramid is more complete and more healthy than ever before.

It’s a big dream, but I’m happy that there’s a vision in place and a plan to go for it. It’s an exciting time to be a soccer fan in the USA.