Future of soccer in the US

An interesting article talking about attendance levels at the lower tiers. I love to see some promotion and relegation in the US (in all sports in fact).

http://prosoccertalk.nbcsports.com/2014 ... in-the-us/

 

An idea I had recently was that it's tough to follow the league if you don't live in one of the major markets. I thought, what if they moved to a unified schedule, maybe like a Saturday, Sunday, Wednesday kind of thing, that way you can televise matches, and actually kinda know when matches are being played.

 

There have been teams get promoted before, and relegated after league restructuring. When the Sounders moved up to MLS they promoted Cleveland from USL 2 to USL 1 to take the Sounders place and within two years the Cleveland team didn't exist. They went from selling out every game, winning the league, to extinction because of promotion. While we have never had a real promotion/relegation system we've had enough of a taste to know we are not ready for it. These team in Indianapolis and Detroit, while seemingly successful now, are new. You can't just look at attendance, you need stability. Another Cleveland example - MLS awarded us a franchise that was to start in the 2005 season, but then the developer died and that was the end of that. A similar case occurred when Brad Freidel built and opened a youth soccer academy in Cleveland that was free to any player good enough. When the economy went bad in 2008, his academy no longer had enough funding. It eventually closed down, only after trying to charge $40,000/yr tuition, and Friedel filed for bankruptcy. I think there are serious problems with thinking we can just copy what Europe does to improve soccer in the US. The fast majority of our athletic resources and fan loyalty are tied to schools and yet US Soccer refuses to build on that and instead tries to start everything from scratch around soccer clubs. There is a semi-pro team in the fourth division of soccer here in Cleveland that started a few years ago after our USL team went under. They decided to start at the bottom division (same one as the Detroit team mentioned in the article) and build the club slowly, "the right way". There is only one problem with this, the product they put on the field is not as good as the University of Akron Mens' team a few miles away and it likely never will be due to the resources available. Why would I support and attend games to see an inferior product? I have to think these Cleveland examples are not isolated cases but have happened across the country and yet we continue to think this is the way to go.

Agree. The new MLS TV deal includes a set time slot for an MLS game of the week type of thing. Not totally what you suggest but it's a start and shows people at the top recognize the need. A complete unified schedule is probably difficult with three time zones, the International calendar, European club friendlies, and current MLS TV viewership levels vs MLS attendance levels.