Good crowds from some of the debutante clubs: New Mexico, El Paso, Memphis. Solid stuff from Vegas, Sacramento, and San Antonio as well.

Scuffed is killing it on the USL coverage of USMNT/USYNT prospects.The USL Championship season kicks off this weekend, starting with Tacoma vs. Rio Grande Valley right now. USL League One starts in a couple of weeks.
It's a deep cut, but the games are all on ESPN+, so Tacoma Defiance (Seattle's team) and North Texas SC (FC Dallas' team) are the two biggest ones I'll keep track of from a USMNT perspective. Both have tons of teenage prospects who will be playing big roles.
Agreed, he covers youth more closely than anyone else. Dude is going to jump off a cliff if Richie Ledezma and Alex Mendez don't turn into stars or play for Mexico, though.Scuffed is killing it on the USL coverage of USMNT/USYNT prospects.
They should do what they did in Formula 1 and called them New York Toro RossoWould renaming New York Red Bulls II as New York Sugar Free Red Bulls be genius or merely brilliant?
I don't know anything about this guy or the likelihood of his plan coming to fruition.-Brett Johnson, Fortuitous Partners, is proposing to bring a professional sports team — a United Soccer League franchise — to downtown Pawtucket and envisions construction of a multi-sport stadium and ancillary and sport-related development. The proposal includes a renewed use for the existing McCoy baseball stadium site. A new recreational park is proposed with six new multipurpose fields that can be used for soccer, lacrosse or football.
It's Omaha. The owners are the same group that owns the AAA Omaha Storm Chasers; the soccer team will share the stadium. That takes League One to 11 clubs for 2020, with the (tenuous?) possibility that the Rochester Rhinos and Penn FC will come back from hiatus as well.The USL is teasing an expansion announcement for League One next week. Based on old murmurings, I wouldn't be shocked to see it be Omaha. Who knows really.
That's a very nice crowd. Of course, once the novelty wears off, we'll see what happens across the season and across all franchises.Just a few years ago, young Canadian soccer players like Ryan Telfer and Kadell Thomas had little shot at professional careers. Without a professional domestic league solely based in Canada players entered their 20s with a sense of uncertainty: despite having the talent to progress into academies, colleges and semi-pro leagues, they would either be forced to play abroad – unless they made it to the handful of Canadian MLS teams – or quit the game altogether. “There are so few options,” said Telfer in 2018.
But this weekend, Telfer and Thomas entered the annals of Canadian soccer history. And more importantly, they now have a pathway to sustained success. On a windy Saturday afternoon in front of 17,611 spectators at Hamilton’s Tim Horton’s Field, Telfer and Thomas each scored in an entertaining 1-1 draw between York 9 FC and Hamilton’s Forge FC in the first ever Canadian Premier League match. The seven-team league has been in the works for more than five years now and is sanctioned by Canada’s governing soccer association as the country’s top-tier league. The league has hopes to expand and eventually develop a tiered system with promotion and relegation.
Feels like the MLS II teams in USL are apples and oranges. Galaxy II and RBNY II are drawing essentially high school game crowds.Good crowds from some of the debutante clubs: New Mexico, El Paso, Memphis. Solid stuff from Vegas, Sacramento, and San Antonio as well.
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I think pro/rel in the CPL would be internal with a CPL2 league. It's hard to see it meshing with MLS at all. If MLS ever has pro/rel, I think it will be with a second-division league under MLS control.Might have to update the thread title, TB. We have a new league in the Great White North, eh? The Canadian Premier League:
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2019/apr/30/will-the-canadian-premier-league-turn-the-country-into-a-football-power
That's a very nice crowd. Of course, once the novelty wears off, we'll see what happens across the season and across all franchises.
This can only be a good thing IMO. Canada's national program has been a joke for so long, roughly akin to one of the Caribbean islands in the CONCACAF pecking order, and never a serious threat to make the Hex. A stronger Canada would produce more good prospects for the region and MLS, and also elevate CONCACAF. Better competition for the USMNT is a good thing.
It says later in the article that pro/rel is a long term goal. That's a very interesting question w/r/t the three Canadian MLS franchises, and pro/rel in the US, right? Would there be a fixed number of Canadian franchises in MLS and pro/rel from those designated Canadian spots to/from the CPL? Could/would the Canadian franchises break from MLS to the CPL? That would be hard to imagine, and I wouldn't think Vancouver would want to abandon its Seattle and Portland rivalries.
All fun to think about, and all good stuff.
MLS once had a reserve league, but it was viewed as inadequate. There was a desire for academy kids and reservists to be able to play in meaningful games against adult professionals in front real crowds (on the road, anyway).Feels like the MLS II teams in USL are apples and oranges. Galaxy II and RBNY II are drawing essentially high school game crowds.
Not that it's on the table yet, but you also wonder what pro/rel would look like with these subsidiary teams.
PL teams have U23 squads that compete in PL2. I follow Everton's decently closely - they just won the PL2 (I like seeing someone in an Everton kit hoist some silverware, even if it's in a cow pasture with five people watching). That might be a better model for MLS rookie squads.
Since the demise of the NASL, the B team in the NPSL is now the only New York Cosmos. Some of their old mainstays like Danny Szetela are still playing there.They beat New York Cosmos B, I believe.
This conflict has been brewing for a while. Padding out what's now USL Championship with MLS reserve teams gave USL an edge in their battle with the NASL and helped provided stability that attracted new independent teams well. The USL-C is now huge, with 36 teams, and like the Old Big East, there are now different factions with different goals.
Not to mention it could encourage more teams to give talented players that can't afford the pay-to-play model a chance.If they can get the transfer fee waterfall working for real we could be going somewhere into feeder club territory. Would give reason to focus on development over WIN NOW.
Might have to update the thread title, TB. We have a new league in the Great White North, eh? The Canadian Premier League:
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2019/apr/30/will-the-canadian-premier-league-turn-the-country-into-a-football-power
That's a very nice crowd. Of course, once the novelty wears off, we'll see what happens across the season and across all franchises.
This can only be a good thing IMO. Canada's national program has been a joke for so long, roughly akin to one of the Caribbean islands in the CONCACAF pecking order, and never a serious threat to make the Hex. A stronger Canada would produce more good prospects for the region and MLS, and also elevate CONCACAF. Better competition for the USMNT is a good thing.
It says later in the article that pro/rel is a long term goal. That's a very interesting question w/r/t the three Canadian MLS franchises, and pro/rel in the US, right? Would there be a fixed number of Canadian franchises in MLS and pro/rel from those designated Canadian spots to/from the CPL? Could/would the Canadian franchises break from MLS to the CPL? That would be hard to imagine, and I wouldn't think Vancouver would want to abandon its Seattle and Portland rivalries.
All fun to think about, and all good stuff.
A “special economic development announcement” has been scheduled for 12:30 p.m. Monday at the Blackstone Valley Visitor Center in Pawtucket and it appears that one of the two proposals to bring soccer to the city will be the winning proposal, with the Brett Johnson/Fortuitous Partners/USL plan being the frontrunner. Brett Johnson is a Brown University graduate, part of the Fortuitous Partners leadership team and Co-Chairman/Alternate USL Governor with Phoenix Rising. It's supposed to be a $400 million project that will be right on the other side of Route 95 from where the PawSox were planning on building The Ballpark at Slater Mill. The new stadium would be right on the west side of the Seekonk River in the Taft Street Community Garden area with development directly across the river to the east in the 45 Division Street area, with McCoy Stadium turned into community sports fields.One of the proposals for the redevelopment of McCoy Stadium is for a USL team.
https://www.providencejournal.com/news/20190426/6-proposals-submitted-for-reuse-of-mccoy-stadium
I don't know anything about this guy or the likelihood of his plan coming to fruition.
Interesting stuff. I've heard about the possibility of a USL team there, but I didn't realize it was so close to happening. I think the Fortuitous Partners venture would be a better idea, primarily because USL is an established and reasonably (by lower-level American soccer standards) stable league, whereas NISA is a real shot in the dark.A “special economic development announcement” has been scheduled for 12:30 p.m. Monday at the Blackstone Valley Visitor Center in Pawtucket and it appears that one of the two proposals to bring soccer to the city will be the winning proposal, with the Brett Johnson/Fortuitous Partners/USL plan being the frontrunner. Brett Johnson is a Brown University graduate, part of the Fortuitous Partners leadership team and Co-Chairman/Alternate USL Governor with Phoenix Rising. It's supposed to be a $400 million project that will be right on the other side of Route 95 from where the PawSox were planning on building The Ballpark at Slater Mill. The new stadium would be right on the west side of the Seekonk River in the Taft Street Community Garden area with development directly across the river to the east in the 45 Division Street area, with McCoy Stadium turned into community sports fields.
The other soccer proposal, from AJAX Advisors, would bring independent professional soccer (the rumored NISA team that's supposed to start next year?), to downtown Pawtucket and would convert McCoy to light industrial use.
One of the teams behind a soccer proposal hired a RI State House lobbyist in September, registered as Rhode Island Riptide FC.
I got that information from the article in the quote in addition to the following articles:
https://www.providencejournal.com/news/20191127/plans-for-mccoy-stadium-downtown-pawtucket-to-be-announced-mondayhttps://www.valleybreeze.com/2019-11-05/pawtucket/fortuitous-partners-touts-400-million-downtown-project#.XeEzY-hKi70
The article from the Valley Breeze also shows a rendering of what the project could look like.
I'm torn on this. Pawtucket, and northern RI in general, can use any and all investment possible and $400 million is quite an investment, as a Rhode Islander who is deeply wounded by the PawSox leaving the state I wouldn't mind this being successful in a "this could have been yours" way, and the rendering looks impressive. That said, I'm just not sure how successful an unaffiliated minor league soccer team would be. You already have an MLS and a USL League One team 16 miles away. Hopefully for all parties those teams will be moving to Boston, but I'm just not sure where a fan base comes from. This feels like a cheap backup plan for the PawSox leaving.
I'm not a huge soccer fan and I don't have any kids, so probably not often. I'm sure I'll go once the first year if the stadium looks good enough just out of curiosity and if the tickets are cheap enough and I have enough fun I might go to a weekend game here or there. That area of Pawtucket is kind of a pain in the butt for me to get to, to the point where it would be easier for me to go to Gillette for a Revolution game and if I'm going to invest time in going to soccer I'd rather just go to the better product where they're both so close. That calculus obviously changes if and when the Revolution move to Boston and if I end up having kids.Interesting stuff. I've heard about the possibility of a USL team there, but I didn't realize it was so close to happening. I think the Fortuitous Partners venture would be a better idea, primarily because USL is an established and reasonably (by lower-level American soccer standards) stable league, whereas NISA is a real shot in the dark.
I think the Revs' USL League One team is a non-issue. They will probably draw less than 300 fans a game. Whether Providence can support an indy team in the "shadow" of the Revs is a legitimate question. I think the Revs' presence is weak enough that it's possible if they get the right people in the front office.
Would you go to games?