Intresting opinion

Mark Schnabel ·

Sports Editor at The Newton Kansan

Pro-rel has nothing to do with player development here or abroad. The US has always had pro-rel, in a manner of speaking. A player does well, he gets promoted. A player does poorly (ask Freddy Adu), he gets demoted.
In Europe, a team gets promoted, it has to dump the roster and ante up to buy higher-level players on the transfer market. A team gets relegated, it has to dump its roster of any high-priced talent it can no longer afford on lower revenues.
Our weakness in the player development system is the insistance that kids pay the equivelent of a year's tuition in college to play a year of high-level youth soccer. Very few youth systems outside the US and Canada require that kind of investment.
It's almost cheaper for a kid's parents to buy a plane ticket and send the kid overseas to play at an English or European academy than stay at home and play at the local academy team.
The US isn't ready for a pro-rel sysyem, mainly because of franchise valuation issues, which is what was proved in these hearings. (NASL teams already had low valuations and those will plummet lower because of its relegation to the third division). MLS owners won't risk losing their investment valulations with relegation. They will fold up their teams becuase it is a cheaper ROI.
When the MLS grows to about 36 to 40 teams, it could then split into a MLS Premier and MLS Championship, but until then, it just wouldn't work. Most NASL owners (as shown in the suit) and many USL owners just don't have the money to play at the MLS level. Very few play in stadiums that would meet the ability to earn the revenue required at the MLS level.
If the NASL and USL managements were able to play nice together in the same sandbox on the playground, they might have been able to come up with a system on their own that US Soccer and the MLS could live with and even thrive with.
When the NASL started, it had the moral edge due to the uncertainty of the USL's sale by Nike. The NASL wanted an owner-run league.
The USL overcame its initial weaknesses and has it spam in a can, while the NASL has devolved into chaos.
To the credit of both leagues, they have both incubated MLS markets both directly (think Minnesota or Orlando City) or indirectly, by showing the strength of those markets (Indy or Cincy both come to mind).