Part 4 with NISA Commissioner John Prutch- Independent Cup, US Open Cup, Pro/Rel, Pro League Standards, supporter-owned clubs and Open v Closed systems.
Part 1: Atlanta and Savannah situations
Part 3: NISA Nation, League Office, Club Failures, Open Systems
Part 4: Open Cup, PRO/REL, PLS and Independent Cup (tomorrow)
In Part 4 we discuss the heaviest topics of all. The Pro League Standards, cup competitions and Promotion and Relegation.
NISA has its own cup competition the Independent Cup which pits non professional teams against NISA clubs. Maryland Bobcats and Club de Lyon, then a members of independent amateur leagues used good runs in that competition in 2020 and 2022 respectively to prove their quality in advance of a jump to the professional ranks.
We discuss MLS’ behavior toward US Open Cup and the loaded issue of the Pro League Standards which face a court date in September. NASL has sued US Soccer and MLS about the PLS and perceived favoritism to MLS. Should the NASL win the lawsuit, we could see a realignment of interests within the pro soccer landscape.
Truthfully, it’s tough to take NISA at its word about open systems and PRO/REL given the rocky road of the league to this point BUT I believe the implementation of a club services department at the league office is a MASSIVE swing in the right direction. Why it did not happen years ago is anyone guess, but thankfully it’s happened now, otherwise I would be very comfortable in saying NISA would be dead by the end of 2024.
In terms of PLS, NISA’s concerns about it mirror many of mine. However, prior to this interview I have not seen Commissioner Prutch speak on the record articulating these concerns. And given NISA’s commitment to open systems and “independence” I’d have thought it would be the first talking point for the league many years ago. Nonetheless, what the Commissioner articulates here is from my point-of-view, encouraging.
KK: So let's talk about the Independent cup. You're back with another year of the independent cup. What do you anticipate it looks like this year because you've gone to a regional format with the league, you split into conferences. So how is that going to affect the way you do the independent cup?
JP: We are going to make the announcement in a couple weeks, but we are going to tweak the format, again. One of the things that we've been hearing is that the amateur clubs want more games against pro clubs. And so we're going to tweak a little bit more. We're going to expand the regional territory, if you will. So it'll be more than one professional club in the region. And so if you think about it, down the road, you'll be able to, with this year's competition, we'll start to see how maybe we could get to a national championship at some point, right? And so I think you'll see the tweaks. I'm really encouraged by, we have a committee that puts that together, and I'm very encouraged with what they're recommending. And so we'll be announcing that in the next couple of weeks.
KK: With the efforts by Major League Soccer to undermine the U .S. Open Cup, How important are these other Cup competitions like the Independent Cup, etc. USL is doing their own Cup competition, which I think is a good thing. The Jagermeister Cup. But it takes on added significance because the Open Cup is the national championship. It is actually the one totally open thing we have, or at least was totally open until a couple of weeks ago? Now it's closed if you're in some MLS circumstances. So how, given what has happened to the Open Cup, how important is building the Independent Cup as maybe some sort of national championship tournament going to be for you guys going forward?
JP: It's going to be, I made a comment to my staff a couple of months ago that the Independent Cup is going to be more important now than ever. It is what's... It happened in the Open Cup.. It's the best trophy in this country. And I understand the reasoning behind MLS's decision. I have a lot of respect for Don and his team, but I don't agree with the decision. And I think it has, I'm gonna take us down the path of PLS here. So, it's unfortunate that the cup couldn't hold together.
I think PLS in this country is, let me also state that there have to be standards and I get it. But the PLS was originally set aside for the professional leagues and so that there would be standards that they would have to meet. But if I were, let me state the problems first and then I'll tell you what I would do. So let's use PLS as it stands today, to have a Division 3 men's team. The primary team owner has to have a $10 million net worth. Own a Division 2 women's team. The primary team owner has to have a net worth of $6 million. in what world does that make any sense, right, unless you believe that it's cheaper to run a woman's team than it is a man's team, right, which is absurd and it's on the surface.
So it's arbitrary and so the Open Cup proves once again how arbitrary it was, right, or those regulations are.
And here we are with, you know, Division I teams not playing, a number of them aren't playing, and reserve clubs are, and which, you know, shouldn't be allowed, but it is what it is. Which isn't allowed under the Open Cup, their own handbook, so that leads to violations of PLS, correct? I mean, so now all of a sudden, you know, you have let's play your integrity, you know, or so last night in our game, the (Michigan) Stars game against Minnesota, a number of division one team players came down (to play for MLS NP Minnesota United 2) You knew this was going to happen.
There were several you can just tell by the jersey numbers, actually, by the kit numbers, right? If someone's wearing number 12, which one of the guys from Minnesota was, he's an MLS guy. And so you just end up in and so, you know, there are some restrictions, but my lord, right? I mean, the farther an MLS Next Pro team gets, the more temptation it will be to bring division one players down, to win a cup.
And then, it's just human nature, right? And then you have the situation, you know, like Des Moines,, right? We're in a true open competition. I think the Independent Cup is going to have a chance of really being very successful because you're playing amateur clubs during their amateur season against pro clubs during their pro season. In this situation, you're expecting clubs, amateur clubs that qualified last year to play in their off season. So you're asking them to be tempted as Des Moines Menace to sign players that wouldn't traditionally ever be on the team.
KK: Jumping in. And they're not the only team that did it. Everybody outside pro leagues had to do it. Brave SC who played Savannah in the first round, as I said, I was at that game. They told me maybe four of those twenty guys would be on the USL League 2 roster this season. That’s it.. They had to go find another team. Nova FC I know built a completely new roster for Open Cup. I talked to them about their process in doing that. We’ve all seen what Vermont of USL League 2 did. Used loopholes in NCAA eligibility to bring in college guys. And this is, it, everybody needed to build a new team out of season. I don't want to make this exclusively an interview to beat up on MLS constantly. But this has all happened because of the Leagues Cup, Commissioner. We moved up Open Cup by a month and a half to placate MLS and yet they still pull out of the tournament, violating the PLS in the process? So I just have a hard time reconciling that. For NISA how do you view it.
JP: There are a lot of unintended consequences sometimes when you make decisions like this, right?
Especially from US Soccer’s perspective if you make those decisions in a hurry, which they had to do right and it was a negotiation at the same time, so I Just think and I know that their intent is to to figure this out in the offseason you know when this cup competition is over and and hopefully, you know, we can we can figure it out.
We'll see but I do think it makes our Independent Cup even more important, but the whole PLS thing though, back on PLS really quick, I think it just, you know, Kartik, I give interviews, I'll say, you know, people say, well, you know, you know, give me an example, as well, all right, FC Barcelona, this is the only country where Barcelona could not be a professional club, because they don't have one owner that owns 35%.
KK: So even in that regard, can you go through the process by which you were allowed to get you were able to get Chattanooga and Detroit into NISA, because there were PLS questions, because of what you were saying, for both of those clubs, when you did get them into NISA, your hands were, because of their ownership structure.
JP: And so what ended up happening is in both of those cases, without giving away any secrets, they had to restructure their balance sheet to allow one person to control 35%. And you can’t have a 501c3 with a professional team under the PLS. So a community club like Chattanooga was, you know, unless you restructure your balance sheet, you can't do it. And so it's it's it really is, you know, there's something wrong. So here's what I would do to fix it. I would say I would sanction leagues, but because if I wanted to have, I remember a number of years ago, I think was in NASL, actually, the San Antonio team was a 501c3.
KK: Yeah. We had an issue with that. I was working at the league at the time. Mr.Hartman the owner was using the clubs profits to fund a charity which was wonderful, but the Federation gave us a hard time about it. And we had to juggle things on paper.
JP: Yeah, that's obviously an aside. If I had my own druthers and was able to fix it, that's what I would do. It would let the league decide, who is qualified and who isn't right? I understand that and there has to be standards and then I get that So I'm gonna go I'm gonna go back.
If I look at the history of professional soccer in this country, right, you have those that had a safety net and those that didn't, right, so look at MLS, MLS started off with a bunch of money from US Soccer as a result of the 1994 World Cup. They start play in 1996. Once they get through that, they had serious issues, they were on the verge of going under, and then all of a sudden it was okay for one owner (Phil Anschutz) to own multiple teams, right, and that saved the league. And thank God they did, right, thank goodness US Soccer allowed that to happen, well today you could never do that, right. NWSL comes along after WPS fails, and they have the support of US Soccer to get off the ground, right, up until recently US soccer controlled it, basically the league, right. And then, USL, now USL, in an effort to try and stabilize itself, kind of makes a deal with MLS for the reserve clubs to join USL, and that worked out really well for both, for both parties. So then you have NASL., NASL was playing without a safety net, and ended up having issues, you know, similar to what we have, in that their competition were taking clubs from them, and they weren't being protected by US Soccer. When a league comes after one of our clubs, I raise hell, because , it's, you know, having a club leave when it's really starting to perform, because that's the only type of club that MLS or USL go after, doesn't help the league stability of the club that the league that that club's leaving.
We know what happened to NASL and there were a lot of reasons for that, but a big part of it was they lost a bunch of clubs over a seven-year period. Taken by the two competitor leagues and they had a fair number of clubs fail, just like we've had a fair number of clubs fail. But I do think that we’ve been fighting hard. To make sure that we're protected right now. and I think when Detroit City left was the opportunity that it took. We didn't start beating that drum or protecting us, right? We now have a stronger relationship with US Soccer than we've ever had. We have advocates inside the boardroom and inside US Soccer. I truly believe that there's room, not for an open system for independent clubs in this country. But it's desperately needed. Now, we have to make sure it succeeds. And I think we have that. And I think we have the ownership groups. I think we have investors. I think we have a staff at the league office that are committed to making that work. But none of us know what the future holds, right? And so that some of the stuff that you and I are talking about here today, will impact not only NISA, but the general landscape of soccer in this country.
One of the things that I know you've indicated in the past that angers you is why does the media not pay attention to lower league soccer, right? Yeah, in this country it’s closed. And that it's that simple. There's no Cinderella stories, right? There's no Pro-Rel. And in the rest of the world, if some team goes from the fifth division to the second or first division over a seven or eight year period, it is massive news.
And it's got everyone's attention. That doesn't happen in this country. If you have a club and you're in Dubuque, Iowa, and I decided that's where I'm from originally, you're in Dubuque, Iowa. And you're in the fifth division, let's just say, you're in the fifth division forever. Yeah.
And but if all of a sudden, there was an open system, and you could make a climb to the top, now all of a sudden, the media starts paying attention. Because holy cow, that's truly a success story, right? That's the way it's done in the rest of the world. So it's hard to get media's attention unless you have those stories. So if we don't have an open system, and the team from Des Moines or Dubuque or Omaha can't climb to the top, then why do we have a pro league standards which says, okay, MLS, you're D1, we subsidize you for years, USL, you're sorry, you're D2, NISA, sorry, you're D3.
KK: The divisional designations make no sense in a closed system. I mean, why then is the Federation allowed to put arbitrary numbers if we're not going to have an open system? They are actually pre -determining MLS will get better sponsors than the USL. and USL. will get better sponsors than NISA and better players, you know, everything. I know many in USL now think they need to have D1 to get the sponsors they need to be successful. Besides, this whole thing implies a discrimination against places like Dubuque and Omaha and Huntsville and whatever medium -sized town you want to name in the country because they're saying, okay, D1 is reserved for New York, LA, Miami, Atlanta, Seattle, right? They're the big cities and not for the rest of the country. So the question I'll ask you, Commissioner, is why have divisional designations if you're going to not, if you're not going to have PRO/REL? And your league as well as USL keeps talking PRO/REL but isn’t it just rhetoric as long as the PLS in place? I mean isn’t it impossible in the current situation?
JP: Yeah, I think it's U .S. Soccer's way of controlling the standards, the PLS standards and designating. I used the word earlier, protecting. Yeah, so I think that said, they understand and they have, what we're trying to do, that we're trying to create this open system. Ultimately, we're gonna have two levels of amateur and then at least two levels of pro. And so we can create our own open system. And I think there are a number of people on the board and inside of US soccer and inside the other pro leagues that understand that is our goal. There will be some people that will try to stop that. But there are other people that are on the sidelines, not saying much, but hoping we get it done because it will change the landscape of soccer in this country if we can do that. It's a long, hard pull. And the more advocates we have in that process, the better off we are. Because it is not only asking us to be successful, it is also suggesting that in US Soccer, you have to change your ways, the way you do business. This is a big country. There's plenty of room for the closed system and the open system. And what we have to do is make sure that we take advantage of that.
KK: So let's, and we'll end on this. Let's assume at some point the PLS itself gets knocked out legally or by whatever means, which between us could happen this year, later this year. So what then, how does that free NISA to build the system you want with NISA Nation? You also then have the situation with your regional leagues, your regional affiliates, like the Gold Coast League, where I am in Southern Florida, a NISA Nation affiliate. and not have to worry about USASA either sanctioning things. So how does it make it more streamlined? Again, the hypothetical, the pro league standards are gone, which also probably implies that USASA can't designate certain leagues tier one, because they've done that too. I'm very supportive of the NPSL, but I'm also quite honest in that USASA are doing the same thing the Federation's doing in putting their finger on the scale. So let's just say hypothetically, it's gone. How does that help you build the four division model you need to build PRO/REL properly?
Sure. So the biggest, we have a couple of impacts. One is if someone had a 501c3, they wanted to own the club, we could do that, right? And there are a number of investors out there that would love to do that, right? The other side of it, and this is the bigger picture side of this, is that let's say that there is an amateur team, let's say Nova. Nova won the championship, gets promoted, but they're not qualified. Right? And I'm not saying they aren't, I'm just saying what if they... Yeah, they don't have that. They don't need to stand up here. Right. And then, and then, and so let's just say that the only standard then, if it were us, is you could go from division, let's say, five, four, three, two, whatever, and not never meet those PLS standards, but get promoted up. And you're financially secure because of the performance on and off the pitch. That would be the biggest difference because one of the challenges that we have, let's say we have a division two at some point, and the winner of division three wants to move up, but they don't qualify. How do you do that? Right? How do you get that done? Yeah. And so anyway, that's how it could impact us. Then we can open up the system and get to an acceptable number of teams to populate additional divisions.
KK: Okay, so that just one last question, which gives us the follow up to that, which is supporter-owned clubs or community-owned clubs. You’ve indicated you want both in the past but haven’t really been able to do that with the PLS, correct? So the Chattanooga example we talked about earlier, but I've been on the board of two supporter owned clubs that one had to play in Gold Coast Premier League, which is an affiliate league now of you guys. And the other had to play in NPSL, because they can't be a professional club. So they can't be in a professional league. So those clubs are stuck where they're stuck. NISA has said they want those clubs. If you want them, doesn’t the PLS need to be gone.
JP: We'd have to be comfortable that financially they could do it. Right? Right. Of course. Yeah. You're right. But yes. There's a huge opportunity for those clubs. Think about all the traditional old amateur clubs that are sitting out there that have been around for 80 or 100 years. Think about them. Some of them would love to be pro. Even El Farlito, they're in NPSL now, but they've been around longer than MLS has been. And actually in theory the (Michigan) Stars, now obviously they're professional and you have your owner and his kids play for the team. But actually, their lineage goes back, I want to say, to the 70s or 80s*. And so yes, it would open the door for those types of clubs to join the professional ranks or get promoted up to the professional ranks, right? Think about what that would do in, let's say, our 200 clubs of affiliates. The amateur system is vibrant and you're really playing for something, right? In the professional game it isn’t quite that way yet.
____________
*By the way, those wondering about Michigan Stars lineage, they were based on the other side of the border in Windsor for many years, but yes it is technically an older club than most know. Many date the club’s inception to joining NPSL in the early 2010’s but actually it goes back to the 1980’s.
_____________
FINAL WORD
In terms of this interview, Prutch laid out several concepts that make perfect sense for the game in this country. But at this moment due both to the PLS and NISA’s own inability to become stable they remain just that - concepts. NISA is an incubator of new ideas such as the Independent Cup but more often than not its been full of concepts without any real implementation to this point.
But in this four part series, the vision for NISA becomes clear which is why many around the game are desperate for the league to stabilize and then create an ecosystem outside of MLS or USL. A platform for future growth requires stability now beyond the obvious need to have a long-term vision that creates excitement and potential movement up and down an alternative pyramid.
Financial issues will continue to haunt NISA teams as will the lack of relevance in local communities for the majority of its member clubs unless we see some serious progress in 2024, which makes it a pivotal year not only for NISA as an entity but each of its clubs should they seek to remain professional long-term.
IMHO, this was a balanced and fair interview. I do not see where KK interrupted the Commish (that Talking Soccer alluded). There is a paragraph spoken by the Commish/JP that should have been bolded so perhaps that formatting error gave the mistaken impression that KK went on-and-on?
Overall, the Four Part series let the NISA present its case far more comprehensively than any other platform has done!
I’m glad you brought these articles and interviews to us. I do have a problem with it though because you seem to want to push back hard against NISA instead of letting them tell their story in an unfiltered way. If you look at how The Athletic handled Garber, they did the opposite. They let him tell MLS story. Really if you want to see NISA succeed, then you should, not so often interrupted Commissioner and not so often add your own pro-USL commentary to this. Let the public decide instead of you, adding bits of commentary and interrupting answers.