The League for Clubs is Uniting the American Semi-Pro Pyramid… So What’s Next?
What a launch it has been for The League for Clubs. Founded as a breakaway from the NPSL, the league has 5 conferences in Northern California, on the Gulf Coast, in Texas, in the Mid-American region, and in the Northeast. With 52 teams total and partnerships with the Metroplex and Gulf Coast Premier Leagues, the league will only continue to grow after partnering with the Midwest and Mountain Premier Leagues in anticipation for 2026. But, who is to say the league’s ambitions stop there? They have done an unbelievable job uniting the semi-professional soccer pyramid and setting the framework for a regional to national, promotion and relegation system, but how can they continue to set up this framework? We have a few ideas.
Cascadia and Southwest Premier League Partnerships
The Cascadia Premier League is a regional league that includes clubs from Washington and Oregon. They formed in 2018 and now have two men’s divisions of 8 clubs each that are connected through promotion and relegation. They also have 14 women’s clubs in a first division. The league is well-known for clubs with strong branding like Seattle Celtic and Sharktopus FC. Their smaller regional set-up is perfect as the lower-division for a LfC top tier, and they’d be willing to partner with a national league after formerly working with NISA Nation.
The Southwest Premier League is another regional league that has a large presence in Nevada and California. While some of their clubs focus on being more an adult amateur side rather than a young semi-pro club, and the league is less enthusiastic about national play in their mission statements, they have also partnered with NISA Nation in the past. Adding their 64 clubs is just a logical step for TLfC’s uniting of local soccer across the country.
WPSL Men’s Clubs Form Across Country
A few clubs like FC Wichita, Iron Rose FC, and the recently announced Brooklyn City FC have joined the League for Clubs originating as a WPSL side. This is because the two leagues have an official partnership thanks to the league office structure. This gives a lot of room for TLfC to flesh out their conferences by convincing successful and well-run WPSL clubs to field a men’s club.
The league’s Mid-American Conference is low on number this year with only 4 clubs. Enter the Midwest Conference of the WPSL, where 11 clubs in two divisions could increase the number. Starting in late May/early June, there will be a Mountain Premier Conference with 4 clubs after a partnership with the Mountain Premier League. Enter the WPSL’s Mountain Conference with 11 teams who could help. Other numbers could be added to conferences in the Gulf Coast, California, Northeast, with many possible in the future Midwest Conference (which will already have many clubs thanks to the Midwest Premier League partnership, a huge get for the league).
There’s also huge potential for new conferences formed by WPSL clubs in regional hotbeds for lower-league soccer. The league has 11 clubs in Southern California, 8 in Florida, and features clubs that could easily field men sides like Decatur FC and Georgia Impact in the metro-Atlanta area. That area overall constantly has amateur clubs pop up every year, and the league could take advantage.
No matter how The League for Clubs continues to form, current WPSL clubs will play a major role.
Find Struggling NISA Nation Clubs a Home
NISA Nation, just like their pro counterpart, has fallen apart. After having partnerships with many regional leagues across the country, including the EPSL, the league has lost nearly all of their clubs. Now, only 6 remain in California, 7 remain in Nevada/Arizona/Utah, and 5 remain in Tennessee/Kentucky. These clubs include semi-big names such as Temecula FC, Capo FC, and Paul Depay FC.
If we’re being frank, while NISA Pro may come back, their amateur side will be extremely hard to rebuild. The League for Clubs can offer the financially stable clubs a place to become relevant again, especially in California.
NPSL Top Division Merger
In December of 2024, The League for Clubs presented the NPSL Board with an offer to fold their clubs under the new league; in other words, they offered to merge. Whether it was an attempt of a publicity stunt or genuine (hard to tell with the conflict between league leadership), it’s a genuine path the NPSL may consider in the future.
The league has lost over 100 clubs in the last 5 years, but the NPSL still has Tier 1 status as granted by the USASA. Their major fanbases would help build the top tier of a league hoping for promotion and relegation. The possible growth in the Northeast, the Southeast, and California would be monumental, and combining the leagues would nearly create the united semi-professional system fans have been calling for in the United States.
What’s more realistic is that TLfC keeps stealing defecting clubs from the NPSL until the league eventually gives out (as the official comment from the NPSL to Beyond the 90 on the merger offer was “no comment”), but one way or another, the two leagues will be involved in some way building the top level of amateur soccer in the nation.
What Won’t Happen: APSL/EPSL Partnership
This just needs to be stated so that there doesn’t seem to be a glaring omission in the article: The League for Clubs is very unlikely to partner with the American Premier Soccer League. Formerly just the Eastern Premier Soccer League, the amateur league (which is focused on more adult teams than summer clubs formed by college prospects) has cheaper fees than TLfC and is expanding across the country, looking to partner with state leagues. Their own national expansion efforts will not align with TLfC and no regional partnership similar to the GCPL or MWPL deals will happen.
So, where does UPSL figure in this conversation? I don’t know of any UPSL clubs in my area (West Florida) but I think there are quite a few elsewhere in the state….
This is one of those discussions that I truly love about lower-division soccer. You touch on it the end of the article, but for the most part, there are two major silos here: summer leagues, and year-round (or Spring/Fall, whatever we want to call them) leagues.
From a player development standpoint, most of the focus is on Summer leagues, rightly so. Pro/rel can and will matter there for properly differentiating the quality of competition: the 'best' players should be looking to the 'best' leagues and clubs for development. The fly in the ointment is USL2 (and USLW). There's not going to be a summer league club that can truly be promoted up into the professional pyramid.
By contrast, UPSL and APSL could theoretically have a structure that would be more in line with a full-blown pyramid. Simply because of calendar. But the level of competition is generally not nearly as high.