While people on the internet have a million solutions for most of hat ails Americans men’s pro soccer, many if not most suggestions are either impractical or wildly fantastic.
NISA announced Friday night that they will delay the start of their 2024 campaign by two weeks. Moreover their is a more troubling rumor from a credible source that we will dive into below.
The situation with NISA speaks to this, because in my experience the difficulty of either
1- Launching a completely new pro soccer team
2- Pulling amateur teams to pro
are extremely difficult. It’s even more difficult if the teams in scenario two aren’t in an optimum adult-amateur divisional setup to begin with (USL L2 or NPSL).
The Georgia Lions rumor
Dan Creel reports, and I believe based on my information, quite accurately that their are rumors about the Georgia Lions not playing its Open Cup First Round match with Apotheos FC. Remember the Lions are a NISA team announced in December to kick a ball in March and have already moved about 100 miles from DeKalb County up to Dalton, GA before even playing a game.
Unfortunately, the Lions not fulfilling its match would not shock me. The run up to launch a pro club should be in my opinion a MINIMUM of 15 months (with a detailed plan). Having worked for multiple professional clubs as well as a few amateur ones who had the dream (or maybe we should call it the delusion) of going pro, I realize the difficulty in doing this at all.
Ideally any transition period would be 18-21 months, and that would include not only a plan around how to enhance the club’s financial standing but also give time to secure any facility upgrades that would be needed. The club would play a final amateur season (or maybe even two) knowing full well they are making the move to the pro ranks the following year.
NISA rushing clubs to the pro ranks
NISA has had one club failure after another largely because they’ve taken the principle of giving teams time to develop a plan and chucked it in the waste bin as they try hard to maintain an illusion of momentum and growth. The league has repeatedly brought teams up from the amateur ranks with 3-4 months notice maximum in order to make numbers and it’s become a viscous cycle as a result.
Too many teams in NISA have not been given time to develop a real infrastructure or local relevance before being pulled up to the professional ranks. The amount of time and effort it takes to make a proper transition can NEVER be crammed into a single off-season. And in terms of local considerations, I return to a consistent theme of mine which is that many NPSL and USL League 2 clubs are far more built out infrastructure wise and in terms of local relevance and market penetration than any current NISA pro club. That’s a pretty damning indictment as NISA is now entering it’s sixth professional season in some form or another.
NISA has proven to this point to be a good incubator for players of a certain level, to get games and a taste of professional soccer before moving on to other leagues. But from a business and optics standpoint it’s been a mess.
As an aside, I am concerned we might be seeing some of this in the USL Super League as well with one or two clubs rushing to a starting line. Let’s remember that is meant to be a First Division on the women’s side, so could be all the more problematic (though it is not like NWSL hasn’t had its own club failures). But that is a topic for another day.
HOW WOULD PRO/REL FIGURE INTO THIS
I support PRO/REL wholeheartedly …
But am realistic about the need to do other things first.
Again, as someone who has worked for both amateur and lower division professional teams, I can tell you the transition is very difficult and fraught with danger. Things as basic as the sort of insurance a club buys for its players is dramatically different at the professional level than in amateur leagues.
Without solidarity in the system and revenue coming from above, it’s difficult to pull amateur teams up and create a system which is linked in as short period a period of time, as NISA has attempted to do
This is why despite being a PRO/REL advocate I do not think it is the first priority. We need stability within our professional leagues and system in general. There are several other things that have to happen first before we do promotion and relegation.
A system of revenue sharing between all of the divisions in American soccer as well as a plan for solidarity payments & training compensation for player development that is nationwide needs to happen first. Also, every league being on more or less the same calendar. This will give a concrete structure to then attempt Promotion/Relegation either nationally, regionally or within a league system.
If USL as a league system can get to a point where they feel they can achieve this within their structure, more power to them but it’s not something that can happen overnight.
I do believe this is why it has taken USL so long to formulate their P/R plan because they’re trying to stabilize their leagues and provide adequate support and revenue to those clubs before they implement promotion & relegation. The lack of patience from some fans in this regard is understandable but also unrealistic.
Back to NISA…
I have no idea whether NISA makes it long-term or not, but I think that all of these are lessons for them and growing pains. They have made repeated mistakes in terms of what clubs to elevate, what owners to trust and how to operate a league during the course of a season. The lack of stability within the league is mind-blowing as is the inability to provide any sort of meaningful infrastructure or support for its clubs.
But these are mistakes that are all correctable. Whether they learn from them or not is up to them.
And more importantly they speak to why we need to link leagues and create a mechanism for revenue sharing before going forward with PRO/REL. They also speak to the need not only to have better vetting of owners, clubs and facilities but also
Good article.
“But also”, what?
The criticism I have for NISA is that it looks like they've done very little to vet clubs. You would think a couple of phone calls or emails would have revealed the issues with the Lions.