When Major League Soccer commissioner Don Garber was asked about promotion and relegation as a future part of American professional soccer, his response was, “Not in our lifetime.” At the risk of potentially condemning this man to death, it is time to cast aside his big time American sports mentality in favor of the world proven system of growing the sport up from the grassroots level.
MLS will survive longer and with more stability than its predecessor, the North American Soccer League, because of its near socialist business model of league ownership and control of individual franchises. But not even David Beckham, even followed by Zidane and Ronaldo, can increase attendance or viewership by more than an insignificant percentage. Unless MLS helps to create fanatical followings in small towns across America, it will continue to just squeak by as a marginal professional sport like hockey or arena football.
The only way to truly capture the imagination of those small market fans is to keep their eyes on the prize - promotion to the next level and potentially all the way to MLS. Franchises must be started and nurtured in areas without other professional or big time college sports. There must be investment in academies to develop local players for club and potentially country. Anyone who has traveled to a small, working class town in England has witnessed the fanatical devotion the population has to its lower division football club.
The major argument that Garber and his ilk put forth against promotion/relegation is that big investors will not want to take the risk of owning a club that may end up in a lower division. Though around the world investors understand the risky nature of the beast, they have ways of hedging their bets via insurance and player liquidation. MLS could easily create a league funded insurance program to mitigate potential losses for relegated clubs, and successful models of how to do this exist in virtually every country on the planet.
In fact, there would probably be greater investment in soccer if the current system were to change. With more opportunities at at much less cost, owners who are confident in their ability to succeed will embrace the challenge of building teams from the ground up. And with a little American capitalist know-how, they'll even turn a profit on the way.
Perhaps Garber’s lack of willingness to even consider promotion/relegation is because he hasn’t been presented with a good plan yet. Well if that’s the case, let Soccer Yanks take a crack at drafting the blueprint:
During the first two seasons, there would be promotion only. One team would come up from the top of the United Soccer Leagues each year, and another club would be added to MLS as a new franchise, bringing the total number of top division teams then to 16.
The following season would be the first to feature relegation, requiring a single 16 team table with the worst team swapping places with the USL champions. For every season thereafter, there would be two teams relegated from MLS while the USL would promote its regular season champ and the winner of a playoff between teams number two through five.
Since America is a big country, the lower divisions of the USL must be regionalized to keep travel costs down, with national playoffs to select clubs for promotion.
Think of the buzz that this type of approach would create in the American soccer community and beyond. The national media would report on it extensively. There would be much whimsical talk amongst national sports pundits of applying the system to all American sports, thus weeding out weak/joke franchises. All that’s required to make it happen is a little research and imagination.
When the modern game of soccer was developed in England in the 19th century, it was grown in the northern, working class towns. Eventually it made its way to the big stage of London and other metropolitan areas. MLS and its leadership are demonstrating arrogance and little foresight in their unwillingness to even consider a system that works almost everywhere else in the world. Despite their apparent pigheadedness, Soccer Yanks want to see promotion and relegation “within our lifetime” and sooner rather than later.
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