The USL is set for a milestone vote on the adoption of a promotion and relegation system in its lower-division men’s soccer structure, sources briefed on the plans tell The Athletic. The sources, who were granted anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the vote before it takes place, are optimistic the vote will be passed, but it is not considered a certainty.
Owners will vote on whether to proceed toward the new competitive structure at the USL’s board of governors meetings, set to take place Aug. 9-10 in Colorado Springs, Colo. If enacted, the USL would be the first open professional league system in modern U.S. soccer history.
The vote will not be on a specific and finalized framework for promotion and relegation, the sources said. Rather, the topic up for a vote will confirm whether ownership at the leagues’ clubs has enough collective interest to merit further work toward implementing an open system among the USL’s professional competitions.
A USL spokesperson declined to comment when reached by The Athletic.
The upcoming vote culminates work that publicly began in earnest at the USL’s 2021 mid-year meetings, when the organization formally proposed working toward incorporating promotion and relegation between its second-division Championship and third-division League One.
Honestly, the Prem seems like a boring way to do sports to me. You play 38 games and then Man City wins it. The enforced parity of American leagues means you can’t have a story like Leicesters, because all of the teams are roughly equal quality, so it’s not a huge surprise when any team wins it all. You come into every season believing your club has a real chance.
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It’s awesome that you support a club that has zero chance to win the league. Good on you, for real. You’re out there giving your energy and spirit to them with no expectations, which is great.
However, this is the difference between 5 teams always winning it every single year with 15 other teams possibly having a snowball’s chance in hell of winning it once every 50 years and 60 teams hoping they can crack into that 15 every few years, vs 20 teams that have a decent shot to win every year, but the 60 teams in lower leagues have literally zero chance of ever winning it. Pro/rel is more exciting if you are a fan of a lower league team, but it more firmly cements the top 5; while a closed league is more exciting for fans of teams in that league or fans of the sport in general.
It’s a different philosophy on sports. We get to have the excitement of our teams having a chance to actually win the league. You get to have the excitement of your teams staying in the league or moving up to a higher league, plus the occasional European trophy.