Building The Pyramid

Last week, we verged outside of soccer. Little has changed (no matter what you might have heard for a day or two from the news media) so I'll encourage you to read that entry and do what you can to help.

But there's big soccer news to chew on this week, thank to the USL choosing Tuesday to drop the latest development in its, well...development. Remember, USL announced its plan to launch a Division 1 league and then promotion/relegation between its planned three-tiered system back in February of 2025. Since then, we've gotten a few nuggets of information but little more. The basic idea of a first division league and promotion and relegation emerged from USL HQ in Tampa as just that via press release: A basic idea.

Tuesday's announcement provides some of imagined structure and establishes firm dates for elements of USL's plan.

In retrospect, we probably could have predicted a USL swing at a first division (or at least a new division at the top of the USL structure) back in 2018 when CEO Alex Papadakis announced the rebranding of USL Pro to "USL Championship" and a second league, playing as a third division, launched as "USL League One".

My thoughts on branding are no different now as they were then: I'm not a big fan of naming American leagues after English ones. It's likely not all that important in the big picture, but a little originality would have been nice.

I just find myself pre-annoyed at having to explain to the soccer uninitiated how something called the "USL Championship" is actually a second division. It's a me problem.

As for details, the only ones of substance involve the general makeup of the tiers.

USL Premier will be a national league with 20 teams (eventually, more on this in a second) in a single table. The Championship will also be a 20-team competition with a single-table format. League One will be a national league with a "regional format". Slightly more info about USL's three-tiered pyramid

Let's parse this is bit because while I don't think USL is being intentionally vague, there are some soft edges on this info.

First, though the target is 20 teams "long-term" for USL Premier, the release gives no date by which USL wants to reach that target, nor a firm number for the launch of the league in 2028. USSF's pro league standards (cue ominous music) require a first division league to have at least 12 teams in year one and 14 by year three.

It's not in the release, but SBJ reports Paul McDonough outlined a 14-team plan for the first season. McDonough also told Paul Tenorio at The Athletic that the build-out of this plan is "five to seven years". The word "runway" was used.

“We’re trying to look out the next five to seven years, toward building a three-tiered integrated system linked together by promotion and relegation,” USL president Paul McDonough said. “We want to try to build towards this structure over the next five to seven years, and then we have enough runway to see how the country evolves, what the ecosystem is like, and we’ll evaluate as we go.”

USL leaves us to guess as the identities of clubs for year one and says it is currently reviewing applications from clubs interested in USL Premier membership.

The list of club's that have publicly confirmed their first division applications is short: Louisville City, Pittsburgh Riverhounds (in conjunction with a stadium expansion plan), and North Carolina FC (while also announcing the club won't play again until the first division comes online).

We can reason out a handful of other clubs that will likely be D1 in 2028, including a few building new stadiums: Sacramento Republic, Detroit City, and Miami FC (who has a plan to build a stadium in Homestead as part of a "sports complex"—Manu Ginobli is involved, apparently).

There are a million questions surrounding just the first division portion of the plan. We'll be trying to unpack all of them on Morning Kickaround, so make sure you're subscribed. We covered the big news on Wednesday and will likely have talked to John Morrissey about it on Friday's show by the time you read this.

Whether the Championship will have 20 teams at launch isn't clear, nor which teams will fill up the second division of the structure. I'm not going to bother with wild speculation about playoffs (for the championship or for promotion), though The Athletic story does say (without directly quoting anyone) that the plan is two up, two down to start with a three up, three down future when USL Premier is fully populated.

Most of the attention wil be on the first division and the plan for pro/rel between USL Premier and the USL Championship, at least initially. It easy to see why.

For me, though, the real intrique is at the bottom of the USL pyramid. As outlined, USL wants a big, national third division that puts clubs in close geographical proxmity to one another. That plan will not only encourage rivalry (as mentioned in graphic above) but help limit travel costs for clubs that won't be operating on big budgets. For me, this whole thing only reaches its potential if USL can foster a vibrant, stable third division with potential dozens of clubs spread across communities all over the country.

It's an admirable goal with huge business implications and if you've been paying attention at all, you'll know that Justin Papadakis have been popping up in medium-sized towns all over the map for months pitching the idea of pro soccer.

We can get carried away pretty easily imagining a United States thick with pro soccer teams from sea to shining sea. I do on occasion and I certainly want all of this to work. The USL is nothing if not ambitious and after forty years of MLS growth (mostly of the slow and steady kind) and minor league soccer struggling to find its footing, the new approach is both refreshing and intoxicating.

But I've already heard some distressing stories during this new rush to expansion about clubs whose launches have hit serious snags. Without naming names, one club has already had its inaugural season pushed back and its franchise agreement altered because the owner the local founders and league recruited went missing for months. We won't throw the baby out with the bathwater and presume that such a situation is indicative of wider problems with the USL's plan, but that setback does serve as a reminder that nothing comes easy in American soccer.

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Until next week.