It's cold and wet here in the shadow of the nation's capital which means it's December and time is in short supply. Thanks for bearing with me over the last couple of weeks as I stepped away for a vacation and Thanksgiving upended the usual schedule.

Now that we're back, let's catch up. December is going to go by in a flash, but I've got some exciting things starting now that will really ramp up in 2026 that I'm really excited about.

Countdown to Kickoff

One of the things that makes American soccer unique is that because it's perpetually in a buildout phase there's never a moment when there isn't a new club in the process of preparing for its first-ever season.

New clubs pop up occasionally in other places in the soccer world, but no country can match America's insane volume of brand new professional soccer teams. With USL's berserker-style push to expand ahead of a new first division and promotion and relegation, this is a particuarly big moment for the number of clubs in their "loading" phase.

As of right now 21 different new clubs are slate to launch within the next two years. 21! It's worth asking if all of them will hit the field as currently planned, but they all exist in some form and are engaged in the process of building towards their first competitive matches.

After watching the story of Portland Hearts of Pine unfold week-to-week in the excellently produced documentary "Up The Hearts", it occurred to me that this moment provides a fascinating opportunity for a guy like me and a show like Morning Kickaround. In addition to whatever after-the-fact chronicle that might emerge down the road thanks to people like Kurt Graser, a current events production on YouTube and podcast could help provide a peek behind the curtain at the work needed to launch a professional soccer team.

Regular features with people from all over a club's organization to include presidents, marketing directors, ticket sales reps, groundskeeepers, coaches, players, content leads, etc., etc. Fans, too, to get a sense of the connection with the community and the culture that is fomenting around a new team.

It adds a wrinkle that we're not talking about massively resourced MLS clubs with hundreds of millions of dollars in investment. The moment is rich with smaller enterprises trying to lay the foundation for clubs in secondary and tertiary markets that, in most cases, have never had a professional soccer team before.

We're calling it "Countdown to Kickoff". Our first episode featured the New York Cosmos via an interview with club president Erik Stover. You can watch it here:

I want to be clear: Countdown to Kickoff won't just be a series of interviews with club executives and coaches. With buy-in from the clubs, we're pushing to get access to things that don't typically see the light of day. I want to know how the sausage is made and I think a lot of people might feel the same.

Think of it as "show and tell" for a new soccer club. Morning Kickaround is going to serve as the outlet for the new outfits to tell their stories, preferably warts and all.

The Cosmos series is up and running, with episodes in the works that will go beyond the high-level topics we covered with Stover. Expect plenty of visuals and behind-the-scenes elements in future episodes.

We've got two other clubs committed to their own series. I'm superstitous enough that I won't name them until the first episode is out and it's all real, but know that the clubs in question are very different both from the Cosmos and from each other in how they are going about their builds. That extra layer of compare-and-contrast is another reason why I'm so excited about this.

SO. If you're at all interested in the growth of professional soccer in America, the bonkers explosion of USL expansion, or just exactly how a professional soccer team goes from concept to competitor, subscribe to Morning Kickaround. If you could also tell a friend while you're at it, I would really appreciate it.