The Present & Future of Promotion and Relegation
There was news out of Mexico last week, covered smartly by Felipe Cardenas of The Athletic, that Mexican futbol is this close to closing the door on promotion and relegation permanently.
Here's the plan in graphic form courtesy of Jon Arnold on Bluesky:
It seems the owners of the currently situated top division Liga MX clubs aren't keen on pro/rel for...reasons.
“Our position is that we consider that league a very important development league,” said Mikel Arriola, FMF’s commissioner and the previous president of Liga MX and Liga Expansión. “We have under-23 players there, and two (Liga MX) affiliate teams in Guadalajara and Cruz Azul. We’re going to keep investing in the league, and we’re also going to keep promoting the teams.”
Two things can be true at once: killing promotion and relegation is a refutation of the history of Mexican futbol and a crime against the clubs in Liga Expansión capable of making the jump to top division soccer AND the possibility of relegation from top division Mexican soccer is a drag on the present and future business propositions of Liga MX.
Arriola is carrying the water for Liga MX owners by relegating Liga Expansión to "development league" status while simultaneously talking up its importance. These are ostensibly positive words that place any club not already in Liga MX behind in a walled garden where they're meant to do the "important" work of developing players.
How convenient.
On one side we have what a lot of soccer fans, who for the purposes of this argument I'll call traditionalists, see as an ethical question: promotion and relegation (sometimes called "sporting merit" in what I think is a mild bastardization of that phrase) is moral imperative and necessary for any league system to rate as legitimate.
These people live in the comments of any discussion on American soccer, ready to pounce if there's even a hint of any opening to reference the lack of movement between divisions in the American game. Why they spend so much time stalking YouTube and TikTok to declare their disgust rather than simply not do that and pay attention to competitions where pro/rel exists, I can't say; what I can say is that throwing the baby out with the bathwater over a unique system that developed as much out of chaos and infighting as it did out of a desire to live up to standards of fair play never made much sense to me.
But we'll come back to that. I'd be remiss if I didn't acknowledge that not all admirers of promotion and relegation are keyboard jockeys.
Some are worse.
On the other side is the business of soccer in the time of a digitally connected world and late-stage capitalism. In this time, the idea that a soccer league—particularly one located on the other side of the world from richer and more famous competitions of Europe, but nevertheless operating in the long shadows cast by those leagues—would choose to create jeopardy for its clubs and undermine stability is naive.
What's at issue here is how much is owed to the idea of "sporting merit" amidst the mad scramble for eyeballs-cum-dinero and insatiable quest for "growth". I think the answer to that question depends on a number factors, with the strength of the culture around pro/rel being the most important.
As Felipe writes, there is an uproar over the opportunistic effort to end pro/rel in Mexico because of 100 years of history. Even if Mexico soccer has often been messy and chaotic, the game is the national sport of the country and the idea that clubs representing communities from across Mexico should be given the chance to win their way into the upper echelons of the game there is embedded in the culture.
That makes it extremely difficult for the moves Liga MX is making look like anything other than a selling out of tradition to benefit commercial gain.
I'm sympathetic to the idea that tradition matters when it comes to questions like pro/rel's place in organizing the game. Mexico dumping pro/rel feels extremely wrong, even if I can understand why the owners of teams currently in the top division think relegation needs to disappear. Of course they're protecting their investment, but if that investment originated when the possibility of relegation loomed over Mexican clubs, they shouldn't be trying to worm their way out of that risk now.
Except, just like MLS, Liga MX dreams of stability and the kind of growth that can both ensure its dominant place in North American soccer (read: stay ahead of MLS) and allow it to challenge top European leagues in all the ways that matter. Ego and avarice warp the guardrails of tradition and when wearing the masks of "progress" and "growth" serve as easy excuses for dumping the past down the drain.
Although the pushback against Gianni Infantino's attempt to sell off the World Cup and other FIFA properties hit a brick wall in the form of Uefa (check out this story: Uefa plans to make criminal claims against Gianni in Switzerland), the World Cup proved that those in charge can push fans a long way before the backlash is enough to cause them problems. If Mexican fans aren't willing to truly walk away from Liga MX over the issue of promotion and relegation, it's difficult to imagine any other result than a closed-off first division.
It should be noted that there is a legal challenge to Liga MX's plan.
MLS, of course, doesn't have to worry about tradition when it comes to pro/rel. The only way the practice is coming to the American top flight is if the league's owner do a truly radical thing that cuts against any wise business thinking. The Court of Arbitration for Sport decided in 2020 that FIFA's mandate of pro/rel doesn't apply in the US because the system has never existed here.
You can hate it, but this is exactly right from incoming MLS commissioner Larry Berg:
“I can understand the appeal for the fans, (but) I don’t think it’s a great way to build a league. I don’t think it’s a way to get stadiums built, get training facilities built, and to have owners invest in rosters and all the other things you need to do,” Berg said.
Again, I don't expect that will read as anything but a thin excuse for the crowd that sees pro/rel as foundational for operating a legitimate professional soccer league. If you don't have pro/rel, you shouldn't have a league, I guess.
But MLS is here and because it is very much like Liga MX in its aspirations. I'm not always sold on the idea that MLS should be aiming for the global prominence, but if the ethos is "growth" than the only way to justify instituting pro/rel is if it serves those ends. Considering the investment the league has received over the last 20 years especially, it's a very hard sell to say MLS needs pro/rel.
Last week I wrote that MLS is addicted to change. That only goes so far and while change is in and of itself a part of the league's DNA, so is the foundational mission of increasing its commercial reach. Unless someone can convince the 30 MLS owners that instituting pro/rel—which would likely necessitate a dramatic change to its business structure—would undeniably spur growth and create little to no risk, it's just not going to happen.
But maybe? The poster in question deleted the post, but one of the longstanding American soccer boosters I follow on Bluesky suggested that MLS could own the American soccer landscape and explode their business if they were smart enough to create a wholly contained pro/rel structure across their clubs.
If there's a universe where that's happening, I'd love to visit.
I can't wrap this up without address the USL, the American soccer concern that is planning for promotion and relegation. What is a ridiculous business proposition for MLS is the opposite for USL exactly because that business is not the market leader for domestic soccer in the United States. Thanks to years of building out two professional divisions, USL now has the depth of (relatively) stable clubs necessary to do the contained pyramid MLS won't.
Things got very quiet on the USL pro/rel (and first division) front over the summer, but USL president Paul McDonough appeard on Unfiltered Soccer with Landon Donovan and Tim Howard just yesterday to provide something of an update.
I'm still parsing the interview, but rest assured we'll be talking about what Paul told LD and Tim on the next edition of Morning Kickaround, set for tomorrow at 9:30 AM on our YouTube channel.
Speaking of other things I do, tonight's episode of The Best Soccer Show is set for 9PM ET. I'll be joined by Jeremiah Oshan of Sounder At Heat to talk about Leagues Cup, MLS player movement, and specific Seattle Sounders things with one of my favorite people in American soccer media. Be there.
If you miss the live version, the show will be out for podcast listening early tomorrow morning. Get it on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you prefer to get your podcasts.
