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USL Focus Part III: MLS expansion leaves United Soccer Leagues wary

14 Nov, 2008

By Charles Boehm, Potomac Soccer Wire Sr. Staff Writer
 
Most fans and observers of soccer in the United States know that the game’s history in this country is littered with lamentable letdowns. Abortive leagues, pitiful national teams and poor public perception are common themes of our past, and many such failures began with cynicism and self-interest trumping the good of the game at large.
 
From the narrow mindset of the immigrant enclaves where the game first reached these shores to the inflated egos and towering hubris of the NASL’s New York Cosmos, there are plenty of cautionary tales regarding the importance of a collective approach to soccer’s American progress, just as time and again, unity and collective spirit have been proven qualities of overachieving teams on the field of play.
 
So if “a rising tide lifts all boats,” then why can’t Major League Soccer and the United Soccer Leagues get along?
 
It’s not as if the game’s top two professional associations in North America are blood rivals or sworn enemies. But thanks to the latest round of MLS expansion, more light has been cast on the awkward manner of their parallel growth and the future seems to hold as much potential for competition as cooperation.
 
Five of the seven candidates to become the top-flight league’s next member (Atlanta, Miami, Montreal, Portland and Vancouver) are USL-1 markets. Of those, three are actually USL-1 owner/investors at the moment: the Saputo family in Montreal, Portland’s Paulson family and Greg Kerfoot in Vancouver. (Kerfoot’s bid has drawn particular attention in the mainstream sports media because one of his investment partners is NBA star Steve Nash, whose brother Martin just happens to play in central midfield for the Whitecaps.)
 
MLS interest in USL’s leading markets represents a compliment of sorts for the ‘lower-tier’ league, but it’s a dubious one, given the potential economic consequences.
 
“They have named five out of seven markets for possible expansion that are our markets, three of which are our clubs themselves,” said USL President Francisco Marcos in an interview last week. “Are we flattered by that? Yes. But we can’t eat flattery. Are we happy about it? Absolutely not. Can we do a whole lot about it? Not a lot.”
 
The trend began in a previous round of expansion, when MLS execs selected Seattle as a new entry for 2009. Commissioner Don Garber and his cohorts were no doubt enticed by the deep pockets of Hollywood mogul Joe Roth and Microsoft-bankrolled Vulcan Sports and Entertainmant, but in the end there was also substantial piggy-backing off the groundwork laid by the Sounders, who recently completed their final season in USL-1 ahead of next year’s MLS debut.
 
Even the name was taken, though not without a hefty nudge from the Emerald City’s soccer fans. Desperate to differentiate themselves as a new MLS entity, Roth and his front office had initially floated three totally unrelated monikers in an online ballot before succumbing to popular demand for the Sounders tag. The club has since been given special dispensation to sign a limited number of its USL players for next year, highlighted by star French striker Sebastian Le Toux.
 
For Marcos and his colleagues, the Sounders’ flight to MLS provided a stark wake-up call.
 
“It’s a bittersweet situation. We want the name to carry on. But it was obviously the bell-ringer, if you will, that said to us, OK, we cannot just fold our arms and allow MLS to come to any market – whether it is because we propel the perception of that market or not. We cannot allow that to just happen without any further thoughts on it,” he said. “Seattle was the learning curve for us.”
 
Now USL is contemplating a restructured approach to its own growth, one that is more clear-eyed about the costs and consequences of continued MLS expansion into promising markets.
 
“They are the 800-pound gorilla, so the only thing that we can contemplate doing going forward,” he explained, “is to seriously look at a concept where we say, if MLS comes calling…rest assured, you may leave, but it’s going to cost you something. Certainly if you can pay $40 million [in expansion fees] to MLS, you can pay $42 million or $43 million or they can discount it so you can pay off the indemnity to USL. So that kind of a concept is something we have to seriously think about, because we don’t have a choice.”
 
For instance, USL is considering a foray into the desert Southwest, where population growth and promising demographics have drawn the larger league’s interest, but not its commitment.
 
“[Take] a market we’re talking to at the moment, Phoenix,” noted Marcos. “MLS has been there, done that, it didn’t work out and it didn’t happen for whatever reasons. That doesn’t mean that they won’t come back five years from now, so are you prepared to say that if you get into USL, that if you decide five years from now to go to MLS, that you have to give us compensation?”
 
The situation has only increased the importance of identifying investors and franchisees who are educated about the U.S. game’s unique circumstances, and committed to durable growth over short-term returns.
 
“In the last four years, I think people have realized that soccer is here. It is going somewhere. And incredible people now want to invest in the sport,” said Matt Weibe, senior director of franchise development for USL. “It’s still growing tremendously. It’s just having realistic expectations and a long term vision for the sport. You’re not going to get huge, instant success in year one or year two of a franchise. You really need to have a long term plan and a very committed plan as to what you want to do to establish yourself in a market.”
 
Certainly, Major League Soccer and other observers can contend that in many of the aforementioned cases, passionate soccer fans, interested investors and other favorable conditions pre-date USL’s arrival. But Marcos, who hopes USL will one day be “a significant alternative league to MLS – not necessarily a first division league, but an alternative league,” clearly feels that his franchises have played a major role in creating attractive conditions for MLS.
 
“There’s other things that we’re going to be demanding because we don’t just want to become just simply the feeder, the testers of MLS grounds such as Rochester, which didn’t happen. Montreal, which may happen. Vancouver, which may happen. Portland, which may very well happen,” he noted. “Places that MLS would have never thought about if we weren’t there.”
 
The aforementioned Canadian teams invite further comparison, having been major success stories, not only within USL but on the international stage. Montreal Impact recently qualified for the latter stages of CONCACAF Champions League, knocking off MLS side Toronto FC en route to highlight the surprising gap between resources and results for the northern nation’s top three clubs.
 
As Marcos pointedly posited, “Why is Toronto not better than they are? How come Montreal and Vancouver are obviously better than they are, and yet they paid god knows what for an [MLS] franchise?”
 
Someday, USL would certainly like to stand on similarly equal terms with its more visible counterpart across the board, but the yawning gulf in the leagues’ financial wherewithal makes a level playing field elusive. So the cat-and-mouse game between the leagues will continue, and as expectations grow across all sectors of North American soccer, Marcos and the rest of USL will look to overachieve, raising more awkward questions for MLS in the process.
 
“The bar is raised,” observes Marcos, a keen student of American soccer history if there ever was one. “But now the flagbearer, the standardbearer of the product, day to day, is MLS. Well, they’ve got to figure it out. They’ve got to get a lot better…I’m not being critical at all of MLS. They’re doing what they can, they’ve done a lot. They will have to do a lot more, just as we have to at our level.”

Editor's Note - enjoy all the stories in this series:
Thriving in the shadows: The survival, and success, of the United Soccer Leagues
USL Focus Part I: DC United exes find greener pastures in Vancouver
USL Focus Part II: Season of success cues bullish outlook
USL Focus Part IV: Real Maryland looks to move past growing pains

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Charles Boehm has covered D.C. United and the rest of the Washington-area soccer world for more than four years. A native of Dallas, Texas, Charlie made D.C. his home following a hard-working -- but hardly spectacular -- NCAA Division III college career and subsequent Peace Corps stint in the small, soccer-crazed, island nation of Grenada, where he also coached and played in the Grenadian Premier League (such as it is). He welcomes feedback at cboehm@potomacsoccerwire.com.

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