I care about the USL.

I want every­one to read this and learn on where I stand when it comes to the lower lev­els of US Soc­cer. Yes I am a MetroStars/Red Bull NY sup­porter. I love my club and I sup­port them to the hilt in every sin­gle match they per­form in either the MLS Reg­u­lar Sea­son & play­offs, US Open Cup and their first time in the CONCACAF Cham­pi­ons League. But this doesn’t mean I refuse to watch the clubs that are below the first divi­sion league of US Soccer.

Besides the Men’s & Women’s teams at Ramapo Col­lege in the New Jer­sey Ath­letic Con­fer­ence of NCAA Divi­sion III I have seen sev­eral matches in the lower lev­els of US Soc­cer. When I got back into the sport after the 1994 World Cup all I ever heard was MLS this & MLS that, never think­ing there was a lower level until I saw adver­tised in the local North­ern New Jer­sey Paper of the New Jer­sey Impe­ri­als play­ing at Far­leigh Dick­in­son University’s Soc­cer field at the Hackensack/Teaneck cam­pus (There was the Ruther­ford cam­pus and still have the Madi­son, NJ cam­pus). This was in 1996 when MLS made their debut and saw two play­ers from the Met­ros on loan. Chris DaSilva & keeper Zach Thorn­ton. It was at least a good six to seven block walk from my par­ents house to the field. I didn’t care about the qual­ity of the PDL league then because all I wanted to see was some good soccer.

I was look­ing for­ward to see­ing them play again in 1997, but sadly they were gone. They didn’t end their oper­a­tions at the time,  just moved to a new facil­ity that I didn’t know where it was. But I also heard about the Long Island Rough Rid­ers from a friend and saw a match or two when I vis­ited him and also cheered them on, even though I was still sup­port­ing the Met­roStars back then.

Once I started to learn about the lower lev­els of US Soc­cer which at the time was called the United Sys­tems of Inde­pen­dent Soc­cer Leagues (U.S.I.S.L.) I tried to look around on my cable chan­nels to see if they were also tele­vised, but unfor­tu­nately no. But as the years went on and the tech­nol­ogy got bet­ter not only did I fol­low my own club closer, but the USL sides as well. My thirst for knowl­edge of the United Soc­cer Leagues grew & grew just like the MLS. I wanted to fol­low every­thing that is affil­i­ated with US Soc­cer, not just one area.

When I heard about the FA Cup and what it stood for I was grate­ful to see that US Soc­cer has the same type of tour­na­ment here which was the Lamar Hunt US Open Cup. Ever since I found out about it I got excited when an A-League side took out an MLS club. Or a D3 Pro side took out an A-League club. Yes there have been times when either the Charleston Bat­tery, the Rochester Rhi­nos or recently last year Crys­tal Palace Bal­ti­more took out my club in US Open Cup play. I was happy & sad. Sad because my club lost to a lower divi­sion side, but happy because this is why you have an FA Cup and to see a side like Crys­tal Palace Bal­ti­more have a pos­i­tive story writ­ten. Remem­ber when the Rochester Rhi­nos won the 1999 US Open Cup that was broad­cast by ESPN. I was excited to see them hoist the Thomas R. Dewar tro­phy & thought this would be a great thing to see again, but we all know what hap­pened. ESPN said no more. They didn’t want a minor league side beat­ing an MLS side to win the cup.

I watch the USL-1st Divi­sion match of the week on Fox Soc­cer Chan­nel every Fri­day when their sea­son is on. If I can’t watch it live, I’ll tape it or catch the replay. I enjoy the matches and as a novice will root for as many goals scored from both sides. I’ll even watch the free pre­views when it’s US Open Cup sea­son on the USL Live web­site. It doesn’t mat­ter if it’s an MLS match, USL-1st, 2nd or PDL I will watch it because these are our leagues. We all truly care about what goes on and what hap­pens. I know that these clubs have been around longer than MLS, which is why I don’t pre­tend that they don’t exist. Why do you think I wrote about want­ing USL to be apart of Pro/Rel with MLS one day. Because I think clubs like Charleston & Rochester do deserve to have their day in the sun.

But now I have to really talk turkey here. Get down to busi­ness with you guys that sup­port your USL sides. I am hop­ing that the two pro divi­sions of USL are still going to be around. I hon­estly don’t know what’s going on at USL Head­quar­ters in Tampa, Florida with Pres­i­dent Fran­cisco Mar­cos but let me applaud him for find­ing ways to make all the lower lev­els sur­vive for so long. No salary cap, no restric­tions of acquir­ing or player move­ments from club to club, no malarkey what so ever. Run the busi­ness like it should be just like what hap­pens all over the world. But I have to say that I am con­cerned about the num­ber of clubs that have been lost, or rel­e­gated by their own finan­cial limitations.

My reg­u­lar job at the moment out­side of the Cham­pi­ons Soc­cer Radio Net­work and join­ing this web­site is at a Sports News Ser­vice in the NYC/NJ area. I found an ESPN Almanac from the year 2000 which has all the stand­ings and sta­tis­tics from the 1999 sea­son in all sports includ­ing Soc­cer. As we all know the USL-1st Divi­sion was once called the A-League. The final Stand­ings in two con­fer­ences from the 1999 sea­son shocked the heck out of me. At the moment with eleven clubs ( 8 US, 2 Cana­dian, 1 Puerto Rican) to start the 2009 sea­son, ten years ago there were a total of twenty-nine clubs.

Out of those twenty-nine clubs only nine are remain­ing from that list, but it would’ve been ten if the Atlanta Sil­ver­backs didn’t close their oper­a­tions for this season.

Seat­tle Sounders in MLS this year
Charleston, Min­nesota & Rochester are in USL-1st
Pitts­burgh & Rich­mond are in USL-2nd
El Paso, Long Island & the Toronto Lynx are in the PDL.

Now I’m not say­ing the cur­rent sys­tem is flawed & I’m not say­ing that USL should adopt the ways that is mak­ing MLS sur­vive. But to be hon­est I’m ner­vous when you have two pro leagues los­ing tons of clubs from a huge amount reduced to eight or nine & the PDL has over sixty-one sides in four con­fer­ences that are region­ally divided as well as play­ing a shorter sea­son to help the col­lege kids con­tinue with their devel­op­ment before going back to school.

All I can say is this. For the pro sides to con­tinue to sur­vive if they don’t have a cushy deal with local high schools, col­leges and ath­letic fields pay­ing rent, then maybe it’s time to join Charleston, Rochester, Port­land  to have their own sta­di­ums. I also want to thank Brian Quarstad of Inside Min­nesota Soc­cer (www.insidemnsoccer.com) inform­ing me thru e-mail that the Thunder’s sta­dium sit­u­a­tion has improved.

So you can have a novice tell you from left to right that the USL finan­cial sys­tem is bet­ter than what MLS is doing, but if you want some­one to actu­ally research the stuff and give you an hon­est look and report about the lower lev­els of US Soc­cer, I am the one among oth­ers that tru­ely gives a damn. We are all broth­ers under one giant umbrella that is US Club Soccer.

Here is the list of clubs from the 1999 A-League sea­son in both East­ern & West­ern Conferences.