It appears that officials of the A-League and USISL have buried the hatchet and agreed on forming a new Division II pro league.
The deal — brokered by Jack Stone, whose family owns Umbro, a major sponsor of both leagues, and Peter Gooding, the former NSCAA president on leave from his duties at Amherst College to work as a consultant to Umbro — could not come a moment too soon.
Both leagues had hoped the success of MLS would give their clubs a promotional boost, but MLS’s arrival has actually done just the opposite.
After once hoping to achieve Division I status, the A-League is big trouble. Atlanta is a mess (again), New York is hardly any better (331 fans its last game), and the flagship franchises in Seattle and Colorado are struggling at the gate.
Like the A-League, the USISL lost many of its best players to MLS teams during the offseason. The USISL’s player drain continues unabated as MLS coaches, unhappy with the players picked in the MLS drafts, look for alternatives.
But it just isn’t on the field that these leagues have suffered. The money MLS has invested to go into big stadiums and then dress them up only exposes most A-League and USISL facilities for what they are: rinky-dink. Many have artificial turf, narrow fields, football markings or poor concessions and inadequate conveniences.
This isn’t just a problem unique to the A-League and USISL, though. It’s an American soccer problem.
(MLS, for that matter, has its share of narrow fields, it will end the season with artificial turf at Giants Stadium, and it faces the problem of what to do about football markings once the football season starts next month.)
Unless these issues are addressed, even this super-duper Division II league has little chance of long-term success.
by Soccer America Managing Editor Paul Kennedy