The United Soccer League is challenging MLS for US supremacy. If the 2026 World Cup is a hit, the USL’s pro-rel gamble may just pay off, says Ed Warner.
Qualifying is well under way for the 2026 World Cup. Four countries have already booked their places to add to the trio of North American hosts. That’s seven down, 41 slots still to fill for this newly bloated tournament.
The US will stage almost 80 per cent of the 104 matches. Will there, though, be the cut-through with the local populace that Fifa craves?
After all, Brazil’s penalty-shoot out triumph at the Pasadena Rose Bowl in the 1994 final was but a fleeting moment in America’s sporting consciousness, with little discernible lasting impact.
Men’s association football (let’s call it soccer just for the purposes of this piece) remains a conundrum. Major League Soccer (MLS) is structured on American sport’s favoured franchised, closed-league model with twin conferences and end-of-season playoffs. All alien to fans in the rest of the world.
Attendances are decent, averaging 23,234 a game in the 2024 regular season, but hardly stellar by US standards. Of greater concern is the quality of play.
Why USL is different to MLS
Even with the import of experienced players from overseas, including the occasional star, soccer aficionados in the States report a gulf between what they see locally and what they watch in European leagues in the early hours every weekend. One contact reports his two soccer-mad sons no longer watching MLS games but bingeing the English Premier League.
All of which makes last month’s announcement by the United Soccer League (USL) rather intriguing. The USL sits below MLS with an inferior standard of play and crowds typically numbering in the single-figure thousands.
Currently structured along standard American lines, the USL has just received approval to introduce a tier one league with equal status to MLS and will adopt promotion and relegation between its three divisions from 2027-28.
Its press release cites the approach of the 2026 World Cup and lays out the rationale. “Fans and stakeholders have been clear – they want something different,” said Paul McDonough, USL president.
“They’re drawn to the intensity of high-stakes competition, where more matches have real consequences – just like we see in European leagues. This shift challenges the status quo and brings a level of excitement and relevance that can elevate the game across the country.”
Promotion and relegation are sacrosanct in men’s football in major European countries. No wonder the USL is drawn to it. However, it heightens financial jeopardy for team owners.
Other sports have struggled to reconcile the sporting integrity that comes with a pyramid or ladder with the commercial reality. Even women’s football in England is contemplating a hiatus to relegation to help facilitate an improvement in its economics.
If the 2026 World Cup really cuts deep into the American consciousness next year, if it changes radically appreciation of soccer in the US; if it creates sufficient willingness to engage with the local game; if there are enough financiers prepared to roll the dice and back teams with wads of dollars and crypto, then the USL’s cultural appropriation of the rest of world soccer’s ladder structure might just make it an upstart winner.
Louisville City currently top the early season standings in the USL Championship Eastern Conference, beating Detroit City FC 2-0 at the weekend in front of a home crowd of 9,004. Watch match highlights here.
You can have fun with the linguistic crossover. LouCity describe themselves as “the Championship’s all-time winningest club.”
Easter glut
As the Premier League reaches the pointy end, so speculation mounts as to just how many of its teams could qualify for Europe next year.
One unlikely combination of results across league and cups would lead to a ridiculous 11 qualifiers. I wouldn’t complain if my team enjoyed a first ever tilt at Uefa competition, but European football truly is in danger of eating itself.
Go again #1
The English cricket season begins again tomorrow, the county game flushed with the success of the auction of the Hundred franchises, if not yet flush with the resultant cash.
As City AM and others have reported, the successful bidders for the two London teams are quibbling over contractual terms. Doubtless differences will be ironed out.
Meantime, a stirring profile in The Guardian of Hampshire’s new young quickie, Sonny Baker, highlights again the absurdity of the Hundred’s structure.
Signed from Somerset, Baker will play for Hampshire in county competition but the Manchester Originals in the Hundred – even though Hampshire co-own the Southern Brave franchise who play at the county’s Utilita Bowl.
Try explaining that to your young kids who you are trying to hook into the game.
Go again #2
It really must be summer soon, as the outdoor athletics season is also about to begin. Michael Johnson’s disruptor Grand Slam Track series makes its debut this weekend in Kingston, Jamaica.
The establishment Diamond League commences in China at the end of the month. Unhelpfully for a sport struggling for global attention, the dates of the second meets of both series clash.
I was asked this week what would mark success for Johnson. My reply, for this first season, was crowds big enough not to appear embarrassing for broadcasters, and living up to the promise to deliver head-to-heads between the world’s leading athletes in the pared-back series of track events Johnson has chosen to showcase.
Tickets in Kingston’s National Stadium are priced between $10 and $100 and the Grand Slam Track website shows they are still available in abundance at the time of writing. You can watch from the UK on TNT Sports and deliver your own verdict on this new enterprise. Track fans should wish it every success.
From Mauger to minor
Last week’s citing of a Mauger in my list of sporting geniuses prompted a glut of messages, some celebrating successful use of Google in unearthing speedway’s Ivan and others reminiscing about watching him in action back in the 70s.
Prize for top memory goes to Paul Edwards who included a photo of himself as an eight-year-old racing with the Kent Youth Grass Track Association in 1973. He tells me his mum once made a laurel wreath won by Ivan Mauger too.
Coe-rrection
My column on the IOC presidential election suggested UK Sport had helped fund Seb Coe’s campaign. UKS has been in touch to say that the election rules precluded any such assistance, and none was asked for by Coe. Very happy to correct my error here.
The IOC regulations state: “No assistance, whether financial, material, or in kind, be it direct or indirect, shall be given to candidates by an IOC member or by any other person or entity.”
Does make me wonder just how much nibbling at the margins of these rules took place across the seven candidates’ campaigns, given the media heat they collectively generated.
Ed Warner is chair of GB Wheelchair Rugby and writes his sport column at sportinc.substack.com