Conner Cappelletti

Expanding on this, USL’s game plan with all of this seems very murky to me. So you want to brand yourself as the alternative to MLS. You want to brand that you aren’t this whacky brand with all these weird rules that doesn’t even follow pro/rel and all that? Fair criticisms of MLS. Yet, you haven’t shown that you are a viable path for players in succeeding and moving onto better leagues where they then go onto big success there. That last part is key. There’s talent in USL, but part of being a good league is being able to develop players to a point where they can succeed at that next stop. If they just flounder, did you adequately prepare them? USL holds up players like Jonathan Gomez and Josh Wynder as the success stories, and unfortunately I’m still waiting for the big success with them. Is USL generating a ton of revenue? Questionable? Do a lot of people watch their games? Do they have attendance rivaling MLS? All these answers are no. If you want to market yourself as this league that breaks the mold of what MLS is, do that! Please play young players. A very quick ballpark gets me to 11 of 24 USL Championship clubs that didn’t give 150 minutes this season to a teenage American player. That’s nearly half the clubs! Is it because teams just need to win so bad and can’t afford to play younger players? I’m afraid to tell you they are just like MLS and have no promotion and relegation. So then USL must have such a strong veteran group of players that are the face of the league? If that’s the marketing strategy, that USL is a league for all the veteran rejects of MLS and it’s a place for them to barely make minimum wage instead of retiring, go for it. You are just playing right into MLS’s hands. There’s no constituency for that group, I’m afraid to tell you. My puzzlement at USL right now applies for both Championship and League One, but I see more of a strategy and direction with Championship. It shouldn’t be stained with being totally connected to League One. League One is probably a league that could very well collapse right now and it wouldn’t tangibly matter. It’s worse than MLS Next Pro at this point. It might be worse than high level college soccer. It’s semi pro soccer. Probably semi pro too in the sense that I suspect the players there work second jobs to make ends meet. There’s no one in that league with any future in the sport other than the four or five younger players who get minutes in the league. Just a total dinosaur brand with no constituency. I excoriated USL here, but this is after a season of frustration of tolerating this brand that isn’t doing well. I would prefer to just see you improve your product and give more of a platform to young players. No one deserving is going to lose out if an extra two teenagers per club get regular minutes. What it would do is bring more of a constituency to your brand, bring more players into it with real upward mobility and profit potential for your clubs and players you could actually market as success stories. You may attract more players to your league that way. Currently, the only young American players who play in USL Championship (no good young player chooses L1 if they have a choice) are the ones that had bad situations with their MLS clubs. Would be nice to see some of the USL Championship clubs start giving their own academy products more of a chance too! Please improve your product. You are stagnating and arguably going backwards. This season was really poor for your youth product after an arguably bad season the one prior. It’s very depressing as someone who’d like to see USL provide a real platform for young players to succeed. We are getting close to MLS earning a monopoly ON MERIT, and I say that as someone with plenty of criticisms of MLS.