Category: Sidewinder Insider

By Scott Adamson
Adamsonmedia.com

No. 1 Wake Forest, which finished as national runners-up last season, will enter the 2017 NCAA Men’s Soccer Tournament as the top seed.

The field of 48 was announced earlier today.

The Demon Deacons won the ACC regular season and tournament crowns, while the league tied its own NCAA record with nine teams in the field.

Joining Wake are North Carolina, Louisville, Duke, Clemson, Virginia, Notre Dame, Virginia Tech and North Carolina State.

Champions of 24 conferences are automatic qualifiers and 24 at-large teams comprise the field. The top 16 teams were seeded and receive first round byes.

Those schools are, listed from 1-16, Wake Forest, Indiana, North Carolina, Louisville, Akron, Duke, Michigan State, Clemson, two-time defending national champion Stanford, Western Michigan, Virginia, Notre Dame, Michigan, Georgetown, Dartmouth and VCU.

All first-round games will be played this Thursday on campus sites and second-round games are set for Sunday.

The third round is Nov. 25- 26; the quarterfinals Dec. 1- 2; and the Men’s College Cup Dec. 8- 10 at Talen Energy Stadium in Philadelphia.

NCAA Men’s Soccer Tourney Bracket

Deltas claim NASL title

The North American Soccer League has a new champion.

Will it be its last?

On Sunday at Kezar Stadium, the San Francisco Deltas topped the New York Cosmos 2017 to win the 2017 Soccer Bowl.

And while 9,691 fans showed up to celebrate the expansion team’s victory, there are some dark clouds hovering over the league and the champs.

The NASL has been denied second division status by the United States Soccer Federation, and unless that ruling is overturned by an appeals court the league could fold.

As for the Deltas, the club is drowning in red ink and could also go out of business, regardless of the fate of the NASL itself.

For 90 minutes however, none of that mattered.

Tommy Heinemann and Devon Sandoval each scored goals for the victors while Romuald Peiser recorded the clean sheet.

It marked the Cosmos’ first loss in a modern NASL title game. New York won the Soccer Bowl in 2013, 2015 and 2016.

USL title game tonight

Louisville FC and Swope Park Rangers will meet at 9 p.m. tonight in the United Soccer League Cup final.

Swope Park (Kansas City) enters the fray with an 18-8-9 record while Louisville City is 20-6-9.

The USL featured 30 franchises in 2017 and has a working relationship with Major League Soccer.

 

Where were you on June 15, 1975?

If you’re in your mid-50s – and a sports fan – maybe you tuned into CBS for a rare telecast of the North American Soccer League.

That was the day the New York Cosmos took on the Dallas Tornado at Downing Stadium, a match that saw Pele make his American soccer debut.

After signing a three-year contract worth nearly $3 million, the magic man of world football was the highest paid athlete on the planet, and he came to the United States to make soccer not just a big deal here, but the real deal.

I was transfixed.

Until that day I was a fan of the Tampa Bay Rowdies, but Pele turned me.

It wasn’t long before I had a Pele poster on my wall and snatched up every copy of Soccer America I could find so I could read up on his exploits.

And even after he retired, soccer greats such as Giorgio Chinaglia, Franz Beckenbauer, Carlos Albert and Hubert Birkenmeier cemented my Cosmos fandom. As a teenager, the New York Cosmos was my favorite professional sports team, period.

So, it was quite a gut punch when the NASL “suspended operations” on March 28, 1985.

It was bad enough that top-notch soccer seemed finished in the United States, but the Cosmos were gone.

Within a week of the league’s demise, I had ripped the Pele poster (which had been joined by posters of Chinaglia and American-born soccer star Kyle Rote Jr.) off the wall. At that point, looking at them made me both mad and sad.

Now, jump 32 years into the future, and I wonder if I’ll have to bid the Cosmos farewell one more time.

The current NASL – the one that just competed its 2017 season on Sunday with the San Francisco Deltas blanking the Cosmos 2-0 in the Soccer Bowl, may not return. And if it’s dead, one has to assume the Cosmos name will finally be put to rest once and for all.

The modern NASL has nothing to do with the original NASL, of course. For a while, the Cosmos of the 1970s were one of the greatest soccer clubs in the world.

The “new” North American Soccer League has never been more than second division, and might not have even been on my radar if not for the Cosmos.

The name had been purchased by former Tottenham Hotspur official Paul Kemsley, and he was looking at the possibility of reviving the Cosmos as a Major League Soccer franchise.

He eventually sold his interest in the club and it was reborn in the NASL, although team officials as late as 2013 said the idea was still to somehow find a path MLS.

That didn’t happen, though, and now that New York has the Red Bulls and NYCFC, it probably never will.

But no matter … I still root for the Cosmos, and they remain my favorite domestic team.

But will they ever play again?

Will the NASL ever play again?

After being denied second division status by the United States Soccer Federation, the league sued in hopes to prove the USSF, MLS and the United Soccer League (another second division circuit) had colluded and, therefore, violated federal antitrust laws. However, NASL’s petition for a preliminary injunction was denied, and if it loses an appeal (set for the week of Dec. 11), it could be the death knell.

None of the stakeholders in the league have any desire to play at the third division level, and that might be the only realistic option.

I’d love to see the NASL become a “renegade” league if it can’t get relief from the courts; with no promotion/relegation system, if it spent enough money on players it could claim major league status.

But that would be a financial war it couldn’t win.

If the ruling stands, MLS, USL (and USL Division III, which is coming in 2019) will have effectively cornered the market on American soccer.

Hey, you never know how a judge is going to rule, but I’m going to go ahead and get ready to say goodbye to the Cosmos for the second – and probably last – time.

 

 

By Scott Adamson
Adamsonmedia.com

Major League Soccer is top dog when it comes to the hierarchy of the sport in North America, but the United Soccer League has grown into a worthy member of the pack.

The USL, which serves as pro soccer’s primary second division in the United States and Canada, has doubled in size since 2014 and is adding three new teams (Nashville, Fresno and Las Vegas) in 2018.

Birmingham and Austin are set to join in 2019.

Once those expansion clubs are in the fold, the USL will feature 35 teams, and currently 22 USL squads have direct affiliations with MLS. All but one MLS franchise (Minnesota United FC) has a “feeder club” in the United Soccer League.

“We work with MLS and their clubs to evaluate their affiliation models to see what makes sense for the USL and what makes sense for MLS, and it’s not a one size fits all situation,” USL president Jake Edwards said during a conference call earlier today. “I think right now after a few years, on an annual basis they have to evaluate from a business point of view and technical point of view how those partnerships work.”

Farm club status notwithstanding, the USL had its most successful season this year.

“The 2017 season had been incredibly successful – not just for the league, but for all of our clubs,” Edwards said. “We surpassed 2 million fans in total attendance, setting a record for a second division league in North America.”

USL attendance in 2017 averaged 5,700 fans per game, a 23 percent increase over 2016. And several teams put up crowd numbers that would make an MLS franchise proud.

“Since 2011, total league attendance has grown at an annual rate of 36 percent,” Edwards said. “This season nine of the top 10-attended professional soccer markets outside of MLS were, in fact, from the USL. Of those, seven USL clubs drew more than 100,000 fans to their games this season.”

FC Cincinnati averaged 21,199 fans per match as the city continues to make a strong push to gain entry into MLS, while Sacramento Republic saw an average of 11,569 fans click the turnstiles for home matches.

Seven other teams averaged more than 5,000 fans per match.

In all, per game averages showed a marked increase over the 2016 average of 3,439.

“This significant increase is the result of several factors,” Edwards said. “It certainly includes the improved quality of play on the field, increased exposure we’ve received through USL Productions and new media partnerships, and a significant investment made by our first-class ownership through infrastructure and stadiums, and the fan experience.”

Edwards says that more than half of the league’s teams play in soccer-specific stadiums, with a league goal of having all of its franchises housed in stadiums designed primarily for soccer by 2020.

The USL was created as USL Pro in 2011, and formerly featured first and second divisions under the umbrella of United Soccer Leagues. A merger with the MLS Reserve League in 2013 led to one unified second division league.

“We’ll continue to attract top quality players for an even more competitive season (going forward),” Edwards said. “Our overall goal is to be one of the top Division 2 professional soccer leagues in the world.”

The 2017 USL Cup championship will be played Monday at 9 p.m. when Louisville City FC hosts Swope Park (Kansas City) Rangers.

ESPNU will televise the match.