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Philadelphia Union
Doolsta and Landon Donovan will compete in a single-elimination tournament this Sunday at the Ace Café in Florida.
Bethlehem Steel’s goalkeeper, Tomás Romero, is the USL Championship Player of the Week.
Local
Twelve area teams are in the middle of their quest for the U.S. Youth Soccer National Championship.
MLS
Austin FC named its first head coach, Josh Wolff, former USMNT striker and current assistant.
The L.A. Times thinks the Revolution is the hottest team in MLS right now.
Minnesota United signed French fullback Wilfried Moimbé.
Inter Miami released a video regarding their future stadium ahead of the 2020 season.
In Leagues Cup action, Chicago fell to Cruz Azul, 2-0, and LA Galaxy beat Club Tijuana in penalties, 2-2 (3-1).
NWSL
The Inquirer‘s Jonathan Tannenwald asks, “Can the USWNT’s World Cup title push the NWSL to a long-awaited breakthrough?”
Two matches tonight, Sky Blue vs. Washington Spirit and Portland Thorns vs. Houston Dash.
U.S. Soccer
Hope Solo evidently thinks the USWNT players will cave at the mediation table without her.
Around the globe
Real Madrid and Arsenal played an eventful friendly down in Maryland last night. Final score was 2-2.
Midfielder Xavi Simons is leaving Barcelona for PSG.
A Twitter user who claimed to be an anonymous Championship footballer intending to come out as gay has appeared to reverse his decision after admitting he is “not strong enough to do this”.
All this talk about Inter Miami and Austin FC. How many teams is this league gonna take? I know I’m probably ranting about nothing here, but in this country everything seems to be spoiled, even soccer teams. Why can’t we have a 20 team league with relegation? Bad teams get punished for being bad teams elsewhere. Whereas here, failure is accepted, even encouraged in some sports. We’re all enjoying the Sixers now, but remember those 3 or 4 years where it was like we didn’t have a basketball team? I want accountability for losing. Maybe the threat of relegation would’ve caused ownership to spend more in our early days.. nah just kidding. Let’s be realistic about that
Right now I see MLS as laying foundations. We don’t have the number of teams ready throughout our system to start pro/rel, and won’t have the money investment needed for quite some time still.
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Adding more teams at the MLS level means that you will have more stable ownerships that could handle movement between levels and the income swing that comes along with it.
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Most USL teams still aren’t anywhere close to being able to have a true pro level stadium. Look to Bethlehem Steel, they got kicked out because of the lack of lights. It seems like a basic thing, but the money isn’t there at that level yet. And if we can’t even get more that 2k out for their games when they play at Talen, it will be a long time before that happens.
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We are slowly starting to fill out the USL levels, but we are still many millionaires/billionaires away from getting pro/rel off the ground.
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So everyone go out and talk to your local multi-millionaire and tell them they need to buy a team and build a stadium.
In a country with other sports leagues without pro/rel, do you think teams going down would be relevant in a city with four other sports teams and college programs?
What’s the prize for moving up to MLS without the stability of growth? Winning promotion comes with bigger bills and relegating to USL come with revenue loss. Good luck finding those investors in this market.
True, I guess I just have to be patient. I wish MLS could compete more with other leagues. And by that I mean NFL and NBA, as well as EPL and La Liga. But it’s MLS so there’s that.
Not even Landon Donovan can get me interested in eMLS.
Yeah absolutely, but hearing about the FIFA game franchise is better than listening to people talk about Overwatch and Fortnite. Go outside, people.
Just wanted to point out that Zlatan has escaped punishment. MLS, lol.