Photo: Marjorie Elzey

Six million dollars focuses attention away from other less spectacular but more fundamentally important news.

A crucial formative element in the system that produced Brenden Aaronson, and his current, future, and probable homegrown colleagues is gone.

Current, future, and probable homegrowns

With precise news-management, the club announced the demise of the professional-level crucible that produced all these players, the connection to the United Soccer League Championship, simultaneously with Aaronson’s $6,000,000 record-breaking distractor.

Death details

Philadelphia Union II, formerly Bethlehem Steel FC, has withdrawn from the United Soccer League relationship that dates continuously from March 1, 2010, Bill Becher, and the Harrisburg City Islanders.

It has not dropped from USL Championship to USL League One. It has severed professional-level ties. The system announced by Sporting Director Earnie Stewart, Union Head Coach Jim Curtin, Academy founder Richie Graham, YSC Schoolhouse head Nooha Ahmed-Lee, and Academy Director Tommy Wilson four years ago on November 16, 2016 not only announced its first payday, it quietly said it had gone out of existence.

Not all of it is gone. Both parts of the Academy continue. Ahmed-Lee’s college-preparatory Schoolhouse remains fundamentally unchanged, if constantly upgrading its well-practiced ability to teach its students remotely. Tommy Wilson and his staff continue successfully to shepherd teams through an elite youth player development platform, albeit a new, differently controlled one.

But the United Soccer League professional stepping stone that has catapulted every one of the 17 players listed above from the Academy into the professional game is gone. It needs replacing.

What will replace it?

There is no official word where Philadelphia Union II will play next year, only informed journalistic speculation based on multiple “sources.” Officially, the public only knows that there will be further announcement(s) at some future date(s).

Speculatively and unofficially, there will be a new MLS U-23 reserve league playing under the aegis of MLS NEXT. MLS NEXT is the new elite youth player development platform still emerging from the desiccated cadaver of U. S. Soccer’s old Development Academy.

The pool from which an MLS reserve league almost certainly forms is the 26 MLS clubs. A 27th will join next year.  Charted summaries follow below presenting what is known — or can be responsibly inferred — about each of those clubs’ lower division developmental teams and their likely competition plans.

The sole available fact is that three of those lower division pro teams have left USL’s two pro leagues – Philadelphia Union II, Portland Timbers 2, and Orlando City B.

The Athletic reports unofficially that four other MLS2 clubs will remain in the USL leagues with Major League Soccer’s permission. Three will remain in the USL Championship: Loudoun United FC of D. C. United, New York Red Bulls II, and Real Monarchs of Real Salt Lake. One will remain in USL League One: North Texas SC of FC Dallas. (The ownership change underway in Utah might change the Real Monarch plan.)

Subsequently Peter Vermes of Sporting KC is reported saying on October 22nd that Sporting KC II would stay in USLC “for now” and “will re-evaluate when other options emerge.”

Only unsubstantiated inferences can be drawn about the lower professional teams and opportunities of the other 19 clubs – 20 if you add next year’s Austin FC.

Seven of those – eight with Austin – do not currently have wholly-owned or affiliated lower professional teams. Six those are recent additions whose academies have not yet matured sufficiently to need a post-academy professional stepping stone. Some have poured money into stadium construction thus slowing academy development. Minnesota dropped its traditional full-time academy altogether October 2nd. , committing to devise a system more appropriate to its Iceland-like environment. The two oldest, the Canadians, laid down their lower level pro teams a few years ago, probably to avoid the attendant financial losses.

No lower level professional team

As many as four, or possibly five, might like to participate in an MLS Next U-23 reserve professional league in 2021, but the two Canadians face Canada’s quarantine restrictions against entry from the United States. If the Canadians join the additions would number four or five. If not, two or three, totaling five or seven before considering the remaining clubs.

Neither five nor seven teams are enough for approval by U. S. Soccer. Eight is the minimum for the first year of division three status (according to information dated 2014). And 75% of the teams must be in the United States, so if the three Canadian teams (include Toronto FC II) participate, there must be at least nine American ones.

The remaining MLS parent clubs have had some type of lower team relationship with the two USL professional leagues as charted below.

Existing lower level professional team connections

These teams’ intentions concerning lower team professional play in 2021 are entirely unknown. The Peter Vermes comment referenced above indicates that right now a reserve league is a fluid concept not a crystallized proposal.  It should surprise no one that in matters of player development the Union’s Jay Sugarman, Richie Graham, and Ernst Tanner are at the cutting edge of new ideas.

Why the change?

When commenting on the Aaronson signing, both principal owner Jay Sugarman and Sporting Director Ernst Tanner each emphasized and re-emphasized the organization’s on-going commitment to elite youth player development. But, probably, that future development will now occur within a new structure controlled by MLS together with the other member clubs.

Jeff Rueter of The Athletic emphasizes the annual cost savings the change should realize. USLC ‘s annual participation fee equaled 93.75% of a 2019 Kacper Przybylko salary (before 2020 raises — he made lots of starts and scored lots of goals — and prorating).

Transitioning to professional play at the U-19 level eliminates the expense of running simultaneously an amateur U-19 side in parallel to the professional one. (Philadelphia, Montreal and Minnesota have already made the change.)

And USLC has a series of requirements for a communications staff above and beyond those of an MLS first team. The requirements include in-game photography and official game-day roster and starting lineup transmission, in addition to the usual daily “comms” staff activities. Judging by past practices, leaving USLC saves the Union one full-time salary and an ad hoc photographer’s part-time compensation.

Cutting out USL may also simplify accounting. Reimbursement for past developmental costs has to be discussed as Major League Soccer works through details for selling homegrown players onward. Academy Director Tommy Wilson mentioned some years ago that he was on a committee considering such matters. Recent sales like Aaronson’s make the benefits to both the individual selling club and the league as a whole no longer theoretical. USL no longer can claim a piece of any such pie.

Cost-savings may be especially cogent given current economic reality.

Inconclusive inferences

The only point that rises to the status of a reasonable conclusion is that Philadelphia Union II will have some place to play next season. The only safe secondary one is that it will not be with either USL professional league.

The reports of Rueter and Phil Grooms of Beautiful Game Network, juxtaposed with Montreal’s U-23 announcement, suggest it will be an MLS reserve league of some type. Whether the U-23 requirement will be “hard,” or softer and more Olympic-like is anybody’s guess. An ability to get a Joe Bendik some game minutes while keeping the average game-day roster-age under 20 would make good sense.

If there are enough teams, there might be regional leagues and a post-season tournament. Four-to-six teams can reasonably make up a region playing each other three to five times, as USLC demonstrated this season. Playing geographically proximate teams more frequently than just home and home works for player development purposes, partly because teams rosters in a calendar-year based schedule get churned by the academic year’s mid-summer recycle. Regional grouping can also save transportation and lodging costs, if the teams are close enough as they are in the Northeast.

The cracked, cloudy crystal ball

Here is what a 2021 MLS reserve league could look like. It is grouped in descending order of likely participation. Several names are speculative and unofficial since sometimes the team mentioned does not actually yet exist.

Philadelphia Union II
Portland Timbers 2
Orlando City B
——————-
FC Cincinnati B
Columbus Crew II
——————-
Los Dos (LA Galaxy)
Tacoma Defiance (Seattle)
Sporting Kansas City II
Atlanta United 2
Fort Lauderdale CF (Miami)
New England Revolution II
——————-

LAFC II

——————
Toronto FC II*
Les Deuxs (Montreal)*
Vancouver Ripples *

All these already exist as academy U-19 teams (except LAFC II), the level at which Ernst Tanner advocates transition to professional play.