It’s been a big few weeks for the USL. The organization that governs most of lower-division soccer in the United States made a splash by announcing its attention to start a new league at the same tier as MLS, and followed that up this week with another bombshell. The league’s board, comprising owners in the two professional men’s circuits (the second-division USL Championship and the third-division USL League One) voted to enact promotion and relegation within the USL ecosystem. If it comes to fruition, it will be the first time promotion and relegation will exist in the modern history of US soccer.
USL president Paul McDonough spoke to the Guardian shortly before the league officially announced the vote on Wednesday morning. Questions and answers have been lightly edited for clarity.
The USL only just announced a big change a few weeks ago. How did this big of a vote come about just after that? After the division one announcement, we met with the board in Atlanta, and the conversation came back around to promotion and relegation, and there was a strong desire to intensify the conversations. We got to a stage where we had a board call on Monday, and the decision was to go ahead and push forward with voting with both leagues yesterday.
What was the language of the vote itself? The vote was to approve the concept of promotion/relegation and the implementation of it, knowing that there’s still a lot of work to do before we implement it. I think you’ve got to take this in steps, and the first step is getting that affirmative vote from the boards. And we got that yesterday. Both votes were complete about four o’clock yesterday afternoon.
How does a question as foundational as this go from a conversation to a vote? Each of our teams have two board members – a governor and an alternate governor that participate in board meetings. And we have different committees. We’ve got a sporting committee, a commercial committee, and so on. So a lot of these conversations happen in smaller groups, and then are brought to the board.
So just to be clear, was the vote to officially enact it by “date X,” or was it to continue researching and making progress towards doing it? We’ve adopted promotion/relegation. But we know full well that there’s different things we have to talk about, right? How do we enact it across the three tiers? We’ve got to get division one going. What are the mechanics of the promotion, relegation, up and down? How do we protect teams that get promoted if the expenses are different? So there’s just some of those things that we’re going to run to and do some work on and present that to the board. But yeah, they’ve adopted to move forward with it.
Is there a chance that any of these issues become some sort of impassable road block? To pick one at random, let’s say that there turns out to be a major problem in how teams that change divisions are able to adapt to whatever their new level is, and there’s some disagreement about how to address that problem among the teams. Would that cause pro/rel to be shelved? No, I just think we have to do the work to safeguard against some of those things. You don’t just say “all right, we’re going to do it.” There’s a lot of work that goes into it, because it hasn’t been done over here.
How did the board land on 2028 as a start date, as has been reported, and is there a chance that that could be adjusted? We have talked about adjusting it to starting in 2027 if division one is going to start in 2028. But that’s something that the board will vote on. You know, some people like that idea, and some people feel as though we shouldn’t enact it until division one starts, so we have the three tiers up and running. So that’s one of those things that we have to do some work and show the pros and the cons of each we bring it back to the board and have a discussion.
Who was responsible for drafting the question itself, and how specifically is it worded? There was a resolution that we put together, which is what they were voting on. It’s like “division one has to start,” you know? And we acknowledge that there’s a lot of work to do. We commit to do the work with the owners and answer a lot of the questions like: How many teams up, how many teams down? What does the competition structure look like? It’s just not something where you say “OK, we’re gonna do promotional relegation,” but then you have an unbalanced schedule, and it doesn’t work. So there’s a lot of conversations that have to happen in the coming months.
How will this affect the conversations you’re having with potential new ownership groups who are interested in joining the new division one league? Based on my conversations, it helps. I’ve talked to some different investors, and they like the idea of promotion and relegation, because they know that fans want it, it aligns with the global game, and it’s something that could be really intriguing, and it’s different.
On that point – it’s true that pro/rel would bring USL in line with most systems around the world, but does it really make the league stronger on its own merits? Yes, England has promotion and relegation, but so does Luxembourg. It’s not necessarily having promotion and relegation alone makes you a good league. I think the difference for us is fans: If they’re going to spend money and come to games, they want to see matches that matter, right? And when we looked at our competition calendar, we found that there were just a lot of what we would call dead rubber matches – you play and if you win or you lose, it just doesn’t matter. We consulted with [sports consultancy firm] Twentyfirst Group on this, but the idea is that getting more matches of consequence throughout your calendar gets fans more engaged. The last thing fans want to do is watch a game where the outcome doesn’t really have any bearing or effect on anything. That’s why playoffs are more important, right? There’s more jeopardy. Normally, when you see a team that’s out of the playoffs, they sell off players, or they trade players, and they just start to regroup for next year. Well, now you can’t do that, because even though you’re out of the top eight, you have to fight to stay out of the bottom. And I think that just gets more appealing for fans.
It does also very much depend on how many teams you end up relegating, right? Because even in the Premier League, you have this pretty big middle class that is still playing a lot of those dead rubber games you’re talking about. Yeah, but they play for money. Every spot gets you money. We’re not there yet. But that keeps it interesting, that if you’re in spot No 13 in the Premier League, getting up to 11 is significant financially, right? You want to try to find that type of balance.
You said that the board and the team owners will be working through all this, but what are your first thoughts on how USL would address a situation where, say, a club gets promoted and doesn’t meet the US Soccer standards for the higher tier, or has an ownership that’s maybe not interested in the team after getting relegated? We have governance where, when this passes as a super majority, even if the team’s against it, they’ve got to go along with it. So that’s what we’ll lean into. And I think everyone will be OK with that. And as far as the pro league standards, we have to have conversations with US Soccer, Concacaf, Fifa, about that. Are we just going to get waivers? You know, we’re not sure, but those are conversations we have to have.
Will you or the clubs be releasing any sort of an idea of which team voted for what, or how the votes broke down? No. I’ll tell you we had 42 teams between the leagues, and about 90% wanted the adoption of promotion and relegation. The owners did a good job. We did the work. And it was pretty resounding.
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For the 10% that voted against it, are those concentrated in one league or another, or are they spread out? I don’t want to go into that, but I think some of the ones that voted against it really just wanted a little more time, a little more clarification. But once you call the vote, you’ve got to do it. And in conversations with a couple that didn’t want it, that was their thing: We really want it, but we just like a little more time, because this happened really fast.
Would you say that the announcement of the division one league accelerated those discussions, or made it more palatable to some owners? Yeah. I think it helped, yes.
Did you or the board speak with players or the player’s union about this? No. We reached out to the union last night to inform them, they’ll be telling their players today. But it’s not one of those things that … you just have to take this in steps. So getting the owners on board and getting the affirmative vote was the first step. Talking to all the different stakeholders is the next step.
Was the welfare of players a factor in conversation? This move would certainly affect the leagues and what it’s like to play in them. Yeah, I think so. I think if you’re looking for a place where players can develop, having more games that matter is better for player development. As the league is more relevant and it grows, then that’s better for players. Listen, we’re not anywhere without our owners or our players, right? So, you know, we need them all to have a successful ecosystem.
You’ve said, both to me and to a few other places, that the beauty of USL and what separates it from MLS is that every team can have their own model and sort of go about their business in their own individual way. I think the lack of pro/rel certainly enables teams to be flexible like that to an even greater degree, because they’re not facing relegation if things go really badly. Soon, they could be. Is the freedom to operate still a tenet of USL that you can still sell to people, particularly new division one investors, when teams are feeling the pressure in that way? Yes, and I think 90% of owners feel that way too. I think they can still be individual. And I think by the owners voting in the way that they did shows that they believe that too.
Promotion and relegation has been discussed ad nauseam throughout American soccer for years. Is there any part of this topic that you think isn’t being discussed enough? I think the hard part is, everyone compares it to England, and I think that we’re a very young country as far as the sport goes, and we need to build it. You can’t compare where we are to something that’s been around for 100-plus years.
I think enacting pro/rel feels very automatic to some. Like, just flip the switch and there it is. Yeah, I don’t think it’s that automatic, right? I think everything you do when you’re building something, you have to build it in steps, and you want to be cautious, and you want to really, really take the time to think about how you implement and build it. And that’s what we’re going to try to do.
