Maryland Majors Fall 2020 Week 1 Recap

And, we’re off!

The Maryland Major Soccer League opened its Fall 2020 season this past weekend. And the soccer winds of change are blowing across the Chesapeake Bay. This summer two elite men’s amateur soccer leagues, the New York metro-based Cosmopolitan Soccer League and the MMSL, teamed up to establish the Eastern Premier Soccer League. The EPSL will launch this fall as a super-regional amateur league made up of top-level men’s amateur teams from the New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington metro areas.

The EPSL is made up of two distinct conferences. The CSL, along with the newly-affiliated Garden State Soccer League, will act as feeder leagues to the Metropolitan Conference. The MMSL will be the primary feeder league for the Mid-Atlantic Conference. To keep the ever-burdensome travel expenses down, clubs will play regular-season matches only against their conference opponents. The league will have a traditional fall to spring schedule with a cross-conference post-season to determine the overall EPSL champion.

Agreements between the EPSL and its partner feeder leagues establish promotion and relegation between the EPSL and its feeder leagues. The EPSL also recently joined fellow amateur leagues, the Gulf Coast Premier League and the Midwest Premier League, to sign an affiliation agreement with the National Independent Soccer Association. The agreement allows the EPSL a minimum number of competition-based slots in NISA’s Independent Cup. A less clear-cut, but potentially more important, outcome of these affiliations is the move toward collaboration between top men’s amateur leagues and NISA - the only pro league outside the MLS-USL partnership.

NISA and its member clubs need colleagues and a support structure to survive. The amateur leagues and their member clubs see a path to a better, more inclusive soccer community through an alliance. Those involved hope to see a rising tide that lifts all boats.

No, this isn’t a soccer pyramid. The structure of US soccer doesn’t provide entry to the professional ranks through any competitive-based system. And because the term itself is fraught with the weight of expectations and understandings, we should steer clear of “pyramid” in attempting to define the relationship between EPSL and its feeder leagues along with its affiliation with NISA.

We often forget there is promotion and relegation in many soccer leagues across the country. Because it is happening almost exclusively at the local and regional league level, most of us tend to discount it as unimportant. That’s a shame. EPSL’s promise of providing such a system between leagues gives hope that those clubs which seek to compete at higher levels will be rewarded, not only with the ability to play against better competition but also with a greater audience.

Like most state-based amateur leagues, MMSL is built on a number of separate leagues with promotion and relegation between them. Currently, MMSL’s top tier is the 1st Division made up of eight clubs. Below that are two distinct divisions: the 2nd Baltimore Metro, with eight clubs located in and around Baltimore, and the 2nd Capital Beltway, with 12 clubs located in the Washington Metro area. As noted above, while the 2nd Division club haves historically hoped to move up to the 1st Division, starting this year, there is an additional incentive for 1st Division clubs to potentially move up to the EPSL.

And, with all that background, let’s get to the games!

The first four games of the Fall 2020 season were all held Sunday, September 13 at John R. Lewis High School in Springfield, Virginia. All the games in the busy quadruple-header involved teams from the 2nd Divisions.

The first game involved the only two 2nd Baltimore Metro squads to play on Sunday. In that game, Sure Sports FC from Glen Burnie, Maryland defeated Argyle FC 1-0. Sure Sports had previously moved from the 2nd to the 1st Division following the Fall 2017 season but was relegated after the Spring 2018 season. The club missed out on again moving up to the 1st Division after losing in the first round of the Spring 2019 2nd Division playoffs.

Clubs from the Capital Beltway Division took part in the remaining three games. In the second match, Dream Team FC, from Montgomery County, Maryland, defeated Frederick Spires FC 3-1. The Spires, from Frederick, Maryland, are a new club in the MMSL but they aren’t wholly unknown. The Spires, a nod to Frederick’s skyline known as the “Clustered Spires”, is a rebrand of The Difference FC.

The third game provided the most lopsided score and involved two newcomers to the league. Maryland United FC, from Crofton, defeated Colombia District FC, from Lorton, Virginia, 4-0. Ryan Senior and Rutilo Morales both scored a brace in the first half as MD United cruised to an easy win with Michael Benevides keeping the clean sheet.

The final Sunday match involved another Montgomery County club, Limitless FC, and 2nd Division veteran, Motorik FC from Alexandria, Virginia. It was an exciting match that was sadly marred by a serious injury to a Limitless FC player. The clubs drew 2-2 thanks to a late header off a corner kick by Motorik.

Week one ended with a pair of night games on Wednesday, September 16 at Troy Park in Elkridge, Maryland. In a 2nd Baltimore Metro match, another new club, Annapolis United 2 F.C., faced Meade United F.C. from Fort Meade, Maryland. Annapolis’ second team scored twice in each half and cruised to a 4-1 victory.

The other match on Wednesday was the 1st Division opener between All Star United and Columbia F.C. from Columbia, Maryland. Both teams moved to the 1st Division from the old 2nd Division South following the Spring 2019 season. Columbia took the hard-fought match 1-0 on a goal by Prosper Adangwa midway into the first half.

- Dan Creel

The league’s schedule for week two:

Editorial Note - We originally reported that Spires was a merger between Blue Side FC and Difference FC, but a reader notified us that, in fact, the two clubs could not agree on terms for the merger & the Spires are essentially a rebranding of The Difference FC with no involvement from Blue Side. Massive thanks.