In my previous pieces on the U.S. soccer league system I wrote about the needs for a formal, sanctioned Division that allows and supports the grassroots clubs who seek to build a professional program. I also wrote about the problem of creating such a structure in a country as large as the U.S. where travel costs often become a massive burden to clubs.

A major hurdle to such thinking has been balancing the needs and limitations of regional organizations while connecting them at the micro level to fans, and at the macro level to the national and international game. Frankly, the U.S. soccer system has failed at this. Time and time again, organized soccer has focused on the top league and left the lower tiers to fend for themselves. This has led to a disorganized structure below the top tiers and a brittle system where a damaged top tier could lead to a collapse of the entire pyramid.

U.S. soccer history is awash with leagues and clubs who do the best they can on their own. Usually, these organizations fail fairly quickly. Teams come and go. Schedules are constantly in flux. Rules and standards change mid-season. Ultimately, leagues disappear.

Stability in sports is not a luxury, it is a necessity. Without it, competition suffers. And when competition suffers, fans don’t show up.

Throughout the country, there are clubs who have the organizational talent, resources and aspiration to grow their clubs from the ground up. Those are organizations that we need to nurture and advocate. But, without a stable environment, even these clubs can easily disappear. Clubs like this can even “fail” from outgrowing a league and having no reasonable place to go.

In addition, while these visionary clubs are necessary, they are generally the exception rather than norm. It is important to create stable organizations that will attract more risk-averse clubs that make up the rank and file of leagues.

A better organized regional league system would provide a stronger environment for current leagues and clubs to survive. It would also allow the development of new leagues and new clubs to fill the ongoing vacuums in the sport. These empty spaces run the gamut from underserved communities to supporting different standards of play to allowing a wider variety of financial situations. There is enough room in this country for more elite-level soccer but the lack of organization, or outright disorganization, makes it difficult to envision and even more difficult to build.

For any system of regional leagues to thrive, it is vitally important that there is a stable structure to support them. Without it, these leagues are and will continue to face difficulties growing the sport. Such a structure should be some entity that, among other things, brings some order to how leagues and their clubs work with each other. This entity would hold its member organizations to understood standards. It would support and promote the leagues and clubs within its jurisdiction.

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The most obvious choice is for such a structure to live within the USSF. The federation directly sanctions and administers the handful of professional leagues. They also sanction the USASA which administers amateur soccer in the country. It would likely be impractical for the USSF to directly administer and provide structure to numerous regional leagues which would make up a new lower level in the soccer pyramid. But, akin to the USASA, they could create and administer a new Regional League System that would have jurisdiction over the amateur/semi-pro soccer leagues which would make up that system.

Sadly, it also seems obvious that the USSF has little interest in such an endeavor. The U.S. soccer league system was set up with three pro divisions in 1994 and that has never changed. The “unofficial Division 4” has been a phrase for 25 years and now seems as much myth as substance. Every league or club operating at a higher than youth but below Division III level gets to refer to themselves as the mythical “informal Division 4”. The USSF seems content to continue this ceremonial status and never formalize the understanding that there is soccer happening that isn’t amateur or top-tier professional.

Another, more practical avenue, is that grassroots and lower level leagues could form such a partnership among themselves. And, while independent, this association need not, and from a practical matter, probably should not, be at odds with the USSF.

Such a working relationship among organizations would help guide the game in a wide variety of ways. It could create more formal standards of play and which leagues play at which level. It could offer a way for potential clubs to understand what their market looks like, what competition they may have in their market and what clubs they would play against. The association could also provide a variety of centralized support services, such as marketing and operations, that would be better resourced than individual leagues.

To be honest, the biggest promise of such a Regional League System might be the creation of an understandable structure in soccer fandom. The average soccer fan doesn’t have any real idea about what’s happening in the English or Spanish or German lower leagues, but they love the organized structure of those leagues.

Tradition is overwhelmingly important in sports. Tradition is the connective tissue between a sport and its fans. It is an emotional connection. And, if you don’t have an understandable narrative, you will have a hard time making such a connection. It is almost impossible for the average soccer fan to connect with lower league soccer because the narrative of lower league soccer itself is confusing.

Currently, the average fan doesn’t know about their local clubs. And, if they do know about them, they don’t understand what that club means to them because they don’t know what the league is and what the league means. Helping soccer fandom understand how leagues fit together will help them understand how their local club fits. And understanding that will help fans know how they fit with their local club.

In the final part of this series, I’ll be putting these pieces together and conceptualize what an organized grassroots, regional structure in the U.S. might look like. And, I’ll also write about how there are other soccer systems that could offer better parallels for the U.S. than the traditional European pyramids.

- Dan Creel