Joey Saputo told Butler of the deal on Oranges at Halftime. He said that the two groups, along with the USSF, are waiting to work out the fine details of the agreement before officially announcing it (likely during the NASL's AGM next week), but that there would be a season in 2010. Plans beyond 2010 have yet to be worked out.
You can hear Butler's statement here (USL/NASL talk starts at 16 min). His words:
It’s great that I can tell you – although not on the record. Wait for the formal announcement – Impact president Joey Saputo joined us tonight on Oranges at Halftime and it appears that…both the USL and the NASL will play in a, let’s call it a hybrid championship during the season 2010. Conveniently, or well timed, is the NASL is having, let’s call it their…AGM, kicks off in Florida (today). I would presume that a large part of the first business will be to dot the Is and cross the Ts and to formally make the announcement. I’m sure the United States Soccer Association will be the one who makes the announcement and look to have that hybrid. And Joey Saputo mention during the conversation that things aren’t quite 100 per cent yet, but he did mention that the Montreal Impact will play teams like Portland and Puerto Rico in season 2010…the good news is we do know that we do have, will have, shortly, in the coming days a formal announcement that a resolution has been found.
The leagues will run in a similar way to Major League Baseball, with teams playing an interleague schedule and for a common championship. The USSF will sanction the league, eliminating any fear of teams being ineligible for international play.
Details on the differences between the two structures, what teams would play in what leagues, and who owns the rights to the St. Louis market were not reported.
3 comments:
In some ways, it sucks.
I would have rather seen one amalgamated league here, leave the interleague gimmick alone, but I guess this is better than nothing.
Maybe this is just a one-year thing, then it will truly be one single league in 2011, when Vancouver and Portland join MLS.
Vancouver wanted to leave a 2nd div team in the NASL or whatever it's called when they move to MLS.
It will be interesting to see the details of these 2 leagues; they had such different idealogies of how they wanted to run it would be hard to imagine how they could co-exist without one gobbling up the other at some point.
Actually, I think this is a great compromise - this way, the NASL doesn't have to pay off the USL1 for its rights to the three teams that were sued and it gives both sets of teams a solid foundation for this year with the ability to look towards 2011.
I would expect that the three sued teams will not sign with USL1 for 2011, and then you'll have the NASL as the second division league - hopefully, having learned the ropes in 2010 so that when they are all on their own in 2011, they can make it work.
Post a Comment