Thursday, January 7, 2010

NASL/USL Deal Complete, USSF Division -2

USSF President Sunil Gulati started off with pleasantries talking about U.S. World Cup, etc, etc. Basically the Federation will take a direct role, operationally, etc. There will be a board of directors handling any issue. There will be no commissioner. All previous legal disputes are dropped. The goal is to have a stable professional league in the U.S. mentioned Gulati mentioned MLS as well and said they were looking for that type of long term stability.

Temporary name is USSF Division 2

USL CONFERENCE...............NASL CONFERENCE
Portland Timbers...................Vancouver Whitecaps
Rochester Rhinos...................Montreal Impact
Minnesota Thunder...............AC St. Louis
Austin Aztex...........................Carolina Railhawks
Tampa Bay Rowdies..............Miami FC Blues
Puerto Rico Islanders............Crystal Palace Baltimore

So My prediction on the league layout was off by 2 teams check it out in my previous post below.

All teams will play against each other without consideration of divisions. Atlanta and NY were mentioned as future teams but will not be in the league this year and they are looking to start in 2011.

The season will be played either from March/April to October/November, the schedule will be developed in the next few days. During the World Cup the schedule will be lighter but will not cease.

A TV deal seems to be in the works. It will possibly continue with USL's previous TV deal with Fox Soccer TV.

Here is the NEW UPDATED USSL D-2 Map
Official announcement HERE
A full transcript of the Conference Call will be out soon at the USSF site

More Links:
U.S. Soccer
Miami Herald
Democrat & Chronicle
The Kartik Report
Portland Timbers site
Inside Minnesota Soccer
Soccer by Ives
Miami FC Site
Aztex Site

USL Press release HERE

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ok but we still want MLS!

Battra13 said...

OK. This makes the 13 Blog in St. Louis very, very happy. Finally to have our own team.