May 1, 2016; New York, NY, USA; The NASL game ball before the game between the New York Cosmos and the Carolina Railhawks at James M. Shuart Stadium. New York Cosmos won 1-0. Mandatory Credit: Anthony Gruppuso-USA TODAY Sports

SoccerWarz (2016), presents a brief history of “the new” NASL. The book attempts to use the league’s fortunes to critique the state of soccer in the USA.

Kartik Krishnaiyer’s book, SoccerWarz, presents a very brief history (around 25 pages) of “the new” NASL and its “war” with MLS for top spot in US soccer. Mr. Krishnaiyer served as communications director for NASL’s league office from 2007 until 2013.

Good News, Bad News

The good news about this book is that it contains a lot of information about the soccer business in the USA. The bad news is that it doesn’t provide a lot of context for its analysis of that information.

The latest developments in US soccer reported by SoccerWarz occurred just last year (2016). That’s more good news. More bad news is that a lot has happened to the US soccer picture in just the first 5 months of this year (2017) to say nothing of the last 12.

What’s missing from the book makes it hard to recommend. And I wouldn’t do so, but for one important reason. About which, more later.

Specifically, SoccerWarz leaves a reader with a few unanswered questions.

Q1: Is it really a “war” if everybody wins?

The book claims:

For many, prior to the explosion of access to foreign leagues on TV, MLS was like a gateway drug. American fans would fall in love with the sport via Major League Soccer but find the hokey rules, trades, lack of promotion and relegation and the sparsity of clubs in certain areas of the nation too much to handle.

So, MLS good and MLS bad.

That’s the general weakness of this book. The little analysis offered is mostly contradictory. The new NASL is painted as both a successful alternative to MLS’ “hokiness”. Later NASL is dismissed as a complete marketing failure. But not much is presented in the way of developing either point.

The only sensible way to explain the facts present in SoccerWarz is that US soccer is a business. That’s true the world over. But the sports business trades on fan loyalty. How could NASL develop that loyalty over the few years covered by this book? Teams are coming and going from USL and MLS, for example, even as I write this review. Loyalty is impossible to create in that time span. So it’s impossible to critique a failure to do that on that basis.

I do agree with Krishnaiyer’s major point. NASL is both failed and successful at once (see below), but any book characterizing it in that way needs to discuss success with fans a good deal more than this one does.

Q2: What is behind the rapid investment and development of USL that we are seeing in 2017?

The main competition for NASL right now is not MLS, but USL. Yes, MLS (and implicitly, SUM) has clearly thrown in with USL. Perhaps MLS’ ownership is even hoping to dissolve its “development teams” completely and eventually merge into one system of relegation and promotion. In 2017, the expansion of USL has to be explained.

The lack of such explanation in SoccerWarz can partly be excused given the publication date. But it is not a complete excuse given the book’s major premise.

Q3: Finally, if NASL has caused MLS to embrace USL, and the coming 2d Division, hasn’t NASL already been successful?

Again, any attempt to answer that question is missing from SoccerWarz.

As a slight nod to the question of fan loyalty the latter part of the book suggests that the new league really only exists in the imaginations of supporters of the original NASL. Once more I am inclined to believe that is true to a degree. But any fair discussion of the facts must consider that that might also be the definition of “success” in this context.

And yet…there is 1 very important reason to read SoccerWarz

In spite of its failings, I still recommend you read this book.

Read it because it presents a uniquely US perspective on the game. I don’t just mean that the author is a fan like the rest of us. He is. I also mean that the development of the game in North America has always been destined to be different from what happened anywhere else in the world.

One of the problems for MLS and both versions of NASL is alternately trying to model the NFL style of fan and then again the EPL style. Neither one will ever apply to our soccer.

Reading about Wayne Rooney’s upbringing in the UK is nice, but it’s not our story. Reading about Uruguay’s uncanny dominance of Brazil in World Cup play is fascinating. But it’s still not our story.

Just as North American soccer was destined to be something new so too are its fans.

We must read this sort of book because we are the only fans who can. And that’s both the good news and the bad news.