This week’s gonna be a little bit different, because aside from SUPER AMERICAN LOWER LEAGUE MELTDOWN-A-PALOOZA, not a lot has happened in local soccer. Well, a little has happened: UofL lost a hard-fought College Cup quarterfinal over the weekend to Stanford, and Toronto FC mounted an absolutely bonkers comeback to make the MLS Cup finals. If you’re bored and hate defense, try to find a replay of that game because it was entertaining as hell.

Now, to the aforementioned SUPER AMERICAN LOWER LEAGUE MELTDOWN-A-PALOOZA. As we know, the North American Soccer League is in some trouble. Almost as soon as their fall season ended, the Tampa Bay Rowdies and Ottowa Fury announced they would not participate in that league in 2017, but would instead join USL. The timeline has since unraveled thusly:

What’s really bad about all of this is that NASL hasn’t issued any kind of press statement about any of the above since the Board of Governors meeting concluded last week. NPSL and USL are having their own board of governors meetings this week, and US Soccer is schedule to issue a press release on Friday. We expect that press release to confirm USL’s ascension to the inherently meaningless status of Division 2 in the USSF “pyramid,” but it could have a lot more news about NASL and whether it will even be a sanctioned league in 2017. Remember, in addition to losing flagship club New York Cosmos and whatever the opposite of a flagship in Rayo OKC, the Rowdies and Fury have left, the Strikers probably won’t be able to field a team in 2017, and Minnesota United are going to MLS.

This, for me, is almost as fun as real soccer. So soap opera-y! Soapy operatic! But suffice it to say, things are in quite a state of upheaval in lower division soccer in the US. Four Four Two has a nice, better written summation of what’s happening here; I recommend you read it.

Oh, and aside from signing Cuatro for 2017, nothings happening with Louisville City that I know about. COME ON, CITY!