Lansing United is changing leagues, moving up slightly with an eye on a bigger move down the road.

After spending its first four seasons in the National Premier Soccer League, the club will play next season in the Premier Development League, which is similar to the NSPL but has a more established brand.

The change comes as United eyes a possible jump to professional soccer in the United Soccer League's new third-division league, which is set to begin play in 2019.

“As I looked at things at the end of last season, the thing that’s a little bit different this year is that opportunity to move up to the professional level,” United owner Jeremy Sampson said Thursday morning. “And getting us over to the PDL aligns us with the United Soccer Leagues and gets us on that side of the (U.S. Soccer) pyramid.

“That was a big thing for us, and, really, the reputation of the PDL is a very strong one around the amateur soccer world.”

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Sampson is hopeful in the short-term — and perhaps long-term, if United stays put in the Premier Development League — that this league will help recruit better college players because of the league’s visibility with the United Soccer League and Major League Soccer, which is also on the Premier Development League side of the pyramid. Some Major League Soccer teams have reserve teams in the Premier Development League.

“If we were still in the NPSL in 2018, Rafa (Mentzingen) probably wouldn’t be coming back to Lansing,” Sampson said of United’s 2017 Brazilian sensation, who plays college soccer at Valparaiso. “This gives us a better opportunity to keep players like Rafa.

“DeJuan Jones (Michigan State, East Lansing High School) played in Myrtle Beach in the PDL last summer. Does this give us a chance to keep DeJuan in town? Perhaps.”

United will lose some in-state National Premier Soccer League rivalries, including with Detroit City FC, Grand Rapids, Ann Arbor and Kalamazoo, though Sampson hopes to keep some of those alive with games outside of the 14 scheduled Premier Development League contests.

United is joining the Premier Development League’s Great Lakes Division, which last season featured six clubs — the Michigan Bucks (Pontiac),Cincinnati, Dayton, Derby City (Louisville), K-W United (Ontario) and West Virginia.

Long-term, this could be the next step toward professional soccer in Lansing. The United Soccer League did a site visit in Lansing last spring, and Sampson is working with a marketing company to put together collateral for investors.

“When you’re in the PDL, you’re in the USL family. You understand the organization,” Sampson said. “One of the things for me is I really get to understand this new organization this year, how they work, how they operate. So that will give me a much better feel of what the whole organization is like this year.”

Contact Graham Couch at gcouch@lsj.com. Follow him on Twitter @Graham_Couch.