by JAKE NUTTING

NASL Beat Writer

NASL commissioner Bill Peterson spoke on a number of topics in an interview with The Telegraph that posted stateside early Monday morning. The biggest take away from the interview may be how strongly Peterson is trying to portray the NASL as an “international league” that exists within the global soccer landscape — unlike MLS. He also hit on the always popular topic of expansion and once again intently stated his desire to implement a form of promotion and relegation in North America after months of staying relatively quiet on the subject.

Forming a New Pyramid For Promotion and Relegation

Peterson has been anything but shy about his hopes of building the NASL into a league much more aligned with how the rest of the world’s leagues operate. That includes the biggest third rail topic in American soccer; promotion and relegation. The commissioner believes that the openness of the system is pivotal to unlocking the full potential of domestic soccer in the region.

“I don’t think we become the soccer powerhouse that we can until every community is engaged in the pro game through a tiered system that has promotion and relegation. When that happens, we become the largest soccer economy in the world bar none,” Peterson told The Telegraph. “At that point a lot of interesting things can happen.

“Without engaging every community in this country then all you have is a regional phenomenon, similar maybe to ice hockey in the United States, where if a city has a team there’s interest but if you don’t have a team there’s not much interest.”

Here is the snippet, though, that will be of most interest to proponents of the implementation of pro/rel.

“Not everyone has to participate, it’s a free country, but we’re going to continue to strive and move forward and start to take action at some point to build this out.”

Peterson indicates that he is in favor of pursuing the more traditional system even without the participation of all the leagues, namely MLS and also likely the third division USL. He mentions the amateur NPSL in the fourth division as an interested partner in shifting the paradigm to promotion and relegation. The commissioner seems to have qualms about his league being the point leader on forming a new pyramid system in North America, separate from MLS, to get an open system deal done down the road. Even he admits that getting the right fit for North America in place will take time, as the NASL and rest of the lower divisions continue to build roots.

Westward Expansion … and the end of Oklahoma, Virginia



Possibly the biggest roots that need to take hold are future expansion clubs in regions where the league has no footprint. The 11-team league is adding a fourth Florida team in Miami next season and is also returning to Puerto Rico with celebrity owner Carmelo Anthony after a two-year hiatus. Peterson told the Telegraph that the league previously announced expansion clubs in Oklahoma City and Virginia are finally dead in the water after years of delay. The league will now funnel the majority of its expansion energy into establishing clubs in the western region of the country where no NASL club currently operates.

Peterson is hopeful that the league will announce western expansion team’s by year’s end.

“We expect to make some announcements this year regarding new teams in the league based on the West Coast,” Peterson added. “So we start to get to a number of 15, 16 or 17 and from there we have to be careful what we do with the last three, which is a great place to be for us.

“We don’t have a hard deadline but within around 18 to 24 months we will be at our 20 teams and have a nice footprint on the East Coast and West Coast and we’re going to fill it in the centre of the country and in Canada as well.”

The west coast expansion would finally satisfy the standards set down by the US Soccer Federation for the NASL to have a toe on both sides of the continent. Peterson, though, seemingly shrugged off the requirement from USSF as something that never troubled him in the first place. He claims that the federation’s mandates were never the guiding force in the young league’s expansion plans.

“There’s standards [from US Soccer] that require a West Coast team but we have plenty of time to conform to that. It’s never played a role in our decision-making,” he added. “We keep this very simple, find the right owners and the right cities and when everything is in the right place and proper manner and we feel the club is going to be in place for a long time, we’ll make the decision to go forward. We can’t let other perimeters or deadlines affect our decision-making – or you’ll end up making bad decisions.”