Some advice for USL brass, new and old

Fresh off their intervention with the U.S. Soccer Federation’s Sunil Gulati, longtime United Soccer League boss Francisco Marcos and Alec Papadakis, one of his designated successors with the Atlanta-based NuRock Soccer Holdings, are rubbing elbows with some of the leading suits in the global game.

Don’t laugh too hard. It makes sense for North American solons to be there, and certainly their presence couldn’t be any more audacious than Major League Soccer commissioner Don Garber’s admonition to the big spenders of Europe to follow the single-entity model.

I can hear ringing peals of laughter for that one.

What remarks, if any, the USL brass might have for their fellow soccer executives in Londontown aren’t known right now, but here’s some very practical advice they might be wise to bring back to these continental shores:

“Let us hope Marcos and Papadakis are doing a lot of the learning part, as back in the US, the league they run is falling apart as if it were American soccer in the twentieth century. This is a shame, because much of what USL has achieved over the past two decades has been pretty impressive: a structure containing, in 2009, well over 100 professional and amateur clubs critical for the development of American soccer.”

And this:

“Forgotten in the byzantine details is one simple fact: USL-1 remains the only league in the world where the team owners do not control the league. This is why when the league seems unable to even properly schedule and market its USL-1 Championship final — Away from the Numbers reports that “the date and time of the Championship final second leg remains something of a mystery” — it becomes clearer why some owners believe an overhaul is needed to professionalize and market its elite division.”