Hello everyone, I return! Had a very busy spring but now am going to try to do a few posts here and there during this exciting Gold Cup/Nations League/WCQ summer. We're back today to discuss the USL League Two, an interesting lower league in the United States with a very not-interesting name. Oh how I wept when the USL decided to name its three leagues the Championship, League One, and League Two. But despite my grumbles about copying an English naming scheme, I like the USL League Two a lot. It's a great source of local soccer and I have found myself going to few games in the area every summer (besides last year, obviously) for a while now.
There are around 80 League Two clubs scattered across the US as of right now, and they play a 14-game regular season that culminates in a 16 team playoff tournament from May-July. But after going to a few games this past month (my first three events since the pandemic hit!), I wanted to talk about where the USL2 stands in the US soccer world. The venerable sage of Concacaf, Jon Arnold, wrote last year about the relationship between minor league soccer and minor league baseball. It's well worth your time if you haven't read it before.
To continue with that same school of thought, if the USLC and USL1 are in some ways the new minor league baseball, then the USL2 is a combination of all the famous wood-bat collegiate baseball leagues across North America. It is a league stocked mostly by college players looking to maintain NCAA eligibility, though there are a few veterans from pro teams or just older amateurs on many rosters as well. But why does every baseball fan know what the Cape Cod League is, and not many soccer fans (even fans of American soccer) know about the USL League Two?
This is the question I have been asking myself over the past week. Here we have a strong developmental league that produces MLS draft pick after MLS draft pick, and yet even MLS diehards do not seem to care. Going to many of these games around New Jersey, the crowds are mostly parents and local coaches, with "conventional" fans mostly only showing up to playoff matches or special event nights. Why aren't the diehard Union fans showing up in nearby South Jersey to see some of the top draft prospects? Where were the Red Bulls fans when Jersey Express (who supplied several players to the Bulls over the years) were playing games at NJIT just a mile away from Red Bull Arena?
When I ask the question: 'why does nobody care about the USL League Two?' I of course understand why most people do not care about it. It's not supposed to be widely cared about. But while the other USL divisions flourish with the more niche soccer audience, the USL2 generally speaking, does not. There are a few exceptions of course. The highly successful Mid-Michigan Bucks, after moving to Flint in 2019, drew crowds of 5000+. And in Des Moines, which lacks a pro-team, the Menace have had averaged a few thousand fans for decades. But these cases are few and far between.
Now one thing that people are going to say about a league that feeds into the MLS draft pool is that, well, the MLS draft is mostly a worthless endeavor with the exception of a handful of players at the top. In reality, the MLS draft stocks the USL Championship, not MLS. But can the same not be said about the Cape Cod League and the MLB draft? There are literally thousands of players drafted into organized baseball every year, and only a small percentage of them ever make the big leagues. So the Cape Cod League (or any moderately successful collegiate summer league) boasting about how many MLB draft picks they have among their ranks is ultimately not that impressive, yet those boasts draw in respectable crowds. The USL League Two makes similar boasts (75% of the players drafted in 2020 played in the USL2), yet it does not draw in fans the same way.
I don't really have a grandiose point to make about the USL League Two, but I feel like this conversation is worth having. US Soccer fandom seems to emphasize local soccer so much; fans love to talk about what it means to support their local club and after the recent Super League debacle I think fans all over the world have taken a closer look at what they can do to support the local game instead of the big boys. And yet, the USL League Two, a fantastic product with an interesting player pool, cheap tickets (often free tickets), and a summer schedule that largely doesn't conflict with European or Mexican leagues, doesn't seem to be gaining any traction.
If you have a local League Two club, and unless you live in Montana you most likely do, I really recommend checking out a game this summer and seeing how it is. Thank you as always for reading, and enjoy this week of Nations League and World Cup qualifying!
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