The U.S. league system that lasted one season

Major League Soccer the latest effort to break the potentially lucrative US soccer market and well at least recently it's doing a pretty good job at it interest is growing attendances are rising big stars are signing but have we seen this all before it's far from the first attempt to bring men's football into the American mainstream there's been multiple Endeavors over the past Century to try and bring the beautiful game to the American Shores and most at times when it seemed like the US market was right there for the taking only for them to all collapse

under their own weight and Fade Away into distant memory like a fart in the wind it's the events of 1966 and 1967 that perhaps most epitomizes the life cycle of football in the United States all the ingredients were there a big fat juicy attentive Market a slice of prime us investment only for it to be served with some out ofate salad in a Tesco value bun before we go into that though we need to go way back for some context contrary to popular belief football soccer was actually popular in the United States in the early

20th century and the origins of the game date back as far as the 1860s the beautiful game was initially popular in cities with a sizable immigrant population where the game began to grow most quickly with organized Regional leagues popping up around the country such as the Bristol County league in 1886 the St Louis League also in 1886 and the National Association football league in 1895 which was National only a name as the vast majority of teams were either from New York or New Jersey there was an attempt to form a truly National professional league in

1894 when owners of the National League of Professional Baseball clubs formed the American League of professional football however that lasted just 17 days the first proper go at a professional league in the country was attempted in 1921 at the time many of the teams from the afor mentioned National Association football league were getting a little miffed at the amateur nature of the division as well as the name so with encouragement from the United States Football Association they merged with the southern New England soccer league to form the American soccer league things were going pretty well

for the American soccer league at its peak attendances rivaled that of the NFL and the quality of football on display as well as high player salaries attracted a lot of professionals from over es particularly the UK however this sucking up of footballing Talent started to off FIFA particularly as some of the clubs in the ASL were signing foreign players while ignoring their pre-existing contracts to European sides this led to FIFA threatening to sanction the USFA which led to something called the soccer Wars which we'll no doubt cover in another episode sprinkle in a little bit

of the Great Depression and long story short football the United States completely imploded on itself the as SL collapsed in 1933 leaving US soccer a desolate land of minor leagues and constant ridicule from other countries football soccer would lie dormant in the United States for a number of decades until it was woken by an unlikely Source in the summer of 1966 a little known tournament was taking place across the pond in England the World Cup as it was known was broadcast to televisions across the United States presumably because they needed something to break up the

same 10 episode reruns of Batman and the Jetson despite this football World Cup having little to know marketing it stunned television boffins across the country by being largely popular with audiences the grown feeling that soccer may be an untapped Market in the US OFA was compounded following the success of the subsequent World Cup documentary goal in the country super rich investors sensed a sporting Gold Rush and ly prepared plans to capitalize on the sports burgeoning popularity in the United States three contenders quickly emerged with the hopes of forming a truly National topf Flight professional League

the first was the National American professional soccer league led by baseball investor bill Cox and businessman Robert Herman the second group the national soccer league was fronted by Richard Millan and the third and final group known confusingly as the North American soccer league led by serial Sports franchiser Jack Kent cook each of the candidates presented their plans to the United States Football Association which also confusingly had been renamed to the United States soccer Football Association in 1945 the ussfa which remarkably at the time consisted of just two members of Staff would have no doubt been

overwhelmed with the amount of attention that they were suddenly receiving the tiny Association had the mammoth responsibility of deciding what the future of US soccer would be you see being sanctioned by the ussfa would not only bring credibility from FIFA but also allow the league to operate within the global transfer system in the quote unquote proper manner something that was still a little bit sensitive given what happened 40 years earlier the ussfa and FIFA knew that three sanctioned football leagues launching would destroy any chance that soccer had in the United States so their initial solution

was to ask the three prospective leagues to merge into one Mega League however the reply they got from each of the delegates was a big fat no so suddenly realizing that they were dealing with businessmen decided to talk in terms that they'd understand in exchange for certification the ussfa demanded 10% of any television deals 4% of ticket sales as well as a flat $225,000 franchise fee from each of the sanctioned League's clubs Cox Herman and Millan almost fell off their metaphorical chairs at the figures thrown at them and refused to pay the extortionate fees put

forward by the ussfa Jack Kent cook and his North American soccer league Saw the space open up for a tap in and agreed to the US sfa's demands and so on the 19th of November 1966 the nasl was sanctioned as the Premier League of American soccer to avoid any name and confusion with the other failed bids the nasl was renamed to the United Soccer Association which again annoyingly for the sake of this video has the USA the USA the league not the country set about getting to business the original plan was to launch their new

football league in the spring of 1968 which would give them time to do all the boring ad mini bits of forming a league such as finding sponsors getting TV deals in place agreeing on Corner flag designs that kind of stuff but it wasn't going to be that easy the npsl and NSL weren't dead yet shortly after the USA announcement the two rejected leagues got their together decided that they could play along nicely after all and merg to formed the national professional soccer league or npsl much to everyone's surprise the npsl announced that they plan to

launched the league the following year in 1967 and even more surprisingly had signed a 2-year television deal with CBS the ussfa and FIFA were stunned they'd been completely blindsided by the Renegade Division and quickly moved to declare the npsl as an outlaw League however the train had already left the station npsl was already assembling a 10 Team league throwing money at Stadium owners coaches and players alike in order to get everything ready for kickoff the following spring the United Soccer Association knew that the tide was turning despite being sanctioned its owners felt that to let

the npsl have a solo run as a division in 1967 would allow it to capture the US soccer Market unchallenged its organizers scrambled and soon announced that they too would be launching their league in 1967 in an attempt to keep Pace with the npsl flash forward to April 1967 and the first of the two new major leagues of football in the United States prepare to launch a new dawn for American soccer the npsl launched with 10 teams competing to be crowned at naural Champions the Atlanta Chiefs Baltimore Bay Chicago Spurs Los Angeles Tauros New York

generals Oakland Clippers Philadelphia Spartans Pittsburgh Phantoms St Louis stars and Toronto Falcons hang on a minute Toronto what are you doing sneaking into the US League never mind come on in and take a seat next to the rest of these degenerates a few things to note about the npsl much like the current MLS it was split into two conferences the easy to remember eastern and western division which makes send up until the point you realize that the Toronto Falcons were playing in the Western Division despite being further east than both the Pittsburgh Phantoms and the

Atlanta Chiefs who played in the Eastern Division in an interesting scoring Quirk teams were awarded six points for a win three points for a draw and zero points for a loss and even quirkier in an attempt to encourage attacking football teams were awarded a bonus point for each goal scored up to a maximum of three per game this goes a long way to explain how the Oakland Clippers managed to top the western conference with a points total of 185 eat your heart out man city another fun Foy ball with the npsl was to do with

its television agreement less than a month into the new season referee Peter rhods admitted that 11 of the 21 fouls he had called in a previous match were done so to allow CBS to run ad breaks Peter not related to Cody rhs also went on to say that he had forced play to feain injury to serve the same purpose this makes the npsl the only league in football history where simulation was actively encouraged by officials a month later in May 1967 the second new new soccer league would kick off the United Soccer Association made less

drastic changes to footballing Traditions however that's not to say it wasn't without its own quirks realizing that they wouldn't have enough time to create teams from scratch like the npsl the USA came up with the novel idea of borrowing teams from other countries selling the league as a kind of pre-season competition to them so the 12 teams loan from around the world were Shamrock Rovers who became Boston Rovers Calgery who became Chicago Mustangs Stoke City who became Cleveland stokers dundy United who became Dallas tornado Glenn torren who became Detroit cougar bangu AC who became Houston

Stars wolver Hampton Wanderers who became Los Angeles wolves CA chero who became the New York Skyliners Ado denh har who became my favorit of the bunch San Francisco Golden Gate Gales Hibernian who became Toronto City Sunderland who became Vancouver oral Canadians and last but not least abdine who became the Washington whips so were the new league successful well as you can probably tell from the title of this video no despite both leagues having initially respectable audiences and broadcasting figures audiences very quickly turned off from American Sports latest play things as an example The Opening match

for the St Louis Stars sold 38,000 tickets however by the end of the season the average for the club would be just a fifth of that with the overall League averaging less than 5,000 fans per match over the season why were fans so quick to turn away from The Rebirth of soccer in the United States well there's probably a few reasons for that first and foremost the quality of football the standard of football in both leagues was far from good and for different reasons the hastily put together squads of the npsl despite having some Marky

signings clearly hadn't had enough time to gel and play together before the big kickoff leaving fans journalists and even the CBS commentators to chastise the quality of football being played out in front of them the USA had a different problem few of the players had any interest in giving it 100% for a new competition with with little credibility team saw the USA as a preseason warm-up and played accordingly reason number two credibility admittedly this is mainly the npsl at fault for this one the bonker's point system as well as questions over broadcasters affecting the sporting

Integrity of each match very much hurt the nsp's Integrity as a serious sporting event which in turn damaged its relationship with existing football fans to compound this both leagues fail to present homegrown talent in fact there were very few Americans playing at all which again would have been a turnoff for the Patriotic American audience reason number three oversaturation of football to put it simply there's now too much football for the new audience to take not only did the unfamiliar American audience have to get their Collective heads around literally a brand new ball game but the

two separate League systems were too confusing and too much to handle for the new market the two leagues were were a financial bust investors and officials were left scratching their heads as to where it all went wrong with a year left on their television deal with CBS the owners of the npsl decided to have another swing at making soccer great again but this time by cooperating with their football league Rivals rather than competing with them in December 1967 the mpsl and the USA merged to create a new 17 team Super League known as the nasl

surely the combined of these two entities would be able to finally crack the American soccer market right right well not really after a flop of the first season in 1968 10 teams folded and two decided to just play friendlies which meant only five teams competed for the 1969 title the nsal would go on to have multiple ups and downs before it too folded in 1984 but that's a story for another day so there you have it despite setting the groundwork for having a popular and exciting League system the USA has failed on multiple occasions to

capitalize on its potential success with the nspl USA perhaps being the most notorious example which leads me to ask the question has the MLS finally Crack the Code of the US soccer shaped puzzle or will it be another full stor for football in the United States well the men's game anyway the women seem to have had their together for decades thank you very much for watching every time I do one of these outros I'm genuinely astonished by how much support the channel has had and how much it's grown now past 25,000 subscribers which is phenomenal

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