USL starts Saturday

Amidst the American soccer landscape, the USL is not often seen or heard compared to MLS... which is not often seen or heard compared to mainstream sports... but nevermind that.

Anyway, the USL did make some noise internationally, however, as Montreal and Puerto Rico did well in their respective CONCACAF Champions League efforts and made MLS look bad in the process. MLS had one-of-four teams in the knockout rounds, and that team (Houston) whimpered out quietly and predictably enough.

Still, Puerto Rico and Montreal eventually crashed out to Mexican teams as well but made their series interesting and gained respect in the process.

Now with USL opening up, where does each team stand with regards to the rest of the first division? Will it be a Puerto Rico-Montreal final? I'm not sure, to be honest, but you can read this informative preview on USL from Inside Minnesota Soccer, which has a season preview for the USL, which kicks off on Saturday (thanks to the awesome Bunky County for this link).

Of course, there's no USL-1 team in Southern California, so this has always made it a bit difficult to keep tabs with. But I have to say Montreal and Puerto Rico's collective efforts made me realize that the USL is a competitive league worth following, or at least attempt to follow.

An idiot AND a retard

Remember last week when I told you all that I get called an idiot on a weekly basis?

I don't lie.

Just got this in my inbox. It actually made me laugh.

You are an idiot for even suggesting that USL is better than MLS. Ever heard of the US Open Cup? Has Puerto Rico won a semifinal series yet? Well then they haven't done any better than MLS has. Only retards ignore history.

No half-hearted effort

Usually when I write something I expect to get feedback from, I am alerted by some e-mail that my SI.com column has been posted.

This time, I beat myself to the punch. My USL/CCL column is up.

Here's the link, but I have yet to get any response.

My favorite line from the story:

"Our teams didn't go into this -- just like they don't go into the [U.S.] Open Cup or the Canadian Cup -- as a half-assed exercise," Marcos said. "It's real. It's a way to vindicate themselves. It's a way to prove that they belong."

Believe

The last two days, I've been consumed with the USL. I'd never really given it much thought outside of Open Cup. I suppose since we don't have a team here locally, at least not in USL-1, it's sort of an out-of-sight, out-of-mind phenomenon.

But I'm starting to come around to thinking that the gap between MLS and the USL is very small.

Since Seattle tore apart Chivas and Colorado and nearly beat Dallas in the 2007 Open Cup, I paid more attention to the USL. I even wrote a column on the Sounders' run for the Press-Enterprise. USL teams knocking out MLS teams in the Open Cup is no surprise to me anymore, since MLS teams don't care about the USOC nearly as much as USL teams do.

There's more to it than just caring and wanting to win, though. USL teams are strong, stronger than many give them credit for. It's not a crackpot, glorified Sunday rec league. And if it is, well, MLS is too.

MLS has so many more advantages than the USL in terms of money and finances and players and talent and even within the scant media coverage given to soccer. MLS is more likely to get mentioned on sports highlights shows than USL.

Yet it's the USL teams who have been the story of this tournament, along with the Mexican teams of course. But the latter were expected to compete, to be there at the end, to continue to set the standard in CONCACAF. Not the USL. The second division. The place where MLS washouts go to prolong their careers.

I don't want to steal any of my own thunder as I wrote a column on this for SI.com. I talked to USL President Francisco Marcos at length yesterday, an interesting and great conversation. You'll have to wait for the SI.com column to come out, but Marcos did say that he thought for a while that if USL teams had the same chance as MLS teams, we'd see what we're seeing now. Something that didn't make it into the column:

Marcos said: I want to make it clear that to enter the competition was always something that was very important to us, just as it is important for our teams to enter the US Open Cup and to do as well as we can because given the overall problem, if I can label it a problem, of not having promotion and relegation, the only way we were going to be able to have any kind of comparative measure or to be able to show to the rest of the world that we to belong somewhere was by being able to play in the same competition where the MLS teams play and where other countries' first division or whatever the case may be also play.

And what happened when USL was allowed entry into the same international tournament as MLS?

Well, only four teams are left in the CCL. Three are Mexican. The other sure as hell isn't from MLS. It's Puerto Rico who rounds out the quartet.

But hey, MLS is the better league, right? MLS has caught up to the Mexican league because... uh what was that... oh yeah, SuperLiga. Right. Forgot about that.

Well, MLS can have the made-for-TV SuperLiga.

USL will be off playing with the big boys.

He's a believer

I had a great conversation with USL President Francisco Marcos earlier this morning. While I can't put some of what he said regarding his overall thoughts on Puerto Rico's run and his league and the CONCACAF Champions League here right now, I did have the opportunity to talk to him about Montreal tonight and how he feels about their chances.

I wrote up a story for that for Goal.com. I'll have a column on some of the other stuff on SI.com tomorrow.

As far as Montreal goes, if they score one goal, it would force Santos to score four in order to win. They do have an opportunity to advance and make the CCL semis a USL-Mexico affair... well, it already is an exclusive USL-Mexico party but it could be two teams apiece instead of three Mexican teams and one USL representative.

This USL-MLS discussion is far from over, friends. And the USL is not a crackpot second-rate league either.