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Late last week the North American Soccer League announced they were denied their request to become a Division 2 league; in reaction to this, the NASL cancelled their 2018 season as a whole.
The league said in a press release on February 27th, “The focus of the antitrust suit to date has been obtaining a preliminary injunction to save the 2018 Season. Unfortunately, with USSF’s decision and the loss of the preliminary injunction, playing the 2018 Season is no longer a possibility.”
Some speculation surrounding this leads us to believe that this happened not only because they were not allowed to be a Division 2 team but also because some of their teams had recently left their league to join other teams, like the New York Cosmos who joined with Miami FC. In addition to this they have also recently lost teams who moved to the USL, like North Carolina FC and the Indy Eleven.
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This decision leaves a lot of players and coaches without anywhere to play or coach for the 2018 season, leaving them needing to find another club. Some former RSL and Real Monarchs players you may know such as Devon Sandoval and Wellington Paeckart play for these teams and won’t be in action this season.
This leaves the NASL in a pretty tough spot, and they are unsure if they will be able to recover from this. Potentially, this could be the end of the NASL as we know it. Since MLS and USL joined together many of their teams to create an upbringing system, the former second-division league has been struggling severely to stay afloat. With attendance down, and even their own teams leaving their league, it’s been tough for the NASL to keep running.
We wish these teams and their staff the best in whatever their futures hold.