Only One Football

Major League Soccer is expanding at a rate of about one team per year, and despite the uncertain economic situation in the world, is showing no signs of slowing down.  When a major sports league in the USA adds new franchises, one of the laments of the anti-expansion die-hards is that the talent pool is diluted and the quality of play in the league overall will suffer.

When Major League Baseball added the Arizona Diamondbacks and Tampa Bay Devil Rays so soon after the Florida Marlins and Colorado Rockies joined the MLB, traditionalists in that sport’s audience cried foul.  Despite having access to a global pool of talent unprecedented in the history of baseball, the league has held firm at 30 teams with talk of contraction rather than expansion more fresh on the minds of pundits.

American Football’s NFL added the Jacksonville Jaguars and Carolina Panthers in 1995, the league’s first expansion since 1976 when it added the Seattle Seahawks and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.  The NFL sits at a very even 32 teams and the prospect of expansion only comes up in discussions of adding teams in Los Angeles or Toronto.  American Football can only mine the USA for any significant talent base but one could make that case that the NCAA and Arena Football develop enough talent to add a few more teams.

The NBA and NHL have similar settled on 30 teams both drawing on a talent pool with greater depth outside of North America.  This past season, the MLS played with 14 teams and will see Seattle Sounders FC take the number up to 15 clubs for the 2009 season.  Philadelphia will join in 2010, with two more expansion teams joining by the 2011 season.  That will take Major League Soccer up to 18 teams.  Such rapid expansion, writes some soccer pundits, will impact the quality of play in MLS.

The reality is though that there is no reason why rapid expansion needs to adversely impact the MLS’ talent pool.  The reality is that no sport on Earth has the depth of global talent available that soccer owns.  A glance down the rosters of the clubs in the English Premier League shows players coming from every nook and crany of the globe.  As long as Major League Soccer is able to bring in enough quality talent from around the world to supplement the North American players, there is no reason why MLS cannot grow even beyond the 30-32 team norm of the mature major pro sports leagues in North America.

There are more than enough great candidate cities for future MLS teams in North America:  the current crop of expansion hopefuls including Miami, St. Louis, Portland, Atlanta, Ottawa and Vancouver;  Cities that have had major expansion rumblings including New York City, Montreal, Las Vegas and Phoenix;  USL cities like Cleveland, Tampa, Rochester, Austin, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Charlotte, Minneapolis/St. Paul and Richmond;  Other major North American sports cities like Detroit, Milwaukee, New Orleans, Calgary, San Diego, Nashville/Memphis and San Francisco.