Scan the American soccer blogosphere any given week and you're likely to come across something that hits on at least one of the following topics:

Promotion/Relegation

Youth Development

Signing/Finding Talent


Sometimes, the pieces written on these subjects are intelligent, well-reasoned, and unique. More often than not, however, they're none of the above; predominantly, they're shallow, naive, simplistic, and ignore serious problems with the approaches they present.


Although not a blogger in the usual sense, Jimmy Conrad has decided to weigh in with his own thoughts on each of the above mentioned topics. It's the question everyone wants to ask, and so many think they might have the answer to: How do we, the American soccer community, take the game to the next level in this country?


Jimmy's first suggestion, a two-tiered MLS that includes promotion and relegation, goes nowhere unique, even if it is a reasonable approach to the "problem". But Conrad, who says twenty MLS teams could be divided into two leagues of ten, glosses over that tricky issue of forcing certain teams to start in the second division, using arbitrary criteria and exceptions to determine the split of first level and second level clubs.


Where Conrad has struck a chord was with his second two suggestions, both related directly to player development; unfortunately though, the prerequisite action, having MLS become a "monopoly" by buying up every professional American soccer league (including indoor), is so large a leap for MLS that it makes me cringe to read it. Why would an organization that imposes strict budgetary control and limits costs in every way possible step up and make such a large financial commitment? The league's owners may have deep pockets individually, but they have shown that as a collective group frugality wins out over all else. The move makes sense as a way to gain control and restructure an American soccer pyramid that has entirely too many cooks in the kitchen at the moment, but it would also be incredibly expensive. It's tantalizingly visionary, but depressingly impossible.


Delving into Conrad's thoughts on what to do with those lower division and indoor leagues once they're under the MLS umbrella seems pointless because it's so unlikely, but he does make solid suggestions for how to help young players gain crucial experience. Most unique is his thought on having young MLS player under a certain threshold of playing time in the outdoor season (he set this as 1,000 minutes) play indoor during the winter; with the greater pressure and faster pace of indoor soccer, the idea is that young players will improve their skills, speed up their development, and be better prepared to play in Major League Soccer. I can find no fault with Conrad's logic.


Following this portion of his column, Conrad asks a cynical question that had certainly run through the mind of many an MLS fan:

What is the main goal of having MLS in place? Is it about land and money and tax write-offs, or is it about something more?

Conrad closes out with his thoughts on the draft, calling for it to end and end immediately. I agree wholeheartedly, and find Conrad's suggestions for signing college players reasonable. My thoughts on the draft continue to be that it does not force MLS clubs to build a proper development system, and the longer they wait, the longer it will be until MLS is able to completely stand on its own as a respectable and established professional football league. Delaying the inevitable is doing MLS no good, and the first step in making the clubs learn to fly is to push them out of the nest without the net of the draft to catch them.


Again, Jimmy treads no ground that hasn't been covered many, many times before. But he does present specific ideas on how to make the system better, and while deeper analysis, not to mention that annoying business a multi-million dollar investement, might poke holes in his concepts, it's nice to see someone who actually plays the game step out with radical thoughts.


I'm curious as to what the MFUSA readership makes of Conrad's vision of the future, so don't hold back.