At top professional soccer league started in the USA under the umbrella of the United States Soccer Federation (USSF) around 1968. This league was called the North American Soccer League (NASL) I was fortunate enough to play in the league from 1976 to 1979 with the Toronto Metros Croatia and Toronto Blizzard. While playing with Toronto Metros Croatia, won the Soccer Bowl in 1976.
The league hit its peak in expansion teams in the 1978 season having 24 teams competing nationally. The great signing of international soccer players like Pele, Franz Beckenbauer, Carlos Alberto, Giorgio Chinaglia, Johan Cruyff, Johan Neeskens, Gerd Muller, Bobby Moore, Eusebio, George Best. All national team players.
Unfortunately for the league, all the millions of dollars that were spent on transfer fees and high salaries for these great international soccer players couldn’t cover their season expenses with the attendance income, sponsorships, and tv revenues, so the league folded in 1984
Eventually a new league was relaunched in 1986 called Major League Soccer (MLS) with 10 teams. Currently in 2022the MLS has 28 teams playing this season.
The success of the MLS is derived from the single entity corporate structure that has been implemented since the league was launched.
This means the league owns all of the teams and player contracts as one legal entity. The clubs themselves are not actually independently legal entities. This structure has been very successful for the league to this point. Currently, a new franchise price fee is over 300 million dollars.
In the US there are over 4 million players registered with the United States Soccer Federation.
Because in the USA, there is a high number of registered soccer players and a limited number of professional soccer teams to play for I highly recommend to all talented youth soccer players to join the Oviedo City Soccer Academy in Spain. This academy can prepare them to get to the next level and fulfill their dreams of becoming a professional soccer player.
The Oviedo City Soccer Academy will provide each soccer player training sessions from September 2022 to June 2023 as well as room and board, 5 days a week of soccer training sessions with top-quality UEFA Pro license coaches.
Also, there will be additional soccer training sessions in the afternoon and will be available for players that are selected to train with the Oviedo City FC first team. The official league games will be also available for the selected players.
The soccer training sessions will be in English and Spanish.
Spanish conversational classes will be provided during the duration of the program.