http://www.espn.com/soccer/united-states/story/3665748/united-states-canada-mexico-could-form-combined-league-after-2026-world-cup

President of Liga MX discusses potential for combined professional league of MLS and Liga MX.

Let's face it. This has about a 1% chance of happening but man it would be pretty awesome if it did.

It would obviously need promotion/relegation, which unfortunately won't happen.

This. American franchises could not withstand the reality of relegation -- at least not in the short term.

My one criticism of the MLS is that it could use more surface area. The teams are just bunched too closely together.

I hear you but consider:

1) MLS will do anything that it thinks will get them more money. If buddying up with Liga MX gets more money in their pockets (and there's a strong case to be made it would), they'll figure out a way to do it.

2) Liga MX's existing promotion/relegation structure is extremely forgiving. Only one team gets relegated and the way they calculate that is based on looking back at results for the last 3 years (unless you're a recently promoted team in which case they look at only your results since you've been in Liga MX). That means it is extremely difficult for an established, high profile club to get relegated.

I could easily see MLS decision makers saying "You know what, I'm more than happy to send down one team a year especially since I know that it likely won't be A) a "big team" and B) will likely be a newly promoted team especially if it means that my attendance numbers, commercial dollars, etc. all double because I'm playing in a league with the likes of Chivas, America, Monterrey, etc."

It's all about the money and if MLS feels the financial windfall is big enough, they'll gladly agree to a limited Liga MX promotion/relegation structure.

It is a very intriguing idea that if pulled off well would really great. How awesome would it be, for example,to host a regular-season match at BBVA against the real Chivas!

The one thing I can never see happening under any circumstances, however, are existing MLS franchising agreeing to any system that could even under the remotest of possibilities ever see themselves being relegated to effectively minor league status.

If a "merger" were to happen I think it would go down something like this:

- While some things (like marketing and television deals, league rules of play, player discipline, training and assigning of officials for games) would be combined under the new umbrella organization, to a significant extent the leagues would continue function independently much like Major League Baseball did for most of the 20th century.

- Liga MX teams would all be in one "conference" together and the MLS teams would constitute the other "conference." While teams would largely compete within their own conference for most of the regular season, perhaps as many as 8-10 matches would be "inter-league" matches which would count as regular matches in the tables.

- At the end of the regular season the top teams from each conference play in their own playoffs to determine a conference champ with the two champs meeting in a final two-leg series to determine the overall North American champ.

- Under this arrangement the Liga MX "conference" could even still haverelegation/promotion (like it functions currently) within their "conference" while the MLS conference would not... and the conferences wouldn't even have to have the same number of teams.

- To me the more difficult issues to work out would be things like labor issues, trades, drafts, transfers, youth development systems and access to those players, and whatever political/legal issues would come up as a result of being in three different countries. Even something as simple as American players not willing to be traded to Mexican clubs and vice versa could be much more problematic an issue and much more frequent a problem than say being traded between a US/Canadian clubs.

Dre_00 said:

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2) Liga MX's existing promotion/relegation structure is extremely forgiving. Only one team gets relegated and the way they calculate that is based on looking back at results for the last 3 years (unless you're a recently promoted team in which case they look at only your results since you've been in Liga MX). That means it is extremely difficult for an established, high profile club to get relegated.

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I'll be candid in admitting that I know little about Liga MX's promotion and relegation structure. I just assumed that it was more brutal European style (bottom three get dropped or bottom two get dropped and next team has to have a home and home for the last spot).

If you could rig it so that an aspirational team with a solid front office could make a run into the top flight but usually and predictably get dropped, I think it might work. That gives you the ability to get more fans rallying around a high-flying F.C. Dubuqe, Iowa. But the problem is the risk of dropping mid-market MLS teams that have bad runs.

My worry, is how this is perceived here at home.

American interest has been slowly/steadily growing. If we combine with Liga MX, will it be viewed as a "non-American" sport by a large swath of the population? I wonder if it will create difficulty marketing and gaining interest by the casual fans (or non-fans we'd like to win over)?

I'm also not sure who it benefits more.

I'd argue that the large swath you are talking about already considers it a "non-American" sport so this really won't do anything to change that if they have. And it won't appreciable change their likelihood to stop considering it a "non-American" sport.

Liga MX is, by far, the most watched soccer league in the US. There's a huge market there...much larger than the large swath I think you are referring to. It won't happen overnight but the only way to get those fans interested in US based clubs is to compete and succeed against Mexico based clubs on a consistent basis. And if US based clubs do that, I'd wager that they would draw more of that large swath because they'll be competing and winning at a much higher level...and everyone likes a winner.

It's completely reasonable to assume that if a club like the Seattle Sounders go up against the like of Chivas and Club America in meaningful competitions and win on a consistent basis, that they will draw interest from soccer fans across all demographics...Liga MX fans and non Liga MX fans alike.

I understand that argument, and do think that will be the case for some. But I think that increased interest/excitement will be mostly existing fans. Not that it's a bad thing. But I dont thinkn it's going to get new fans to start paying attention.

I have buddies who always called it 'futbol/football' because they didnt considering it an American Sport. But as the years have gone on, they've started paying attention and even following the sport. That's happened a lot over the last decade, as we've seen numbers climb across the MLS.

Maybe it won't have much of an effect, but I'm a little wary.

blindey said:

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If you could rig it so that an aspirational team with a solid front office could make a run into the top flight but usually and predictably get dropped, I think it might work. That gives you the ability to get more fans rallying around a high-flying F.C. Dubuqe, Iowa. But the problem is the risk of dropping mid-market MLS teams that have bad runs.

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Yep, that's more or less what Liga MX already does. It's not impossible to get promoted to the top flight and stay there but you have to be a fantastically run club or a sugar daddy owner who just pours heaps of money into it. And yeah sure, you run the risk of a team like say....my beloved Dynamo...getting relegated into the abyss at that team's expense but a team like the Galaxy, Sounders, Toronto FC, etc. would never be at a serious threat of relegation.

And as much as MLS' single entity structure wants to protect all of their owner/investors I have no doubt they'd be happy to throw a team like the Dynamo into the abyss if it meant 1) they get a replacement team that likely has more worth 2) they'd never have to worry about a big team going down and 3) agreeing to such a structure trebled the leagues income just through the mere addition of teams like Chivas.

MLS and the American viewing public going to be amenable to clausura/aptertura and not playing in much of the summer anymore?