North American Soccer League – Take Two

The rumors were true (another one), the North American Soccer League is back…kinda.

I know some of you are putting your faces in your hands and groaning, and if you follow basketball you have a good reason to. The second coming of the once celebrated American Basketball Association has been nothing short of a complete and utter disaster, just take a look at the list of defunct ABA teams. With that said, I trust Joey Saputo and Traffic Sports more than I trust Joe Newman.

The reaction from the American soccer public has been mixed, to say the least. Some appear to be willing to give the new league a chance while others, understandably, wonder why the new league would want to associate itself with what many people view to have been a failure.

I don’t really blame the TOA for going down this road though, lately it seems America is obsessed with sports nostalgia, nearly every team in the “big three” has throwback uniforms that they break out every once in awhile, and the NFL is openly celebrating the history of the AFL. So it makes some sense. Individual teams have recaptured pieces of the NASL with great success, notably the Seattle Sounders, Portland Timbers, and Vancouver Whitecaps, the latter of whom will play one season in the new NASL before moving on to join the other two in Major League Soccer for 2011.

I’ve always been of the opinion that the more teams we have, the better for soccer in this country, but that’s only true when the leagues involved aren’t continually throwing barbs at one another and constantly trying to one up the other, that’s when spending gets out of control and teams start folding like crazy.

I’ll give it a chance, as long as they agree to call the Silverbacks the Chiefs.