If I had a nickel for every time I heard an American make an excuse for MLS by saying “Well, the league isn’t as old as other leagues,” I’d be a rich man.

Launched in 1996, Major League Soccer is celebrating its 30th season this year. In that time, the league has grown to become a permanent fixture in American sports. With the 30th team (San Diego) joining its ranks this year, the league’s greatest achievement has been its permanance. At its going rate, it’s on a path to exponential growth as it expands its reach from youth soccer through to its controlling relationship with US Soccer Federation.

So, what’s with all of the excuses by MLS fans who answer most criticism with explaining how young the league is? It’s an automatic defense mechanism used by many to avoid explaining the league’s shortcomings. By trying to change the topic to focus on the age of the league, it’s their attempt to deflect the criticism.

I get that a league that is more than 100 years old has an advantage over MLS that is 30 years old, but at what time in the future will its age excuse end? Thirty years is a long time in the soccer world. Japan’s J-League launched 33 years ago, but we don’t hear Japanese soccer fans whining that they’re not a big league because “they’ve only been around for 33 years.” 

MLS has a lot of positive things going for the league, but the willingness of the MLS fans and media to give them a free ride because “the league is only 30 years old” needs to stop. It’s time to take off the training wheels and to realize that MLS is old enough now to be evaluated on its own merits.

100 years of soccer history

Most criticisms of MLS are met with a “Well, those other leagues are older than MLS, so of course they’re bigger” response.

However, it’s not the rest of the world’s fault that the United States has had a history of mismanaging its soccer leagues. The English Football League (EFL) was founded in 1888 and is still going strong. But while MLS fans and Americans who like to make excuses about MLS quickly retort that “MLS has only been around 30 years, so it doesn’t have the history that other countries have,” soccer in the United States has, in fact, a history as long as those in most European countries.

The golden age of soccer in the United States was in the 1920s when it was one of the most popular sports here. Soccer ranked second only to baseball in the early 20th century.

Except for the periods of success for the NASL in the late 1970s and early 1980s, as well as MLS’ success rate from 2002, when it shut down two teams, to now, the popularity of the sport declined since the 1930s due to disagreements between professional leagues. Sadly, that infighting between separate leagues has been ongoing in US soccer for the last 100 years. And it’s still continuing with the soccerwarz now between MLS and USL as evidenced by last year’s US Open Cup debacle, as well as NASL’s court case against MLS and US Soccer that is in trial this week.

Given the long history of different soccer leagues fighting against each other since the 1920s, the popularity of soccer declined from the number two spot to the fifth most popular sport. A large part of the blame falls on the US Soccer Federation, who has been an absentee landlord where it prioritizes its focus on the national teams instead of governing the club game.

Time to put an end to the excuses

In future discussions about MLS and how it can improve, don’t fall for the “soccer doesn’t have a 100+ year history in this country” excuse. The United States has a very rich history of soccer from the late 1800s to now (look through the research records of the Society for American Soccer History if you want to learn more).

So while it’s important to look at the past, it’s more important to remember that “The only way to predict the future is to learn from the past.” Imagine, for example, if all of the professional leagues in England weren’t connected. Each of them was working independently to try to establish themselves as a Division 1 league with no promotion or relegation between each league. It would be mass chaos.

That’s precisely what we have in the United States where MLS operates on its own as one of the best (or worst, depending on your viewpoint) super leagues where teams are only allowed to participate by paying hundreds of millions of dollars to join. Meanwhile, you have USL with its many different divisions acting independently, and the dormant NASL fighting for its life in court. That doesn’t even include the other leagues who are all unconnected such as NISA, NPSL, etcetera.

The mass chaos and lack of leadership from the US Soccer Federation only helps to grow MLS as it’s the league that’s featured most prominently and benefits from building strong fanbases in many of the cities where it has teams.

But the next time you hear someone start with the “MLS is only 30 years old” excuse, be sure to answer them back and ask them how many years will it take for the league to stop using that as an excuse.

Photo credit: Adidas