Seven teams — some established, some brand new — will enter MLS Next Pro for its sophomore season on Friday. What kind of journey will they be embarking on?
In one respect, MLS Next Pro is part of a new assembling order in MLS, with the league serving as a bridge for MLS academy players needing development en route an MLS first-team — albeit tied more closely to those parent clubs than United Soccer League affiliates or college options. It’s a league that MLS Next Pro president Charles Altchek declares has “now completed the pro player pathway.”
But it’s also a bit of a petri dish, featuring a range of innovative new rules to fuel competition and perhaps solve some of the timewasting issues that diminish, however slightly, the world’s game.
Altchek, speaking to The Striker in the lead-up to the league’s opening night, talked of four pillars guiding MLS Next Pro and its 27 teams for the 2023 season. As far ranging as those principles are, it starts with development.
But even there, he notes “it’s not just about players. It's about the coaching staff and technical staff and business staff and everybody around the sport who wants to make it to the next level on and off the field.”
The league also has a pillar devoted to relationships with local communities, and as new entrants to MLS Next Pro demonstrate, that manifests in different ways.
For Nashville SC, it’s about creating a franchise in Huntsville, Ala. — nearly two hours away — to strengthen its connections in its section of the South. For LAFC 2, it’s about decoupling its affiliation with Las Vegas Lights to develop its future stars closer to Hollywood. For Austin FC II and Charlotte’s Crown Legacy FC, it’s about tapping into already-robust soccer markets and providing additional programming featuring players that a number of fans have already gotten to know.
Atlanta United 2, LA Galaxy II and New York Red Bulls II, three well-established clubs formerly completing in USL, are coming to the expanded MLS Next Pro to nearly complete the full set of MLS teams with Next Pro reps. Only D.C. United, with plans to join in 2024, and CF Montréal will be without an MLS Next Pro team when Austin FC II hosts in-state rivals Houston on Friday night for the season’s first match at 8 p.m..
A pillar emphasizing equity, diversity and inclusion seeks to extend hallmarks of MLS’s overall corporate identity.
The innovation piece, however, might be the most fascinating pillar for observers in 2023 — and thanks to MLS’s deal with Apple, MLS Next Pro has the potential to get a lot more visibility than it did in its debut season.
That puts pressure on the league to think about production values for its matches … especially with its Friday and Sunday matches being potential companion programming for MLS fans wanting matches on those days — something that's been more sparse with MLS’s Apple-driven Saturday focus.
'The right kind of pressure'
“What this league is all about is creating the right kind of pressure for everybody involved to develop and prove that they're ready for the next level. And that is all encompassing, on and off the field. It's all about creating pressure for the players, for the coaches, for the front offices, for the broadcast people, the marketing people, the fan development folks, that ticket selling folks, the sponsorship folks and everybody at the league office to improve and get better.
“And so what the Apple deal is doing beyond just being an amazing platform and being partnered with the most innovative and iconic technology company in the world,” he continued, “is that it's pushing us all to be better and to put a better product out there, to have better stadium environments and better facilities and all those kinds of things.”
Because MLS Next Pro doesn’t have the same guardrails on salary rules as MLS, teams can be more creative about how they build their rosters. While it is a natural place for MLS academy players to graduate, it’s not exclusively a waystation between the academy and the first team, and has a much broader pool of players than 18-to-22-year-olds weighing college, USL and MLS Next Pro as options.
Altchek points to Crown Legacy FC’s recent acquisition of midfielder Nikola Petković, a Serbian international who signed with Charlotte FC’s new MLS Next Pro team rather than with the senior club – a move that the club’s technical director Bobby Belair characterized as “a great example of how we are approaching MLS Next Pro strategically through alignment with the first team and long-term roster planning.”
Answering the call 🇷🇸
— Crown Legacy FC (@crownlegacyfc) March 15, 2023
Congrats Nikola Petković on getting called up to the Serbian U-21 National Team!https://t.co/D3M4g0DgYD
Shootouts are back
The league’s bringing back one of its primary differentiating features in 2023 — not allowing matches to end in draws. According to the league’s release, “Shootouts using kicks from the penalty mark will return this season to decide a match that is tied after regulation. Both teams will receive one point each for the tie, with the winner of the shootout receiving one additional point (two points total).”
The release also notes that “In 2022, 20% of matches resulted in a shootout,” as Altchek observed, the additional points that were available to teams via shootout wins were difference makers in the final playoff landscape.
Speaking of playoffs, MLS Next Pro’s turned some heads with a playoff format wrinkle in 2023 — the ability for top seeds to select their playoff opponents.
“The purpose of that is is twofold,” he explained. “One is to to force our teams to be really deliberate about who they want to play, as opposed to just being a perfunctory straight line where one plays seven and two plays six … and so they have to decide who their opposition is going to be in the first few rounds. Is it is it the lower seed or is it the second lowest seed? … and then you're gonna have to explain to your fans if you lose that game, why you made that decision.”
He then added, “From a fan engagement perspective, our plan is to create some really compelling content around that, kind of our own version of Decision Day, and having the teams be very deliberate and public about who they're picking and they can explain to us why, and that's good.” While details are still forthcoming on when and how that happens, there’s certainly potential for that to be compelling streaming.
'More soccer, more action'
Other rules, carrying over from their mid-season implementation last year, deal with substitutions and other situations when the ball’s not in play.
The Red Card Suspension Rule means that if a player receives a red card in a Next Pro, he will serve the resulting one-game suspension against that same opponent, rather than applying the punishment to the next match.
The Off-field Treatment Rule will continue from last year, holding that "If a player is suspected of having an injury and is on the ground for longer than 15 seconds, medical personnel will come onto the field to evaluate the player and assist him off. Once the player is off the field, the player will be treated by the medical staff and will be required to remain off the field for three minutes."
Added to that this year is the Timed Substitution Rule, which will allow "a maximum of 10 seconds for a player to leave the field when he is substituted" — though the player can exit the field from anywhere. The rule also notes, "If the player does not leave the field of play within the 10 seconds, the replacement player will only be able to enter after a 60-second holding period, resulting in the offending team playing a man down for a minimum of one minute."
Though timewasting is a momentum-killing tactic currently residing within the gray areas of soccer, as fans of Concacaf Champions League matches can attest, MLS Next Pro is willing to test out rules with the potential to improve the game everywhere.
Altchek noted once the Off-field Treatment Rule became part of league competition last year, “the instances of the game being stopped because a player needed medical attention went down significantly from before the rule was in place and stayed consistent through the playoffs.”
Noting that it was different from the current MLS landscape, he added, “The idea is if the rule continues to have the impact on the game in a positive way, which is about more soccer, more action — and less dead time or downtime or no soccer — then it could be that that rule ends up in Major League Soccer as early as next year.”
A future with 60 teams?
For Altchek, who will be at Austin’s opener on Friday night before heading to Charlotte ahead of Crown Legacy FC’s Sunday debut, the possibilities are exciting and — while not quite boundless — certainly with the potential for the league to grow much larger.
Even though the league’s only non-MLS-affiliated club, Rochester New York FC, announced March 10 it will not be part of the 2023 season, an independent club based in High Point, N.C. will join the league in 2024 and a second independent club in Cleveland is on board to join the league in 2025.
“Our ambition is to grow this league meaningfully,” Altcheck noted, “So if you’re using round numbers, if you have 30 MLS-affiliated teams competing in MLS Next Pro, we'd like to have another 30 independent teams on top of that competing in MLS Next Pro over time.”
Noting that 60 teams could open up questions about multiple leagues under the Next Pro umbrella, Altchek’s excited about those prospects.
“There are so many things for us to look forward to; there are so many ways for us to be creative," he added. “And we're looking forward to all that, whether it's new cup competitions, new cross-conference, cross-division, cross-league play … there are so many things that we can do that we'll be able to do with that kind of scale, but we have to do it the right way. So that's what we're focused on now.”
