So, it’s fair to say that the landscape of soccer in the United States was shaken up a little bit last week as the USL announced their intention to launch a Division One league in 2027-28, moving alongside the MLS who up until now were the only Division One outfit under the eyes of the U.S Soccer Federation. 

It should be pointed out that it is still a proposal at this stage, and what the final product looks like in terms of the number of teams, where they will be playing and so on won’t become clear for some time. 

Speaking to Riverhounds president Jeff Garner on Wednesday, who had literally flown back from a Board of Governors meeting in Atlanta the day before, he helped to explain the initial developments and clarified that this was not a decision made by the teams, similar to the proposed European Super League a few years back, but by the league itself. However that isn’t to say that the teams were taken completely by surprise as this is something that has been muted for some time now: 

“Currently we are part of the USL Championship. The USL is its own entity. The USL, not the Riverhounds, the USL, is planning to create a Division One league. It has nothing necessarily to do with us from a planning standpoint or a launch standpoint, so we didn't vote, we didn't have a say in whether they did it or not. 

“Now what I would say is, over the past few years there certainly has been a conversation among teams that we’re interested in exploring promotion and relegation and we’re interested in what a Division One would look like, and so I think the majority of teams, I can't speak for everybody, but the majority of teams are in favour of something like this. 

“There are a lot of details to figure out, but we have confidence that the league is going to continue to work through those. The league U.S Soccer and we are really just excited about it. It's going to be a fantastic step forward.”

The one thing that struck me in this response, was the mention that this has essentially been in the works ‘over the past few years’ as he says, which led me to ask if the Riverhounds have been future-proofing for this possibility all along. 

As you may or may not be aware, the team is in the process of expanding Highmark Stadium to 15,000, which just so happens to be the minimum required for Division One. As Garner put it though, it wasn’t deliberate that the two concepts lined up so well, but it wasn’t a coincidence either: 

“There was not a direct connection. The indirect connection is that we were hopeful a move like this would happen at some point in the future and that we needed to expand the stadium. So if we're going to expand, let's expand to meet the Division One standard of 15,000 seats. 

“I've said multiple times when most people would say ‘Oh well, you want to go to the MLS’, not necessarily. I had thought the more likely outcome was that the USL would create a Division One. Now, what form that would take? I had no idea. But this was our hope that this opportunity would come, and when it did, we would be prepared from an infrastructure standpoint to move into that league. 

“We're not anywhere near knowing if we're going to do that or not, there's a lot of details to be figured out, but it was considered indirectly. We didn't have any earlier knowledge, we weren't aware it was happening on this timeline, but it does line up pretty nicely with where we'll be at. The management of the Riverhounds has done a good job planning for the future strategically.”