Good point. Having trouble deciding where to play isn’t nearly as bad as having nowhere to play.

But man, with the NCAA, PDL, NPSL, USL, NASL, and MLS, the American Soccer Pyramid is one wacky looking structure. However, as long as our clubs don’t go bust, our players develop and get paid what their worth, and our national team is competitive, I’m happy.

What about the “Minnesota BUZZers” with a big August yellow-jacket as their logo (but better than Edina’s).

Grant—nicely put.

Maybe instead of Thunder Jrs. we’ll have Youth Strikers, and MN Thunder Academy (MTA) can morph into MN Youth Strikers Academy (MYSA).

I guess what my wildly uneducated question is…instead of thinking that ‘my team might not play’ this season, should I be happy/optimistic that there are so many leagues that my team can fit themselves into? If there is one common thread from everything Ive been reading, its that there are these soccer teams with owners, and they are trying to decide what league they want to play in. What a strange dilemma? I love it! Its not the usual “Were gonna start a soccer league…would you like to be in it?” …”Ummm…no!…nobody likes soccer!” Its a reverse of that. They are going to have to instead ‘consolidate’ leagues. It sounds like, if your one of the many groups who own a soccer team in the US, you can be in youth development up to PDL, or USL-2 if your slighlty more ambitious, or USL-1/NASL if your middle range serious, all the way up to MLS which is the marquee league for Professionally managed teams….or still yet…be in all of them!

Sounds like the burden is on The USSF to make sure all of these markets remain ‘interested’, right? to make sure ‘a’ league exists which unifies all of the soccer watching American populace?

This is going to make for an interesting chapter in yet to be published ‘The History of American Soccer’ Are there any examples of this happening in modern sport? NFL/AFL, maybe?

The NASL logo is just something that we’ve dug out of the archive just to have a visual. The TOA has not come up with a new logo but I’m positive they are working on it as we write.

Also, the NASL was not the leagues first choice. National Soccer League was, but they couldn’t get the rights.

I guarantee you if NSC starts a new team, which I have no doubt that they will, it WILL NOT be named the Thunder for a whole lot of different reasons. I have written about this before as well. There are pros and cons but right now I think there are more pros to not keeping the name than cons, even though I am very attached to the name that has been around longer than any MLS team has. As well, its a tribute to Buzz Lagos. But there are a lot of negative connotations with the that name right now which is very say and a product of the last several owners.

“How do they seriously consider being able to put something together for next summer; management, coach and a team?”

Mark, this question has to be asked not just of the Thunder but of all the teams involved with the TOA and USL at this point. Again, I wrote about this in the last several weeks, but all these teams are paddling up stream right now as they are losing their Christmas sales, the first of the year sales and are going to lose sponsorship because all their other clients are planning for next summer NOW. The GM’s of these teams are having a fit.

What is the state of the Thunder management—three people? How do they seriously consider being able to put something together for next summer; management, coach and a team? -Unless, as Tom suggests NSC grabs the reins.

and that NASaL logo is awful!

I’ve always said, Parade would have been the absolute perfect place for the Thunder and of course they had proposed Crystal Palace at Parade but there was no chance of that ever happening for exactly the reasons you suggested. The wealthy Kenwood gang.