League One is getting an in-season tournament of its own
In new cup competition, USL League One teams will compete for a trophy & cash money
The long-rumored and recently-leaked in-season cup competition featuring USL League One teams has been confirmed to begin in 2024.
When someone accidentally emailed Union Omaha’s schedule to fans, lots of people noticed eight matches were labeled “League One Cup.” That led to lots of speculation about whether this was a real thing, and if so, how it’d work.
First of all, we are told today that it will not be called that, but that the name will be announced in the coming weeks.
The 12 teams in USL League One are divided into three groups of four. (My previous speculation post was wrong on this point.) The groups are:
Each team will play each other team in its group twice — home and away — and play one game against a team from each of the other groups, one home and one away, for a total of eight games in the group stage. For Madison, those outside-of-group games will be going to Charlotte in May and hosting Omaha in August.
A win gets you three points and a draw gets you one, just like in the league table. But wait, there’s more! Any game that ends in a draw goes directly to penalty shootout. Both teams get one point regardless, but whoever wins the shootout gets an extra point.
All three group winners move to the semifinals. And here’s something fun: the fourth semifinalist is whichever non-group-winner scored the most goals. Not the team with the best goal differential. Whoever scores the most goals.
It is entirely possible that Fuego will lose every game 6-4 and make it to the semifinals by virtue of scoring 32 goals in the group stage. Fun!
Dedicated cup matchdays will be integrated throughout the USL League One schedule. The group stage will kick off the weekend of April 27 and finish the weekend of Aug. 31. These will be dedicated “tournament” windows. The cup final will be held on Sept. 28 or 29, with no other USL League One matches taking place that weekend. The league hasn’t announced the date of the semifinals though you’d expect it to be sometime in early September.
Here’s Forward Madison’s tournament schedule:
We haven’t heard about broadcast of these matches, but I think it’s moderately safe to assume they’ll be streamed at the same place as the league matches, which seems likely to remain ESPN+ at this point.
The cup-winning club will earn prize money and a new trophy to be unveiled ahead of the cup’s first matchday.
It seems the reason that this is not being called the USL League One Cup is that it’s not going to stay confined to USL League One. A league press release says it’s “designed to quickly evolve.”
From the release:
Over the next few years, the USL aims to evolve the cup competition, including integrating other leagues and exploring additional innovations geared toward the fan experience.
“The cup is a scalable platform,” USL LEague One President Lee O’Neill said. “Our ambition is to include clubs from other leagues in the future. There are so many strong clubs across our country and our region, and we believe this competition can be a catalyst to bring many of them together to grow the game and create a unique and amazing experience for players and fans everywhere.”
Could be other third-tier clubs like MLS Next Pro and/or NISA; could be multi-level within USL. Seems like they’re keeping those options open.
While I didn’t have all the details for my previous post — and got a couple speculations wrong — my reactions remain pretty consistent, but I do have some updates so don’t skip this part even if you read the previous post:
This is a really dumb idea
The thing about a cup competition is that you get to play against clubs you normally don’t play. This USL League One Cup is basically a mini-league within the league, using only the same closed set of clubs, so just feels redundant.
This objection is largely mitigated by the intention to expand it — this closed, within-the-league format is just a test run.
Related, in a straight knockout cup competition, anyone can have a good night. An Omaha can beat a Chicago Fire or a Sacramento can have a series of good nights and end up in the final. In this kind of group-stage format, it’s more likely that the best teams will win the groups and move to the knockout stages. And in this case, those best teams will very likely be the same as the best teams in the regular league table.
So the likely outcome is that you’ll have the top teams in the league adding one or two midweek Cup knockout games right in the middle of the race for the Players Shield and the playoff push.
Not ideal.
You’ll also end up with teams playing each other four times over the course of the regular season - twice in the league and twice in the cup. That feels excessive.
This is actually pretty smart
In an ideal world, a football league season consists of two games against every other member of the league — one home and one away. In a 20-team league, that’s a healthy 38 game season.
In a league of 12, that’s only 22 games.
Last season each club played 32 league matches. Each club played most other clubs three times, but some only twice. That’s an advantage to the teams that didn’t have that third match against an NCFC or a NoCo, and it’s an advantage to the teams that hosted two of the three matches.
The league clearly wants to cure that imbalance and focus on a traditional round robin league schedule. Obviously with a reasonable league minimum player salary, you can’t just go from 32 matches to 22. This tournament solves this problem by rounding out the schedule to 30 games for every club, plus one or two more for the best clubs. (Plus a couple additional US Open Cup matches.)
Tournament games do not count in the league table. So this tournament takes eight matches out of the stakes of the league table, which simultaneiously lowers the stakes of those eight matches — allowing managers to rotate players and give some squad guys more minutes — and increases the stakes of the 22 league matches. With only 66 points on offer in the league, every point becomes even more precious.
It’s also likley that toward the end of the group stage, at least a couple clubs will have been eliminated from cup contention, so will be playing truly meaningless games on Wednesdays in August. Those games can give bench guys a real chance to play, and give managers a chance to rest starters without risking anything. ALSO! In those late stage games, some teams might be chasing lots of goals to try and grab that wild card spot in the semis. Can you imagine, on the last day of cup competition, one club being like “We don’t need to win, we just need to score seven goals.” Either way, some of those late group stage games will lend themselves to the Vibes and Chaos (tm) that we love about this league.
This idea also gives everybody more to strive for. You can play for the Shield, the Cup, and the playoff championship — or the double or even triple — all within this group of 12 teams.
Weighing all those factors — especially that this is a first step toward a bigger idea — I’m generally in favor of this tournament. What do you think? Do you like this? Or would you rather just have 30 league games? Do we like Madison’s chances in a group with Lexington, Knoxville and Chattanooga? Will we go to tournament games at Breese? I definitely will.
Sounds like we’ll get the full league schedule later this week or early next. Stay tuned!