USL League One Cup, you say?
A leaked schedule gives a glimpse of the league's latest idea.
On Thursday, someone in the Union Omaha front office apparently hit the wrong button.
The email included a graphic outlining the full schedule, which another X user posted in reply to the above tweet. Er, post, or Xeet, or whatever. That reply has apparently been deleted.
It’s likely that the schedule outlined in that graphic is still a draft, so nobody should be booking travel plans yet. However, it included one thing that a few Xwitter users noticed that goes beyond dates of games: eight of Omaha’s 30 matches were marked as “USL Leauge One Cup.”
This cup competition has been rumored and muttered about, mostly in Xwitter DMs among lower league soccer weirdos, for a few weeks. This is our first (accidental) confirmation that the league is at least considering it — and probably more than just considering.
Based on the schedule, we can make a few inferences about how it’ll work. I reached out to the league to see whether they’d confirm that it’s happening, or confirm any of my inferences. They got my email but didn’t respond.
Here’s how it’ll probably work. I think.
Based on the Omaha schedule, it looks like the 12 teams in the league will be divided into two groups of six. The western group will consist of:
Central Valley Fuego
Spokane Velocity
Union Omaha
Forward Madison
Chattanooga Red Wolves (or whatever they end up being called)
Northern Colorado Hailstorm
And the eastern group will consist of:
South Georgia Tormenta
Charlotte Independence
Greenville Triumph
One Knoxville
Lexington SC
Richmond Kickers
Each team will play three of the other teams in their group twice, home and away, and the other two teams once for a total of eight matches in the group stage. Either the winner of each group will play a championship match, or, more likely, the top two from each group will play a semifinal and then a final. It’s possible, I suppose, that they could take the top four from each into an additional quarterfinal round, but that’d be a little crazy.
In any case we’ll get knockout / extra time / penalty shootout matches in September, probably about a month before we get the same kinds of games in the league playoffs.
Most of the cup group stage matches are scheduled for midweek, and looking at the league schedule, the knockout games probably will be too.
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.
Related to that, 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 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.
Then there’s the travel. Obviously the western group has much more distance to cover than the east. This means Madison has to go to Fresno and Spokane twice each - once for a weekend league match and once for a midweek Cup match. It’s even worse the other way — Fuego and Velocity will have to make at least one extra trip all the way to Chattanooga, as well as Madison, Omaha and Colorado. Also not ideal.
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.)
It 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 lend themselves to the Vibes and Chaos (tm) that we love about this league, and can give a lot of bench guys a chance to play.
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.
I also assume this is a precursor for a broader USL Cup that’ll include USLC sides at some point. As much as we USL1 weirdos don’t love being the guinea pigs, it does make sense to try out a league cup on a small scale before ramping it up.
One more question …
What’s the incentive? Is the league going to put some money on the line? A payout comparable to the US Open Cup — $25,000 to the last third-division team standing — would go a long way to getting managers on board to really go after this tournament. If it’s just bragging rights, the incentive would be to rotate players, which has its own advantages.
The league usually drops the full schedule toward the end of December, so we won’t have to wait too long to see whether any of this is real or accurate. If the league gets back to me, I’ll let you all know!
In the meantime, roster announcements are coming Monday. I’ll have an update on the Madison pro women’s team for you tomorrow and a glimpse at the makeup of your 2024 Mingos on Monday, along with a special episode in your podcast feeds.