I've been the biggest MLS honk in the great plains, but the league is really starting to piss me off.
Can you explain to me, a dumb guy, why the European promotion/relegation model and calendar wouldn't work?
We'll start with the calendar. The climate is just too much to overcome to play the European calendar. People try to dismiss that but the climate matters, it's the same reason why we just had a winter world cup and will have another one when Saudi Arabia hosts in 2034. Places that have harsh climates in Europe; Poland, Czech Republic, and Ukraine, take winter breaks and their winter isn't nearly as harsh as many places in North America. I've been to the UK and Poland in the dead ass of winter, a lot, and the climate in both of those places is closer to Kansas City than Toronto. The MLS have franchises in the following cities, all outdoor stadiums. Montreal, Toronto, Boston, New York x2, Philadelphia, Chicago, Columbus, Cincinnati, St. Paul, Denver, and Salt Lake City. Fans don't want to watch games in those conditions and more importantly, players don't want to play in them. Go back to qualifying for the 2022 World Cup. Canada actually made the last round of qualifying and the USMNT tried to get cute with qualifying and place some matches in the Midwest in winter and it was absolutely miserable. Also, winter is much longer in the US than in Europe, playing every week in November to March would be a total nightmare.
As far as pro/rel the reason that it doesn't work in the United States is that the sport is too new and the disparity between the teams is much broader than that in Europe. When discussing pro/rel people often focus on the teams that would move down, and they should, but the focus really should be on the teams that would move up. The difference between lower level EPL teams and Championship teams that often ride the wave of promotion/relegation is financially indistinguishable from one another. This is because these teams have over a hundred years of playing on the same level, the play was established way before billionaires ran the sport. Even with this, you look at the EPL standings now and the bottom three are the three teams that just got promoted. Everyone gets romantic about pro/rel in Europe, because it's what they've always done. But if we had that system in America, how much club growth would the Charleston Battery have if their fans could only ever hope to get to MLS from the USL Championship and finish outside of the playoffs. Burnley has a hundred years of fans growing up around Turf Moor and knowing nothing but unyielding love for Burnley. Their rivals are other clubs of similar size and if similar fate. That system works because outside of maybe 8 or 9 clubs, the other 130 or so know they aren't winning the EPL, a system like that would never work here.
The EPL is only 30 years old and it was created so that the big clubs didn't have to play on an even level with the also rans. The trend is going away from pro/rel because the people that own these teams don't want their heavy investment compromised. Mexico has stopped using a true pro/rel system. The European Super League is the same concept, clubs Luke Madrid doesn't want their place in the richest tournament in the world to be compromised in favor of some team from Croatia with a seven figure valuation.
