USL announces new brands for 3 leagues

Image credit: USL

The past few years have been remarkably eventful for the United Soccer Leagues, LLC, and now the organization that has a strong grasp on lower-division professional soccer in the United States has unveiled a new look to highlight its growing position in the landscape.

The company unveiled Tuesday new branding for each of its three league properties and a fourth corporate identity in a remodeling familiar to fans who follow the English Football League. Transitioning from the former United Soccer Leagues, LLC title, the organization as a whole will now itself simply be called the United Soccer League.

The group’s Division II league — formerly known as the United Soccer League — receives a shiny black and gold makeover and will be renamed the USL Championship, reflecting a similar title for the Division II league within the English football pyramid.

Image credit: USL Championship

Meanwhile, the all-new USL Division III finally has its branding revealed as USL League One — again following the English pattern — with a black and teal look as its color scheme.

Image credit: USL League One

Additionally, and unsurprisingly, the Premier Development League — an amateur U23 league largely composed of collegiate-based players in the same realm as the NPSL and USPL — will follow the English trend and becomes USL League Two, keeping its signature red and adopting the consistent black of its sister leagues.

Image credit: USL League Two

All three league properties and the organization itself will transition to their new identities — including new websites, social media handles and more — in mid-November, following the 2018 USL Cup.

WHY?

On the surface, the adoption of a well-known naming convention sets a strong tone for the United Soccer League moving forward. The English league system is certainly among the most well-known in the world, particularly among casual soccer fans in the U.S., and helps place the USL within the American soccer pyramid.

The rebranding also helps orient the USL’s league properties into easily identifiable tiers. The re-introduction of the USL into the Division III space was bound to raise questions and confuse those fans who don’t follow the pyramid below Major League Soccer (MLS) closely. The Championship, League One and League Two become clear levels in a tiered system under one governing body, simplifying the inevitable explanations that will be necessary entering 2019.

The rebrand can also be perceived as an attempt to legitimize a position that the USL has battled for since the traumatic 2009 split that created the most recent incarnation of the North American Soccer League (NASL). That well-known event cast the USL into Division III at the time, where the league bided its time and slowly grew into a 30-plus team behemoth that received provisional Division II sanctioning in 2017 — alongside the previously mentioned NASL — before receiving full sanctioning as the sole Division II league in 2018.

Now uncontested at the Division II level, the USL does face challenges in the Division III and amateur spaces. The former being contested by the National Independent Soccer Association — which also applied for USSF sanctioning alongside League One in recent weeks — with the latter occupied by a variety of rivals to League Two, including the NPSL, UPSL and still-shrouded-in-mystery NPSL Pro. A rebranding to orient the USL’s lower-division properties can be seen as having a unifying effect that grants more legitimacy to their internal efforts that their rivals lack.

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?

Aside from pretty new logos, uniforms, styles and other cosmetic changes, not much in the short term. The leagues will still operate in largely the same way, with similar schedules, goals and competition formats.

Several immediate questions pop to mind when considering the new branding, the most-discussed of which will be a potential implementation of promotion and relegation within this new structure. While the announcement doesn’t make any mention of implementing such a structure in the near term, it is clear that a restructuring like this is a necessary precursor to movement between at least the two professional league properties in the USL umbrella. The league has previously stated its current objective to be the successful launch and solidification of Division III before any discussions of pro/rel are introduced, though did note an interest among its ownership and clubs.

A second concern of note will be the rebranding of the PDL into League Two and what that means in a fluctuating collegiate soccer landscape. While the NPSL explores an expanded, professional move, League Two will not be following suit, opting to remain in its role as a fully amateur home to elite collegiate talent. Additionally, the league is expected to retain its short-form summer schedule of 14 matches, plus playoffs.

Longer term, the rebrand cements an ambitious attitude expressed by the USL of late. After the organization’s ascent up the American soccer pyramid, a foray into multiple leagues — as well as forays into several MLS-level markets that hint at previously unrealized competition with the Division I league — it’s clear the league isn’t simply content with filling the space left for it by its higher-division associate and intends on pushing that envelope forward.

WHAT ELSE?

Also notably missing from Tuesday’s announcement was any mention of another two trademarks previously filed by the USL for USL Youth and USL Derby Week. While the latter could be introduced at a later date closer to the 2019 season, the USL did announce that its youth property, the Super Y League, would remain labeled as such and would not rebrand, casting questions onto the use of the USL Youth trademark. That moniker could’ve been planned and scrapped — as it’s always safer to trademark potential names ahead of time — or could be a part of another USL project to be launched in the future.

Additionally, rumors of an interleague cup between USL clubs at the Division II and Division III level were also left unsatisfied, unmentioned in Tuesday’s release. Again, that could come into play this winter or early spring, but it is also possible that the USL intends to allow League One to gain successful traction before further congesting the schedules of those clubs taking part in the league’s 2019 launch.

The reception to the very English-inspired rebrand will become clear in the coming days and weeks, but on its face appears a foundational move intended to serve as a precursor for later changes within the USL.

Follow Colton on Twitter: @cjcoreschi.

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