Right now, I’m really curious to see which direction Puerto Rico goes. I’ve heard the Islanders are sympathetic to the TOA, and I suspect they want to play in the league with the best competition, just to stay fresh for the Caribbean Championships and CONCACAF. Plus, having both Montreal and Puerto Rico in the breakaway league might make it just slightly more marketable to TV networks.

As for Portland, Timbers owner Merritt Paulson has gone on the record to say he’s not getting involved in any sort of breakaway. Sounds like he’s keeping his focus on getting the MLS franchise up and running in 2011.

***”the TOA claims that it is “committed to a restructuring of USL-1 into a truly professional soccer league which complies with the international rules established by FIFA, the governing body of international soccer. These rules include the requirement that the league be owned and controlled by its teams.”***

If the above is serious, this “rumor” of reviving oddball NASL rules is not coming from the TOA.

IIRC Cooper has also made noises about switching to an August through May schedule, which is IMO not a workable idea at this point in time, even with a generous winter break. There’s also less reason for a lower division North American league to take a summer break since there are a lot fewer USL-level players who play for national teams. USL teams don’t have to worry as much as MLS teams do about losing all their best players for weeks or months during the summer.

That can’t happen without the approval of the FMF, which isn’t going to happen. This is not a credible rumor, IMO.

If, however, there is some truth to it and it represents Traffic’s thinking on the matter, this is another bad sign. I really am skeptical of any league that has Traffic as a major partner in it. They can’t run Miami FC properly, and now they want to have a major say in running an entire league?

***”In tradition of the old NASL they will bring back the shoot-out and the 35-yard offside line to make things more exciting.”***

Dear God, no. We had some of this cr@p in the early days of MLS and it was pathetic. Shoot-outs do not make things “more exciting” they just pointlessly extend the duration of a regular season match which does not need to be extended beyond 90 minutes. Idiotic idea.

As for 35-yard offside line, it did little to affect the nature of the game except to allow some aging, tired European ex-stars to camp out at the 35 yard line instead of at the 50 yard line. It didn’t make things “more exciting”.

***”The main difference between this new NASL and the old NASL is that the new NASL will have revenue sharing amongst the teams so that the smaller teams can survive with the larger teams. If the old NASL had revenue sharing then it might have survived.”***

Certainly true, but the linchpin NASL club, the Cosmos, would never have agreed to that so they allowed the league to collapse rather than compromise until the economy killed everything (ie got Warner Communications out of the pro soccer business). By 1983/84 if the NASL owners couldn’t agree on revenue sharing (or even better, single entity of some kind) then they were never going to. The NASL was born in chaos and died in chaos.