The United Soccer Leagues (USL) is the organizer of several soccer leagues with teams in the United States, Canada and the Caribbean. It includes men's and women's leagues, both professional and amateur. Leagues currently organized are the USL Pro, the USL Premier Development League, the W-League, and two leading youth leagues, the Super-20 League and Super Y-League. As of 2011 it has also assumed the operations of the Major Indoor Soccer League. It is directly affiliated with the United States Soccer Federation, the United States Adult Soccer Association and the Canadian Soccer Association. There is no promotion and relegation in US soccer.
On September 8, 2010, USL announced the formation of USL Pro which will merge the USL First Division and USL Second Division to begin play in 2011. The merger is meant to consolidate USL's position within the American professional soccer landscape and focus on commercial growth and professional development of soccer in four main regions throughout the U.S., Canada, and the Caribbean.
Famous quotes containing the words united, soccer and/or leagues:
“Man is to himself the most wonderful object in nature; for he cannot conceive what the body is, still less what the mind is, and least of all how a body should be united to a mind. This is the consummation of his difficulties, and yet this is his very being.”
—Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)
“If we were doing this in the Falklands they would love it. It’s part of our heritage. The British have always been fighting wars.”
—British soccer fan. quoted in Independent (London, Dec. 23, 1988)
“Only be admonished by what you already see, not to strike leagues of friendship with cheap persons, where no friendship can be. Our impatience betrays us into rash and foolish alliances which no God attends.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)