USL

Most sports fans in the United States think of summer as the season for baseball, but the warmest months of the year are also the perfect time to attend a professional soccer match — and there's no shortage of teams.

As Major League Baseball continues to cut minor league teams, the decline of professional baseball in the country becomes more prominent. But not so with soccer.

ESPN's SportsCenter doesn't usually show soccer highlights — preferring to show incessant home runs and slam-dunks that look like mirror images of every other home run and slam-dunk — but when it does, you can rest assured that it's a 40-yard banger or impossible bicycle kick from range.

On Saturday night, trailing St. Croix 2-1 in USL2 play, the Des Moines Menace's Fernando Garcia got the attention of SportsCenter with a flying golazo from nearly 15 yards out. 

It came in at No. 3 in the Top 10.

What is a Xogg? Alternatively, what is a Zigg? The Xoggz and the Ziggx were the men's and women's semi-pro soccer clubs based out of Columbus, Ohio, in the mid-1990s.

According to fossilized internet forums (because there is no other discussion of the topic), these were made-up names that were going to be assigned meaning through a fan contest. Unfortunately, neither club survived long enough for that to happen.

While these clubs were short lived, their rise and fall illustrates the state of American soccer in the 1990s.

The original purpose of this piece was to find players who began their careers in American soccer in the lower league and worked their way up to Major League Soccer — not players who went out on loan, rather athletes who signed for a USL or NPSL club, impressed at that level, and drew the attention of an MLS side.

But after a thorough examination of numerous MLS rosters, I found that this type of career path is almost nonexistent; such upward mobility is nearly impossible in American soccer.

It's easy to criticize American soccer, but in doing so, we can't embrace the unique stage of development the game is going through right now.

Soccer in the states has only gotten consistent traction in the last few decades, and there are very few professional sports leagues across the world that are actively expanding — none are doing so at the rate of American soccer.

This leads to the constant restructuring of leagues and teams moving between divisions — both of which are further complicated by the lack of promotion and relegation within our footballing pyramid.

El Paso Locomotive FC beat out eight teams across three leagues to be crowned the best professional soccer club in Texas, winning the inaugural Copa Tejas Shield. Admittedly, that wasn’t too hard given how bad the MLS and NWSL clubs in Texas were in 2021, but we’re not here to discuss merits; we’re here to discuss ... chips and dip? No, that can’t be right.