Pitch to Pro
Pitch to Pro is the official podcast of Ozark United FC. This will be our platform to tell our story about the club and the special place that we call home, Northwest Arkansas. This is a journey. We want to bring you along for the ride. We'll share what's going on behind the curtain, help educate the community at large about soccer, Our league, and give updates on the progress of the club along the way.
Together, we'll explore and unpack our journey to professional soccer, the magic that is NWA, our community, and talk all things soccer from on the pitch to behind the scenes, telling the story of our club.
Pitch to Pro
Stoppage Time Special: MLS, USL, and Beyond: Making Sense of American Soccer
As the FIFA Club World Cup captivates soccer fans around the globe, it feels like the perfect time to take a step back and revisit one of the most confusing—and often misunderstood—aspects of the beautiful game: how soccer is structured here in the United States. In this Stoppage Time episode of Pitch to Pro, we’ve pulled together highlights from Episode 10 that shed light on the U.S. soccer pyramid, including how Major League Soccer fits into the global game, why promotion and relegation don’t work the same way here, and what it means for young American talent coming through the ranks.
With the Club World Cup spotlighting international club competition, this is a timely refresher on how American soccer clubs position themselves in the broader landscape. Whether you're a diehard supporter or a newcomer trying to make sense of leagues like MLS, USL, NISA, and beyond, this episode offers clarity—and a little history—to help ground your fandom.
We also touch on the development path for players in the U.S., from youth academies and college programs to domestic professional leagues and overseas opportunities. Understanding this system is key not just for fans, but for aspiring players, parents, and even coaches trying to navigate the best route to the pro level.
With a wave of high-profile soccer events coming to the U.S.—including the 2026 World Cup—there’s never been a better moment to deepen your understanding of how soccer works stateside. Consider this your pregame warmup for the years ahead.
Welcome to the Stoppage Time edition of the Pitch to Pro podcast. This is a highlight reel of some of the best moments from the show so far, and every other week we will be bringing you a special five to seven minute segment featuring the best stories, tales and moments of the podcast. In 2025, you've got the FIFA Club World Cup. So just like there's a World Cup for countries, for nations and national teams, you also have a Club World Cup. So think of the biggest clubs in the world Manchester United, real Madrid, barcelona, bayern Munich, paris, saint-germain and others. You have clubs, the best clubs from individual regions, from all those six different associations from around the world that I talked about. Those guys are coming to the United States to compete in a tournament called the FIFA Club World Cup, which is coming in 2025. So more to come there on venues and all that kind of thing. But I'm sure that Dallas will be a venue, if not KC as well of thing, but I'm sure that dallas will get be a venue, if not kc as well. And then we also have the coup de grace the men's fifa world cup in 2026 coming right here to the us. Kc will bea stadium, and it was just announced that dallas is. It's been leaked and believed to be correct, so I'll caveat that. But I'm pretty positive that Dallas AT&T Stadium, jerry World, is going to get the final for the 2026 Men's World Cup. So that's just five hours away. Absolutely incredible opportunity to be so close and to be able to host such an event. And then on top of that, after the men's world cup, we have the potential, we're in the running To host the 2027 women's world cup or, if not that one, the 2031 women's world cup as well. So we have bids in both, but we're pushing hard for 27. That's just this incredible slate Of massive marquee tournaments and it's a great time to be a soccer fan in the US, or even become a soccer fan in the US, and kind of get drawn in there.
Speaker 0:So let's come back and kind of focus in on the US for a bit. We talked a little bit about the global governing bodies and how that operates and works and what falls underneath. But now let's get into kind of the US and talk about the US soccer landscape. So again you have USSF the United States Soccer Federation, sitting on top of soccer in the United States. They kind of set the standards and regulations again for the US soccer pyramid. So you keep hearing the term, or maybe you.
Speaker 0:This is a new term for you, but it's a very common one all over the world and it's called the soccer pyramid and that's often how professional soccer is stood up all over the world, and at the very, very top you've got a league or leagues, depending on the situation in the country, but in our case it's one league for each men's and women's soccer. So at the very, very tippy top you've got division one, what we'll call division one, you've got division two and you've got division three. We have three different divisions and tiers, if you will, on that pyramid that equate to professional soccer in the United States, and professional soccer just means that a player can live and be successful, earn a living wage on their kind of compensation package from the team. So in the United States the soccer pyramid has three different tiers or divisions and within those three there are a whole bunch of different KPIs and different metrics that the leagues have to hit to fall within those tiers and qualify for them. But the two that are the most common and easiest to understand are stadium capacity and population size. So on division one you've got major league soccer on the men's side Be qualified to be. You know, if you're a new team, you want to go into MLS, you've got to have a population base in your market of about a million million plus and you've got to come in with a stadium soccer specific stadium with a capacity for roughly 20,000 people. That's division one. Division two you have and you start getting into the USL ecosystem. On the men's side you have USL Championship, the highest level of soccer in the USL. That is where our club will play, and the minimum stadium size there is 5,000 and market size around 750,000 in terms of population base. Then you drop down into Division III, which is USL League One or MLS Next Pro and you're talking about markets of about 500,000 in that tier.
Speaker 0:On the women's side you have the National Women's Soccer League, or NWSL. On the women's side it's going to be interesting you have the USL Super League starting in 2024. That is where we will play on the women's side and they meet all the criteria for that US soccer lays out in terms of market size, stadium capacity and those kinds of things to be called tier one. I don't believe at this point they've got their sanctioning yet. So there'll either be division two or division one, but it's a planned division one league as they're making their launch here in 2024.
Speaker 0:Super exciting, and, again, that is where we will play. So we will play on the men's and women's side at the highest level of soccer within USL's ecosystem and at least Division II and potentially Division I on the women's side, depending on how that shakes out. Underneath that. Then you have some semi-pro leagues within the USL ecosystem that I'll talk about here too, which is USL League 2. So in Arkansas we actually have a League 2 squad that does very well the Little Rock Rangers, shout out to you guys and they went really deep this past year actually in the playoffs in League 2, and they drew crowds at War Memorial of almost 8,000 multiple times, which is huge and incredible at that level. So congrats to those guys.
Speaker 0:You also have the USLW League and that is on the women's side.
Speaker 0:In those two leagues, typically what happens and what you find is their seasons are from kind of like May through August, and that is typically. You find a lot of college players that are looking to play at a high level out of their college season and that's typically who makes up those rosters. So again. Division I, ii and III are professional. You have MLS Championship in the USL and League I in the USL to round out the men's side, and then on the women's side you've got NWSL D1, and potentially USL Super League in either Division I or Division II. Nothing today on the Division III side of the women's pyramid, but then you have USL W League and Division IV semi-pro. So that is the US soccer pyramid. Thank you for joining us for this stoppage time special of the Pitch to Pro podcast. If you've enjoyed the conversation, you can click watch the full episode here. Be sure to tune in next Thursday for a new episode of the Pitch to Pro podcast, the official podcast of Ozark United FC, available on YouTube, instagram and everywhere you get your podcasts.