US Soccer Combined Leagues 2019

UPDATED December 15, 2019: Final Standings updated based on the teams for next year.

Just suppose that many years ago, the US Soccer Federation required all professional teams to play in the same league system. Just suppose that they decided that it would be best to always have two equal leagues, east and west, and then divide teams vertically into Division 1, Division 2, etc. Just suppose that, each year, they promoted the best teams from Division 2 and relegated the worst teams from Division 1.

And here's the big leap. Just suppose that we didn't have any more teams playing than what we actually have.

In 2019, the USSF has 70 professional men's teams. Only one team (Penn) withdrew after the 2018 season. New teams added to Division 2 West are Austin Bold, El Paso Locomotive, Memphis 901, New Mexico United, North Texas and Tucson. New teams in Division 2 East are Birmingham Legion, Chattanooga Red Wolves, Forward Madison, Greenville Triumph, Hartford Athletic, Lansing Ignite, Loudoun United, Orlando City B and South Georgia Tormenta. Whew! That's quite a lot.

To balance the leagues, Saint Louis and Swope Park Rangers were moved to the West, while Chicago landed in the East.

Here is a map of the teams. Click the rectangle tab thing in the upper left to get to the list where you can deselect the separate divisions.

Here are the final standings for 2019.

Since a wonderful home-and-away round robin didn't actually happen in each league above, I substituted that with ranking the teams by points-per-game, including each team's league and cup games played in 2019, only counting games against teams in its division (Division 1 or 2).

Due to the large number of teams entering play in 2020, a Division 3 will be added. Rather than have three tiers of two leagues, I've decided to have a single 18-team table for Division 1 next year. This will provide competitive balance between East and West, over the years. Thus eight teams will be relegated from each 2019 Division 1 league and ten from each 2019 Division 2 league.

B teams must be in a division below their A teams, so if an A team is relegated from Division 1 to Division 2, then the B team will be relegated to Division 3, no matter its place in the table.