Larry Berg’s flat rejection of promotion and relegation is a cowardly concession that MLS will forever prioritize balance sheets over footballing souls. For a league that claims to have learned from Lionel Messi’s arrival, the 26North chief’s decree smothers the one mechanism that could turn soccer’s American experiment from a protected cartel into a genuine meritocracy. Instead of embracing the tension that makes every fixture in England’s Championship feel like a final, Berg has doubled down on a model where mediocrity is rewarded with a playoff berth and outright failure is cushioned by the draft, the salary cap, and the next expansion fee.
The evidence against the closed-shop mandate is not theoretical—it is splattered across every inert franchise that has ever worn an MLS crest. Chicago Fire, a club that has made the playoffs four times in fifteen years, remains structurally identical to LAFC, a club that has won two MLS Cups under Steve Cherundolo’s press. That is not a sporting hierarchy; it is a timeshare. When Wilfried Nancy took Columbus Crew to the 2023 final, he did so with a squad assembled through clever trades and a DP slot, but his success triggered no fear in the Eastern Conference bottom-dwellers. Toronto FC can spend millions on Lorenzo Insigne and still finish dead last, then get rewarded with the first overall pick—a gift that allows the incompetent to draft precocious teenagers and sell them for profit. No team is ever relegated. No owner is ever punished. The only players who face elimination are the ones who lose in a random, single-elimination October coin flip. That is not football; it is a shareholder retreat with a scoreboard.
Berg’s mandate is a death knell because it chokes the very innovation the league loves to advertise. Promotion and relegation would force every club to build a genuine academy, not as a PR stunt but as a survival contingency. It would make the final day of the regular season matter in Portland, Kansas City, and Charlotte, where fans currently check the standings only to calculate playoff seedings. It would turn every September match between a flailing San Jose Earthquakes and a surging Phoenix Rising into a blood sport. Instead, Berg chooses the comfort of the closed loop, where the worst team in the league still banks its distribution check, and the best team in the USL Championship—say, a Louisville City or a Sacramento Republic—has no legal path to test itself against the top flight. That is not stability. It is a mausoleum.
The verdict is unavoidable. MLS will not see promotion and relegation under Berg, and that stubbornness will cost it the next generation of fans who grew up on Chelsea’s relegation battles and Schalke’s flameouts. The league will keep selling expansion slots to Nashville and San Diego, inflating its valuation while diluting its product. But mark this: when the USL finally flips its own pyramid to open pro/rel, and when a LIGA MX with nineteen teams and a genuine second division starts poaching American teenagers who want to play for something, the commissioner’s closed shop will be exposed as the single most cowardly decision in modern American sports. Larry Berg can protect his investment, but he cannot protect