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American Soccer Champions
Despite each receiving FIFA-affiliated status in 1913, both the United States and Canada have lacked a consistent, multi-division soccer system until recently. Consequently, the determination of champions has been problematic at times. The United States did not have a truly national top flight league until the FIFA-sanctioned United Soccer Association and the "outlaw" National Professional Soccer League, which had a network television contract, merged in November 1967 to form the North American Soccer League (NASL). The NASL considered the two pre-merge forerunner leagues as part of its history. Before 1967, there were several regional and city leagues of various levels of quality. For example, the first and second incarnations of the American Soccer League constituted the premier level of professional soccer in the Northeastern United States, but they and teams from the St. Louis Soccer League would regularly defeat the best the other had to offer. These are only two of the most ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
FIFA
FIFA (; stands for ''Fédération Internationale de Football Association'' ( French), meaning International Association Football Federation ) is the international governing body of association football, beach football and futsal. It was founded in 1904 to oversee international competition among the national associations of Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland. Headquartered in Zürich, Switzerland, its membership now comprises 211 national associations. These national associations must each also be members of one of the six regional confederations into which the world is divided: CAF (Africa), AFC (Asia and Australia), UEFA (Europe), CONCACAF (North & Central America and the Caribbean), OFC (Oceania) and CONMEBOL (South America). FIFA outlines a number of objectives in the organizational Statutes, including growing association football internationally, providing efforts to ensure it is accessible to everyone, and advocating for ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
MLS Cup
The MLS Cup is the annual championship game of Major League Soccer (MLS) and the culmination of the MLS Cup Playoffs. The game is held in November and pits the winner of the Eastern Conference Final against the winner of the Western Conference Final. The MLS Cup winner is awarded the title of league champion. MLS uses a playoff tournament following the regular season to determine its annual league champion, a method common to every other major North American sports league. This format differs from most soccer leagues around the world, which consider the club with the most points at the end of the season to be the champion; MLS honors that achievement with the Supporters' Shield. A U.S.-based team that wins the MLS Cup is awarded one of the country's four berths in the following season's CONCACAF Champions League. The three Canadian teams of MLS can only qualify for the Champions League through the Canadian Championship—if any of them should win the MLS Cup, the Champions ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Washington Whips
The Washington Whips were a soccer team based in Washington, D.C. that played in the United Soccer Association (USA). The league was made up of teams imported from foreign leagues. The Washington Whips were the Aberdeen F.C. from Scotland. The name was chosen as the outcome of a newspaper contest. The team's owner was Earl Foreman, later owner of the Virginia Squires of the American Basketball Association and president of the original Major Indoor Soccer League. Edward T. Reynolds was the booth announcer for the club prior to the merger. In 1967, the Whips played for the league championship and lost in overtime. After losing a coin toss, the Whips played the Los Angeles Wolves at the L.A. Coliseum in front of a crowd of 17,824. The two teams played to a 4–4 tie in regulation and then a 5–5 tie after the first overtime. At 1:26 in sudden death overtime, Ally Shewan of the Whips scored an own goal to give the game to the Wolves. Washington played with only 10 players for 94 m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Los Angeles Wolves
The Los Angeles Wolves were an American professional soccer team that played for two seasons. In 1967 they played in the United Soccer Association, finishing as champions, and in 1968 they were founding members of the North American Soccer League. United Soccer Association In 1966 a group of American and Canadian sports Entrepreneurs, led by Jack Kent Cooke, formed the United Soccer Association with the intention of organizing a professional soccer league. The USA originally intended to launch its league in the spring of 1968. However a rival league, the National Professional Soccer League, announced it was ready to launch in 1967. Not wanting to lose ground to its rival, the USA decided to fast track its launch. Without any players of its own, it opted to import whole teams from Europe and South America. It was intended that these teams would represent the franchises during the inaugural season, giving them time to build their own squads for the following season. Wolverhampto ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Canadian Soccer Association
The Canadian Soccer Association (Canada Soccer) is the governing body of soccer in Canada. It is a national organization that oversees the Canadian men's and women's national teams for international play, as well as the respective junior sides (U-20 and U-17 for men and women). Within Canada, it oversees national professional and amateur club championships. Organization and governance Canada Soccer's objectives, as described in its by-laws, are to: # promote, regulate and control the game of soccer throughout Canada, particularly through youth and development programs; # organize competitions in Association Football in all its forms at a national level, by defining the areas of authority conceded to the various leagues of which it is composed; # draw up Association Football regulations and provisions, and ensure their enforcement; # protect the interests of its Members; # respect and prevent any infringement of the statutes, regulations, directives and decisions of FIFA, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
United States Soccer Federation
The United States Soccer Federation (USSF), commonly referred to as U.S. Soccer, is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization and the official governing body of the sport of soccer in the United States. Headquartered in Chicago, the federation is a full member of FIFA and governs American soccer at the international, professional, and amateur levels, including: the men's and women's national teams, Major League Soccer, National Women's Soccer League, youth organizations, beach soccer, futsal, Paralympic and deaf national teams. U.S. Soccer sanctions referees and soccer tournaments for most soccer leagues in the United States. The U.S. Soccer Federation also administers and operates the U.S. Open Cup and the SheBelieves Cup. History U.S. Soccer was originally known as the United States Football Association. It formed on 5 April 1913, at the Astor House Hotel in Lower Manhattan and on 15 August of that year was accepted as one of the earliest member organizations of FIFA and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Expansion Of Major League Soccer
Major League Soccer has expanded several times since the league began play in 1996. Major League Soccer was established as the top level of professional soccer in the United States in 1993 with 10 teams and began play in 1996. It has expanded several times since 1998 into new markets across the United States and, since 2006, Canada. St. Louis City SC is the 29th MLS team and the most recent expansion team, having joined the league for the 2023 season. The league plans to expand to 30 teams and may expand to 32 teams at a later date. Expanding and establishing a larger national reach is seen as essential to securing television rights fees needed to reach MLS's initially stated goal of becoming one of the top leagues in the world by 2022. In 2013, New York City FC agreed to pay a record $100 million expansion fee for the right to join MLS in 2015. This record was surpassed by the ownership groups of FC Cincinnati and Nashville SC, which each paid $150 million to join ML ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Promotion And Relegation
In sports leagues, promotion and relegation is a process where teams are transferred between multiple divisions based on their performance for the completed season. Leagues that use promotion and relegation systems are often called open leagues. In a system of promotion and relegation, the best-ranked team(s) in the lower division are ''promoted'' to the higher division for the next season, and the worst-ranked team(s) in the higher division are ''relegated'' to the lower division for the next season. In some leagues, playoffs or qualifying rounds are also used to determine rankings. This process can continue through several levels of divisions, with teams being exchanged between adjacent divisions. During the season, teams that are high enough in the league table that they would qualify for promotion are sometimes said to be in the ''promotion zone'', and those at the bottom are in the ''relegation zone'' or Reg zone (colloquially the ''drop zone'' or ''facing the drop''). An a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Professional Sports League Organization
Professional sports leagues are organized in numerous ways. The two most significant types are one that developed in Europe, characterized by a tiered structure using promotion and relegation in order to determine participation in a hierarchy of leagues or divisions, and a North American originated model characterized by its use of franchises, closed memberships, and minor leagues. Both these systems remain most common in their area of origin, although both systems are used worldwide. Etymology The term league has many different meanings in different areas around the world, and its use for different concepts can make comparisons confusing. Usually a league is a group of teams that play each other during the season. It is also often used for the name of the governing body that oversees the league, as in America's Major League Baseball or England's Football League. Because most European football clubs participate in different competitions during a season, regular-season home-and-aw ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
FIFA Club World Cup
The FIFA Club World Cup is an international men's association football competition organised by the ''Fédération Internationale de Football Association'' ( FIFA), the sport's global governing body. The competition was first contested in 2000 as the FIFA Club World Championship. It was not held from 2001 to 2004 due to a combination of factors in the cancelled 2001 tournament, most importantly the collapse of FIFA's marketing partner International Sport and Leisure (ISL), but since 2005 it has been held every year, and has been hosted by Brazil, Japan, the United Arab Emirates, Morocco and Qatar. Views differ as to the cup's prestige: it struggles to attract interest in most of Europe, and is the object of heated debate in South America. The first FIFA Club World Championship took place in Brazil in 2000, during which year it ran in parallel with the Intercontinental Cup, a competition played by the winners of the UEFA Champions League and the Copa Libertadores, with the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
CONCACAF Champions League
The CONCACAF Champions League, known officially as the Scotiabank CONCACAF Champions League for sponsorship reasons, is an annual continental club football competition organized by CONCACAF. The tournament is contested by clubs from North America, Central America, and the Caribbean. The winner of the CONCACAF Champions League automatically qualifies for the quarter-finals of the FIFA Club World Cup. The tournament currently uses a knockout format; it had a group stage prior to the 2018 competition. Unlike its European and South American counterparts, the winner of the CONCACAF Champions League does not automatically qualify for the following season's competition. When it was first organized in 1962, the competition was called the CONCACAF Champions' Cup. The title has been won by 28 clubs, 13 of which have won the title more than once. Mexican clubs have accumulated the highest number of victories, with 36 titles in total. The second most successful league has been Costa Ric ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Canadian Championship
The Canadian Championship (french: Championnat canadien) is an annual soccer tournament contested by premier Canadian professional teams. The winner is awarded the Voyageurs Cup and Canada's berth in the CONCACAF Champions League. It is contested by Major League Soccer sides Toronto FC, Vancouver Whitecaps FC, and CF Montréal, eight Canadian Premier League sides, and the champions of League1 Ontario, League1 British Columbia, and the Première ligue de soccer du Québec. The tournament is organized by the Canadian Soccer Association and has been broadcast on OneSoccer since 2019. History The Canadian Championship is a club soccer competition organized by the Canadian Soccer Association. The championship determines Canada's entry in the annual CONCACAF Champions League. Until the creation of the Canadian Premier League in 2019, all fully professional Canadian soccer teams played in United States-based leagues. Prior to the creation of the official competition in 2008, there w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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