The original American Soccer League, operating between 1921 and 1933, was the first significant, viable, professional soccer league in the United States. The league operated primarily in the Northeastern United States, mainly in the New York metropolitan area and Pennsylvania. The ASL was created by the merger of several teams from the National Association Football League (NAFBL) and Southern New England Soccer League in 1921. The move came from a growing disenchantment with the mismanagement of the NAFBL as well as the desire by the United States Football Association (USFA) to create a unified first division league.
In real life, the experiment came to an end in 1933, the first of many attempts to create a professional league in the United States left in the dustbin of history. But what if the league had been able to make it work? Sure, teams would have come and gone, as they do in any league, but what if the idea of pulling in great clubs teams to build your league, in the same way that leagues in Europe and Latin America did, had remained. What would the landscape of American soccer look like today?
This thread will include a series of concepts, all based around real club teams that have existed at some point in the United States. The idea is that, instead of franchises moving and expansion drafts being scheduled, that the ASL just continued to add more teams from existing clubs as it went along, eventually necessitating the creation of lower divisions feeding up to an ASL Premier Division. Teams were picked based on historical success in the National Challenge Cup (later known as the US Open Cup), various pro leagues, local amateur competitions, or just because I thought they seemed cool and I needed a team in a market.