Do all first-division dreams go through MLS?

(Follow link for full article.)

http://www.fourfourtwo.com/us/features/can-nasl-be-first-division-us-soccer-indy-eleven

Do all first-division dreams go through MLS?

23 August 2016

Scott French

Not necessarily, says Indy Eleven. As Scott French reports, the NASL's spring-season champion still looks toward a day when its league can be "the highest level."

Minnesota United's dream of playing first-division soccer comes true next year, following Friday's announcement that the NASL club, accepted last year for Major League Soccer expansion, will begin play in the country's top league next year.

It’s not the first team to make the jump to MLS, and they're not the only one with first-division desires. The New York Cosmos have made it clear that they harbor big-time aspirations, and Miami FC looks like it wants to be at the top level. MLS probably isn't going to be an option for either, and with only so many slots available as a league aiming for 28 teams, it doesn't look good for most of the rest of the NASL, either.

That doesn't mean anybody is giving up on the dream. There's more than one way to make it to the top. Just ask Peter Wilt.

“During my time [with the NASL’s Indy Eleven], the feeling among everyone in the organization was that we want to compete at the highest level,” said Wilt, who founded fall season-leading club and served as its general manager through last spring's campaign. “The preference is that the North American Soccer League would be that highest level. ... The progress of the NASL has been such that there's reason for optimism, that achieving first-division status in Indianapolis and playing at the highest level in North America in Indianapolis is possible within the North American Soccer League.”

If so, it's a ways off. The NASL, in name a successor to the celebrated league that lured Pelé, Johan Cruyff, Franz Beckenbauer and other international stars to North America in the 1970s, has grown immensely since stepping onto the field in 2011, but, Wilt said, “it's not where it needs to be to be a first-division league, which is an aspiration of most if not all of its owners.”