Following the announcement of the USL Super League, a coalition of future league leaders took a hop across the pond to the Netherlands, gaining valuable experience that will undoubtedly serve the new league and its founding members.
The Super League will serve as a first-tier display of women’s soccer in the United States and as such, the group’s main activity while abroad was spent taking in the 2023 UEFA Women’s Champions League final between Barcelona and Wolfsburg.
While the tournament’s finale produced plenty of excitement, the trip was also valuable because of what was learned. Steve Livingstone and Mauricio Ruiz represented JAXUSL on the trip and were able to pick up on many aspects of the Dutch game that they hope to make even better and bring to Jacksonville.
Some of these lessons relate to stadium design, which is one of JAXUSL’s first orders of business as they bring professional women’s soccer to the First Coast. Without an existing venue, the group has a blank canvas to work with, allowing them to survey some of the world’s greatest. Building an environmentally-friendly home ground is a priority for the group.
“We want to be as energy-mindful as possible and a lot of teams and big artists are only holding events in arenas that they consider green-concept,” Ruiz shared. “That’s something that, as we’re looking to build our stadium in the next few years, one idea that we really got from them.”
While these lessons are helpful, the trip’s emphasis focused on women’s soccer abroad and how it can be improved as the USL looks to uplift the game here at home. This was done through a variety of manners, looking both at what’s been done in the past and what can be done differently in the future.
Although women’s soccer largely hasn’t received the support it’s deserving of, Ruiz believes that there are features of the American system that provide a heads-up on the rest of the world and can allow the Super League to experience great success.
“We do have this really high-level college developmental system that the majority of our young ladies have gone through and in Europe, they don’t have that,” Ruiz said. “If you’re a young athlete and you’re not at the top of your game at a national-caliber level, there’s really not a pathway for you.”
Pathway is an important term for the Super League, which features “bridging the journey from youth to pro, connected to the global game, and bringing professional women’s soccer closer to home” as part of its mission.
Another inherent advantage that the Super League will have is that it operates on the FIFA calendar, which will still allow players to prioritize playing for their country without having to worry about scheduling conflicts with their club team.
The current structure of professional women’s soccer prevents many of Europe’s top players from coming to the States because of these conflicts. In addition, the Super League will not enforce a salary cap, further encouraging the world’s top talent to come play.
In the latter days of the trip, the group visited the Dutch federation to see how they are going about advancing women’s soccer. They are doing this with relatively-low resources, which makes Ruiz hopeful about what JAXUSL can do for the women’s game.
“If we can convince our community market and business partners to really focus a lot on the opportunity in the women’s game, I think we can be a huge part of this elevation that women’s soccer is already having in the country,” Ruiz said. “We won’t be the pioneers of it by any means, but we can certainly be a huge part of adding fuel to that fire and steam to the train that’s already on the move.”
