Club Football
Until recently club football had been a very limited affair involving a handful of amateur teams in several separate leagues. In recent years, as the domestic game has grown in popularity, this has started to change. The Puerto Rico Islanders began to play in the USL First Division, the second tier of football in the United States at the time, and in 2008 the first ever unified competition the Puerto Rico Soccer League was established, marking a major landmark in the history of the game on the island. Many clubs of the island are now affiliated with larger teams in some of the worlds major football leagues.
In 2011, club football teams on the island made another monumental leap. The Puerto Rico Islanders made a transition to the North American Soccer League, which is the new second tier of football in the United States. In addition, Puerto Rico United, Club Atlético River Plate Puerto Rico, and Sevilla FC Puerto Rico made a transition to USL Pro, the new third tier of football in the United States. The Puerto Rico Soccer League held a 2011 season. However, the PRSL folded after the 2011 season, making the Liga Nacional de Fútbol de Puerto Rico to become the top tier league, even though it is an amateur league. The LNFPR split into a First Division and Second Division in order to fill the void left by the now-defunct PRSL. Seeking to restructure professional football in Puerto Rico, the PRFF is planning for the Liga Profesional de Fútbol de Puerto Rico, which is supposed to start in 2013.
Read more about this topic: Football In Puerto Rico
Famous quotes containing the words club and/or football:
“The barriers of conventionality have been raised so high, and so strangely cemented by long existence, that the only hope of overthrowing them exists in the union of numbers linked together by common opinion and effort ... the united watchword of thousands would strike at the foundation of the false system and annihilate it.”
—Mme. Ellen Louise Demorest 1824–1898, U.S. women’s magazine editor and woman’s club movement pioneer. Demorest’s Illustrated Monthly and Mirror of Fashions, p. 203 (January 1870)
“In this dream that dogs me I am part
Of a silent crowd walking under a wall,
Leaving a football match, perhaps, or a pit,
All moving the same way.”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)