Beyond the 90 is a reader supported publication where the majority of our community members have significant involvement in the domestic game here in the United States.

We never had problems until the last few weeks in our comment section and unfortunately I’ve had to take action as a result. I’m very sorry I dropped the ball on this- I should be monitoring the comments more carefully I admit.

Please watch this video and understand the ground rules for commenting in the future.

Thank you for your continued support of BT90.

Going from supporter to writer. Some tips from personal experiences and some of the mistakes I’ve made in the past.

The situation is fluid, but there are some conclusions that can be drawn from what has transpired in the last few months.

On this late week edition of The Third Half:

We take a look at the Gainbridge announcement and I give my thoughts on this massive news for the USL.

Buffalo has announced a stadium site for their home ground. Lets take a look at the pluses and minuses.

Louisville City and Lexington have announced partnerships. What do they mean?

Louisville City and Lexington also announced what they will be playing for as this new rivalry takes off.

I also take a look at the recent signings in the league and recap the two midweek fixtures.

As a reminder, due to travel this weekend there will be no early week edition of The Third Half. I do sincerely apologize and our regular schedule will resume with the late week edition.

I do apologize for any background noise that may have been picked up during recording.

As always, thank you for your support of both The Third Half and Beyond the 90.

How should the USL professional ecosystem be structured with PRO/REL? Some ideas here.

President Trump is unlikely to have a huge impact on whether people travel to World Cup 2026 or not as many of the concerns I have heard about coming to the United States predated his election, but the immigration and tariff situations as well as the uncertainties created by Trump’s policy meandering about are already negatively impacting the sport in this country.

One potential positive is that a weakening dollar may lead to more foreign clubs touring the United States. Increasing inflation may help USL but the potential of stagflation which could come from a protectionist economic policy could be disastrous for the professional game in this country.

We get into all of this in this video answering your questions.

We talk about all of the topics listed on the graphic in addition to discussing the need to properly staff clubs with ticket and sponsorship sales people.

Sorry for the delay this week - life happens. But we got around to recording on Monday afternoon and covered all the Loudoun United situation news and analysis as well as digging into the weekend’s USL Championship action.

The Third Half Podcast is available via the Beyond the 90 stream on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and wherever you get podcasts

While, the financial arguments do deserve more critiques (next video in this series) the player development benefit around promotion and relegation are painfully obvious. But for those still unconvinced we dive into it here.

When we launched Beyond the 90’, we made a commitment to avoid political discussions as political polarization is tearing apart much of the citizenry in western democracies. Football/Soccer should be release from this.

But times unfortunately require us to pivot and the subscriber mailbag is filled with questions which relate to politics and public policy- questions which I hear being talked about every single day by my sources in the world of American soccer.

The reality is football/soccer is a business like any other business and it’s a multi-billion dollar international business at that. So current events are impacting investors confidence and effecting how front offices build rosters and even acquire kits and training gear.

So the questions that have been asked are all valid questions which are beginning to creep into every high-level discussion about the sport in this country. We didn’t want to have to talk about these things, but we have no choice but to do so.