Klinsmann is always super bummed out about how, in his view, the differences between the American system and every other system means the USMNT will never be as good as the best Euro and South American national teams. So it's no surprise he's come out again in favor of pro/rel for the MLS.
I like pro/rel as much as the next guy *in other leagues* but I've also come around to the position that the US simply doesn't have the soccer infrastructure to support it (as in, we'd need the hundreds of professional teams that many of the major soccer-playing nations have), the fan patience to deal with it (the oft-repeated question of "what happens to the new soccer fan whose team gets relegated in the fan's first season), the fact that expansion teams don't start at the bottom and fight their way up, and the fact that we don't have a century of soccer history in which supporters have seen their teams go up and down multiple times over generations.
Basically I think we can come back to this issue a few generations down the line, when the number of quality professional teams has exploded, the number of lower tier leagues has increased and the tier system has solidified, and the tradition of following, say, NYCFC has been passed from grandparent to parent to child so the next generation would follow them even into the USL and below.
I like pro/rel as much as the next guy *in other leagues* but I've also come around to the position that the US simply doesn't have the soccer infrastructure to support it (as in, we'd need the hundreds of professional teams that many of the major soccer-playing nations have), the fan patience to deal with it (the oft-repeated question of "what happens to the new soccer fan whose team gets relegated in the fan's first season), the fact that expansion teams don't start at the bottom and fight their way up, and the fact that we don't have a century of soccer history in which supporters have seen their teams go up and down multiple times over generations.
Basically I think we can come back to this issue a few generations down the line, when the number of quality professional teams has exploded, the number of lower tier leagues has increased and the tier system has solidified, and the tradition of following, say, NYCFC has been passed from grandparent to parent to child so the next generation would follow them even into the USL and below.