Former Inter Miami sporting director, COO Paul McDonough named USL president

Paul McDonough, who was suspended for two years by MLS for his participation in doctoring Inter Miami’s roster, was named president and chief soccer officer of the United Soccer League on Monday. Here’s what you need to know:

Backstory

In April 2021, MLS announced an investigation found that Inter Miami violated league roster and budget rules by having four designated players on its roster in 2020. However, when announcing sanctions, the league added that violations included incorrect roster categorization for Andrés Reyes, who should have also occupied a DP slot, bringing the total to five players.

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The league had said in March 2021 that it was investigating Miami’s summer signing of Matuidi, who was billed as being signed with targeted allocation money. By acquiring the Frenchman on a TAM deal, Miami preserved its third and final DP slot (the club signed Rodolfo Pizarro and Matias Pellegrini as DPs prior to Matuidi’s arrival), which it later used to land Argentine striker Gonzalo Higuain.

The league release said MLS reviewed 1,400 pages of documents during the investigation. The probe also found that Matuidi was paid above the limit for a TAM player — $1.6125 million in 2020 — and should have been classified as a DP. As a result, the club had four DPs for the final months of the 2020 season, putting it in violation of league rules that limit all clubs to three DPs.

The club had to offload one of the four DPs prior to the MLS roster compliance deadline on April 16. To do so, the team announced that it was loaning Pellegrini to its USL League One affiliate, Ft. Lauderdale CF. It also reached an agreement to buy out Pellegrini’s cap number.

Inter Miami owners Marcelo Claure, Masayoshi Son, Jose Mas and David Beckham were found to have done no wrongdoing. The league added that none of the club’s players were “the subject of the investigation, committed any violation, nor were aware of the violations.”

The Athletic’s instant analysis:

Significance of McDonough’s hiring

When Jake Edwards left his role as president and CEO of the USL, the league ecosystem lost its public face. For years, it was Edwards who would handle the league’s media appearances, attend its new expansion clubs’ launch events, attach his name to its public statements, and generally be the lower-league organization’s heart and voice. Upon initially announcing his departure, the league named Jeremy Alumbaugh (formerly a top club executive at St. Louis FC and Chattanooga FC) and Lee O’Neill (formerly of Ipswich Town FC) as senior vice presidents of the second-division Championship and the third-division League One, respectively. Hiring McDonough helps handle one key question that several sources at both the league and club level voiced: Who will replace Edwards as the central public-facing figure? — Rueter

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What are the key issues the USL is facing?

For years, the USL has spoken about its interest in creating a closed promotion and relegation system between its two professional leagues, most frequently through Edwards. That, along with exploring a schedule switch to play the August-to-May timeframe that is customary in many European leagues, was seen as a way to radically differentiate the USL from all other competitions in American soccer, past and present. While McDonough’s news release didn’t specifically mention either pursuit, the repeated mentions of “innovative competition reforms” and “transform(ing) soccer in America” alludes to that aim not leaving alongside Edwards and Mark Cartwright.

The league is also in the final year of its latest short-term broadcast deal with ESPN, leaving it without a future viewing home for its fans. While McDonough does not have experience along these lines at the league level, the USL will hope that the network he’s built between his agent and club roles will help inform decision-making that could greatly impact the ecosystem’s bottom line.

Ultimately, there remain questions about how, specifically, the USL will continue to improve the fates of its clubs. Unlike MLS’s single-entity format, the USL is club-driven. The league has significantly grown its footprint over the past decade, rolling out multiple expansion sides on a near-annual basis since it became the nation’s second-division league in 2018. While the front-end expansion fees have helped the league’s operators, the majority of that income does not get shared among existing owners, per reporting by SocTakes in 2019.

In the following years, the league has yet to significantly improve the revenue that is shared among its clubs either via its broadcast or its sponsorships. The trick for McDonough and the league’s entire office will be to bring more money in to be dispersed across its members while not forfeiting the “open concept” appeal of the league (i.e. not making decisions that bring it closer to being a single-entity operation). — Rueter

(Photo: Eva Mari Uzcategui / AFP via Getty Images)