According to the NASL, the Montreal Impact and Vancouver Whitecaps can field affiliated teams in Div. 2 as early as 2012. While neither team has concrete plans in place to have affiliated teams in NASL, Vancouver has retained its membership in the league and Montreal plans to do the same when it leaves NASL for MLS in 2012. This is consistent with previous indications from the league.

Both the Montreal Impact and FC Edmonton will have full sanctions to participate in the Nutrilite Canadian Championship, said Impact owner Joey Saputo in an NASL conference call Wednesday. He said the indications he has from the CSA is that the format for the four-team NCC will be released in the next couple of weeks, and that the Impact and FCE would be seen as Div. 2 clubs. But, he is confident that all eight NASL teams will have Div. 2 status after Saturday’s United States Soccer Federation vote in Las Vegas. The NASL expects the USSF board to approve its re-application for Div. 2 status on Friday, and then have the membership ratify that vote on Saturday.

It's making its rounds throughout the soccer media. But seven of the eight NASL teams are represented (by supporters groups) in this open letter to U.S. Soccer Federation president Sunil Gulati, urging him to grant the league official Div. 2 status. The USSF meets next week. Two weeks ago, the USSF stripped the NASL of its provisional acceptance as the official Div. 2 of soccer in America, but the NASL has carried on with business as usual, and is confident it can win back the status. The league has stated that going down to Div. 3 is not an option.

Major League Soccer and the Canadian Soccer Association will work together on a plan to develop Canadian talent. That announcement came Friday, at the same time the league announced it was dropping the number of Canadian players its Canadian-based teams would be required to carry to three each.

The North American Soccer League did its best impression of an organization NOT in crisis Tuesday, as it released its full 2011 schedule, and announced that six of the circuit’s eight teams will make the playoffs

The fledgling North American Soccer League has confirmed that the United States Soccer Federation has yanked its pledge to sanction it as the region’s official Division 2.

Can a Nutrilite Canadian Championship game generate enough interest to sell 50,000 tickets? That question will be answered in May, when FC Edmonton hosts Toronto FC at Commonwealth Stadium.

While we are months away from finalizing the format for the 2011 Nutrilite Canadian Championship, we know this much; the chance of the Canadian Soccer Association going with a four-team full round-robin is nil. Under that system, each of the four clubs would need to play six games. There’s no time in either the MLS or NASL schedule to make that happen. Remember that a winner needs to be crowned before the summer, when CONCACAF needs the entrant for Champions League qualifying-round play. So, what is the likely course — and that is what is on the table at the moment — is a simple knockout Cup tourney. The four teams would be seeded; TFC would get the No. 1 slot, and would play the newbies, FC Edmonton. Vancouver and Montreal would play in the other series. The winners would face off in a true Cup final.

Even though both the Montreal Impact and Vancouver Whitecaps are moving to MLS, both are retaining their memberships in the second-division NASL. NASL chief executive officer Aaron Davidson confirmed that MLS is aware that both the Impact and Whitecaps are retaining their memberships in NASL, even though Vancouver makes its debut as an MLS city in 2011 and Montreal makes the move in 2012. “They can still have teams in NASL; those teams can have synergies with the MLS franchises or they can be standalone teams,” said Davidson Tuesday, over the phone from Paraguay.

It is troubling that the only evidence the committee will have to work with comes from four shambolic years of TFC mismanagement. It’s like having to decide on new rules of the road based on the actions of one chronic drunk driver.