Jeff Hunt and the Ottawa Sports and Entertainment Group are preparing for a press conference Monday to announce an NASL expansion club for the Capital region. And, like FC Edmonton, the Ottawa side won’t have any affiliation to another Canadian pro club. That was confirmed by league sources Thursday.

The Professional Arena Soccer League wants to work with the Major Indoor Soccer League. While the United Soccer Leagues, which took over the administration of the MISL last week, has made it clear that it thinks that its league is by the best indoor league on the continent, the PASL hopes the two leagues can discuss interleague play and competing against each other in Cup tournaments.

FC Edmonton and the Montreal Impact both start the NASL season on the road this Saturday — and their fans will be able to stream those games, for free.

The North American Soccer League took a step towards stability with the hiring of an independent commissioner on Monday. David Downs will take over as the head domo of the second-division league on April 4. Downs has 30 years of broadcast experience as an executive with ABC Sports and Univision Communications. He negotiated U.S. broadcast rights for World Cups from USA ’94 to Brazil 2014. He was also the head of the U.S. bid committee for the 2022 World Cup, which lost out to Qatar in the voting.

If Major League Soccer is true to its word, we can expect to see a rise in the number of cards and penalty kicks awarded in games this season. Commissioner Don Garber outlined some new points of emphasis for MLS officials in his season kickoff conference call Friday. Garber made it clear that the league was concerned over what it felt was the number of infractions that went unpunished in games last season.

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.

After a close board vote on Friday, the decision to give NASL the Division 2 sanction was ratified by the membership of the United States Soccer Federation Saturday in Las Vegas. But the sanction is only good for the 2011 season. According to a release from the league, “The NASL will need to meet certain requirements defined by the Board of Directors to be granted full sanctioning beyond the 2011 season.”

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.

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