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  1. PWC2017

    Soccer - Developing the HK & North American Leagues

    Chapter 36: The Long Conversations Identity, Geography, and Uncomfortable Truths (2018 – 2021) Long before Project 26 had a name, before announcements or timelines, Manson was already working on the least glamorous part of reform. He called it preparation. Others called it interference...
  2. PWC2017

    Soccer - Developing the HK & North American Leagues

    Chapter 35: Protecting the Foundations The MLS Originals and the Price of Stability (2022 – 2023) The announcement of the pyramid answered one question publicly. Privately, it raised another far more dangerous one. The Reality of the MLS Originals By 2022, Major League Soccer was no longer...
  3. PWC2017

    Soccer - Developing the HK & North American Leagues

    Chapter 34: The Announcement August 2022 – Four Years Out By the summer of 2022, silence was no longer sustainable. Too many stadium filings. Too many trademark registrations. Too many ownership movements happening in parallel. Project 26 had reached the point where secrecy was creating more...
  4. PWC2017

    Soccer - Developing the HK & North American Leagues

    Chapter 33: The Rival City AC Miami and the Art of Compromise (2019 – 2022) Miami had already chosen a side. Or so it seemed. More Than One Club When Inter Miami entered the landscape, many assumed the door had closed on any serious second club. For Manson, it had done the opposite. Miami...
  5. PWC2017

    Soccer - Developing the HK & North American Leagues

    Chapter 32: The Hardest Market Golden City and the San Francisco Problem (2018 – 2023) If Las Vegas required patience, and Baltimore required trust, San Francisco required endurance. For Manson, it was the most difficult chapter of Project 26—not because of vision, but because of reality. The...
  6. PWC2017

    Soccer - Developing the HK & North American Leagues

    Chapter 31: A Club for the City Baltimore Athletic (2018 – 2022) Baltimore did not need convincing that sport mattered. It was already in the city’s bones. An Obvious Fit By 2018, as Project 26 expanded beyond theory and into ownership strategy, Baltimore stood out as one of the most obvious...
  7. PWC2017

    Soccer - Developing the HK & North American Leagues

    Chapter 30: Desert Ambition Las Vegas and the Club That Would Not Wait (2016 – 2022) Las Vegas was never meant to be a football city. At least, that was the prevailing wisdom. For Manson, that assumption alone made it impossible to ignore. The First Conversations (2016) By 2016, Las Vegas...
  8. PWC2017

    Soccer - Developing the HK & North American Leagues

    Chapter 29: The People’s Club Detroit Express and the Long Road Home (2014 – 2022) Detroit’s story was never going to follow the same path as New York or Los Angeles. Where those cities were driven by capital, branding, and global reach, Detroit was driven by something far rarer in modern...
  9. PWC2017

    Soccer - Developing the HK & North American Leagues

    Chapter 28: The West Coast Super Club The Return of the Los Angeles Aztecs (2018 – 2022) If New York represented history, gravity, and global recognition, then Los Angeles represented something else entirely: scale. For Project 26 to succeed, it needed a West Coast Super Club capable of...
  10. PWC2017

    Soccer - Developing the HK & North American Leagues

    Chapter 27: The First Super Club The Rebirth of the New York Cosmos (2018 – 2022) The idea of Super Clubs had always been controversial, even within the inner circle of Project 26. Critics saw them as a contradiction—how could a pyramid built on merit justify institutions designed to lead from...
  11. PWC2017

    Soccer - Developing the HK & North American Leagues

    Chapter 26: The Competitive Pyramid 2021 – 2022 By 2021, the conversation had shifted from whether a pyramid was possible to what kind of pyramid North American soccer actually needed. Expansion alone was no longer enough. For the system to mature, performance had to matter, and it had to...
  12. PWC2017

    Soccer - Developing the HK & North American Leagues

    Chapter 25: Laying the Pyramid Foundations 2021 By 2021, Manson had spent nearly a decade studying professional football growth in multiple continents. From Hong Kong and Macau to the United States and Canada, he had seen the importance of structure, sustainability, and slow, deliberate...
  13. PWC2017

    Soccer - Developing the HK & North American Leagues

    Chapter 25: Announcing the World Soccer Calendar 2021 By late 2021, years of quiet negotiation and private meetings had reached a tipping point. The World Soccer Calendar, long discussed behind closed doors with MLS, USL, Liga MX, CONCACAF, and CONMEBOL, was ready for its first public step...
  14. PWC2017

    Soccer - Developing the HK & North American Leagues

    Chapter 24: The World Soccer Calendar 2020 – 2021 By 2020, one of the most persistent barriers to North and South American football had become impossible to ignore: the calendar. North America ran summer-first seasons. Mexico split its competitions into Apertura and Clausura. South America...
  15. PWC2017

    Soccer - Developing the HK & North American Leagues

    Chapter 23: The Calendar Problem 2021 Every ambitious football project eventually collided with the same immovable object. The calendar. It was not a scheduling issue. It was a cultural one. A commercial one. A political one. And in North America, it was treated as untouchable. Manson...
  16. PWC2017

    Soccer - Developing the HK & North American Leagues

    Chapter 22: Looking South 2020 – Early 2021 If the structure was finally beginning to take shape at home, the next question was unavoidable. How high was the ceiling? For decades, North American soccer had measured itself against CONCACAF, and largely accepted the limitations that came with...
  17. PWC2017

    Soccer - Developing the HK & North American Leagues

    Chapter 21: The Big Seven 2019 – 2020 Some ideas were never meant for slide decks. They lived in notebooks, in late-night calls, in conversations that ended with silence rather than agreement. The Big Seven was one of those ideas—spoken about carefully, shared selectively, and never written...
  18. PWC2017

    Soccer - Developing the HK & North American Leagues

    Chapter 20: Building the Middle Late 2018 – 2019 Once the lines were drawn, the work became relentless. The creation of MLS NEXT had resolved one long-standing tension, but it also exposed a larger opportunity. With affiliated teams moving out of the professional ecosystem, USL finally had the...
  19. PWC2017

    Soccer - Developing the HK & North American Leagues

    Chapter 18: Separation of Purpose 2017 By mid-2017, one contradiction had become impossible to ignore. USL was being asked to be two things at once—and succeeding at neither fully. On one hand, it was expected to function as a professional, independent league, capable of hosting clubs with...
  20. PWC2017

    Soccer - Developing the HK & North American Leagues

    Chapter 17: The Lever 2017 By the beginning of 2017, one thing had become unmistakably clear to Manson. If meaningful structural change was ever going to happen in North American soccer, it would not begin at the top. It would begin in the middle. Understanding USL’s Role MLS was stable...
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