Here’s a question I’m stuck on: we know how the first and second tiers would work, but how should relegation below the second tier work? Would it remain as A-League to Championship to NPL or would we introduce more national tiers?
In Europe they usually have a few national divisions and then regional divisions that get smaller and smaller as you go down, with some countries having grouped national divisions (i.e. national divisions split into groups, e.g. Serie C) in between. To give an idea of how many ungrouped national tiers each country has in men’s football: France has three, Germany has three, Italy has two, the Netherlands has three, Portugal has two, Spain has two and so on. The UK is unique in that England and Scotland have five and four, respectively, which is more than the two or three seen in the pro systems of Continental Europe.
In Asia, they also do this. Japan has four national tiers, the same number as the Scottish pyramid with a similar principle as the English one (as in, Japan has three pro national tiers and one amateur one, while England has four national ones and one semi-pro one). The national tier structure persists in many other countries, with China having three, Iran having two, Saudi Arabia having two and so on. However, in South Korea they don’t have true regional tiers until the eighth division and below, though only the top four divisions are ungrouped national tiers.
Other countries are pretty similar, with Argentina having two, Brazil having four and Mexico normally having two as another three other examples. So what should we do? We have a concept for an NST, should we make one for an NTT too?