XSL not interested in playing interleague games against Blast
The Blast wanted to get extreme this season, but a rival indoor soccer league quickly put an end to any discussion of interleague games.
The Blast, a member of the five-team National Indoor Soccer League, contacted the Xtreme Soccer League about playing two exhibition games. But that won’t happen, said Brian Loftin, the commissioner of the Xtreme Soccer League.
“Right now, we’re really concentrated on our product, and our core product, which isn’t just related to what’s going on the field,” he said. “We’ve made major strides in the online side, with the implementation of fantasy games, and bringing games live web-streaming.”
All four of the XSL teams — the Milwaukee Wave, Detroit Ignition, Chicago Storm or New Jersey Ironmen — competed against the Blast in the Major Indoor Soccer League before it folded last spring.
The Blast plays 18 games during the regular season, which are 12 fewer than it did last season in the MISL. The Blast joined the Rockford (Ill.) Rampage, Massachusetts Twisters, Monterrey La Raza and Philadelphia KiXX in the newly formed NISL. The Blast won the MISL title in four of the past six seasons.
“We were certainly open to playing some games against teams of the other league,” said Kevin Healey, the Blast’s president. “The first one right off the bat was Milwaukee. We’d love to have a home and away with them. We have a lot of respect between the organizations. Their organization would like to play more games also, but their league strategy is not to do it.”
