To be honest, I think this "MLS Elite" league is all a smokescreen, MLS league? I don't think so, I've heard it will have different categories, one for MLS clubs and then a separate category for those "elite" clubs. Why not have both regular club teams and MLS play against each other?
The non-MLS are only involved for filler games and for MLS reserves to get their games in. I’m not sure the parents understand that yet. They will be shit on, taken advantage of, will travel more and they will be the bottom of the food chain. MLS clubs don’t want to play non-MLS but they need the filler games. Attached is the competitive format (shhhh, it’s top secret) and as you can see the MLS teams are only committing to 20% of their games being played against non-MLS in specific age groups and everything else is TBD.
I think this was the inevitable next step for MLS. It’s years in the making so they can do what they want and not be under the control of US Soccer but the better move for the non-MLS was boys ECNL which just gained legitimacy on the boys side because of the clubs that jumped in on that. I’m guessing that the clubs that got in to this MLS league weren’t accepted in to ECNL so they had to have some flavor of kool-aid for their families to drink. I doubt anyone would turn down the established ECNL platform for a new and unproven league just because MLS is backing it.