At some point the guys at Konami got themselves organized enough to actually put in full leagues they have player likeness rights for, mainly focused on the European leagues, even if they don't have the actual team licenses. Which is actually a pretty impressive change, as this is a feature I'd have otherwise not expected them to actually make available for a free soccer video game. Usually you can tell what the team is supposed to be based on the name -- Manchester B[lue] is of course Manchester City. The next option in the list (row 2, column 1) is Liverpool. Previously only Arsenal and Manchester Utd. were available, as those teams had real licenses for their teams.
If you look online, you can see that this mode's update was announced as part of their season 3 expansion -- see here. Full league representation for the Japanese leagues, Ligue 1, and Liga MX -- teams with real names and logos -- are there, whereas for Italian, English, and Spanish leagues (as you can guess by the fact that the leagues are only identified by which country they play in) have a smattering of real teams combined with the generified versions of many others, but real player names and likenesses.
That said, there's a shocking gap here among playable teams: eFootball has, since last season, been a major sponsor of the USL Championship, and along with that they have the league, team, and player licensing rights. You can play as, say, Birmingham Legion in the ult. team mode and recruit actual players from their lineup like Nico Brett, or you can recruit players like Erling Haaland (who, again, is in the game with his real name and face even if his team isn't) and play as a real international superstar soccer team.
That is, it doesn't actually make much sense to recruit USL players when there are stronger players in the international leagues that don't cost a terribly larger amount of the in-game currency. As a result, despite eFootball branding being inescapable in USL matches and broadcasts, the association feels like little more than window dressing. But hey, golden boot winner for the 2022 season Milan Ilosky is probably on the order of 3,000 points to recruit and Everton's Doucoure is like 15,000 points, so you can set up a team quickly if you recruit from the USL...just don't expect to be terribly competitive in the online modes.
The lack of meaningful representation of USL teams is weird in this context. You can select them in the practice mode, but otherwise the real USL teams, despite their logos and players all being there, don't really exist.
I should note that this change to the authentic team mode happened relatively recently, within the past weeks (notice that on the page announcing it, there's an 'updated 23.03.2023' note there). I didn't notice it because when it comes to single matches I tend to play FIFA, and my focus on eFootball is, go figure, the dream team mode, so it's been a little while since I've looked there.
Why isn't the USL showing up? I don't think it can be put down just to the fact that they're a second-tier league in the US. I'm probably underplaying how significant eFootball is as a presence in USL advertising, and they really do make a fuss about being to play as your favorite USL players and teams and everything...except, it's not really feasible to do so because of how the modes are set up. So here's my theory.
There's an update coming in the Wed-Thurs. maintenance period, and it's a major one announced on their Twitter feed. It's also the first eFootball update since the new USL season started. So teams, kits, rosters, logos, etc. are all settled (though any pre-season roster additions are already showing up, just without player photos). That's the only reason why they haven't done this sooner -- everyone outside of America is mid-season currently and of course outside of the transfer windows, so they've had the team information available for them all for a while. USL teams have been announcing new free agent signings this week.
I can't promise that USL will be in efootball's authentic team mode starting Thursday (I mean, the season 3 update took two months between its start in January and the full leagues in authentic team mode), but I would like to see it soon, given how big a deal the game makes of itself within the league. I really hope it happens, though; I'll finally get to play a game of NM United against El Paso Locomotive in this game!