Gardner needs to be taken to a shooting range and shot up until their is nothing left of that d...less wonder.
He is the biggest prick to assume that he can write about soccer. I ignore Soccer America because of him. The sound of his voice makes me want to shove his computer down his throat.
there are a lot of iimprovements to mlssoccer.com but one of the dumbest things they have changed is to have gotten rid of the "live" section under videos. last year when there were streamed teleconferences and other live events you could then go back and watch them later on mlssoccer.com ... and they were easy to find. now, not so much .... i guess if you have a job and couuldn't listen to the teleconference at 4pm then you just don't get to hear it ...
Twitter transcript of the conference call http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/thegoalkeeper/141973373.html
Upon review, seems NYC20 is all but complete and they are working at stadiums. From what I can take away from the tweets is that the stadium will be owned by MLS. This makes me think that MLS may be building a "National Stadium."
Except they don't have an ownership group yet... MLS will likely be able to find the ownership group once they get a stadium in place but they don't have one yet. They don't have a stadium location picked out yet, and then they have to go through all the red tape etc of securing the land and everything else. Then pick the ownership group.
Ownership group would take two seconds once they have stadium approval - that's exactly Garber said. Its interesting though that MLS now has the equity to do that kind of thing - go ahead and invest in themselves by trying to get a stadium approved in NYC and then sell it to an investor. Not sure what the costs of this procedure are for the league. I would actually like to see a Qatari investor come into MLS - it would be no different than LA Galaxy except deeper pockets. The rules of the league are already in place to limit spending, but they would unquestionably spend to the max allowed by the league (e.g., 3 25 year old highly talented DPs). You would think that one of these Middle Eastern billionaires wouldn't mind throwing a hundred million at a club in one of the top 5 cities in the world - it's like pocket money for these guys.
Good points I would not mind seeing a MLSNY2 such as the NY Cosmos with middle east money who don't mind buying 3 DP players that would make people bust a nut.
It seems the league truly seeking NY2, if they're really into investing league's money to build a stadium. This alone is an achievement for a 17 year old league.
That's probably my least favorite thing about MLS. The point of having a season is to determine the best team.
NFL guys like Garber are betting that since no one complained when the Giants won the NFL with a mediocre regular season record, the same will happen here. Thank God for the new rule about higher regular season finish hosts the Cup. That's going to add an enormous amount of excitement and intrigue to the playoffs.
Not when there are playoffs. Then the point of a season is to earn a right into the playoffs where the best team is then determined.
since i can't actually listen to this presser because mlssoccer.com is run by morons i could only read the twitter feed and i wasn't clear what MLS HQ is actually doing. are they spending money and time researching, lobbying, and securing the location for a stadium so that the winning expansion bidder simply has to put together the money and the blueprints and build a stadium? or are they actually going to fund the entire stadium project and build it themselves as a league and own it as a league and rent it to the prospective expansion ownership group? because it isn't clear from what i read. if i had to guess i would say that it is the first. still an investment of time and money to get the stadium location secured and approved for building a stadium, maybe even spending the money to design a specific stadium for that location and have it approved. but to actually fund the entire construction and then own it afterwards? that seems out of the purview of the league quite honestly.
Let me know when an American soccer team can have several losing seasons without totally losing fan support. Because it has never happened. Here's some American exceptionalism for you. The worst baseball team still wins 20 - 30% of its games. The worst football and basketball teams still score touchdowns/baskets throughout the season. But in soccer the worst team can not only never win, but hardly score any goals. And no Americans want to spend money to see that. By the way, we don't want to watch foreign teams with that kind of record either. The playoff system was a brilliant innovation by the league. I, for one, would like to see it implemented in European leagues too.
Take it for what it's worth, but I had a meeting 2-3 weeks ago with a current MLS owner on an unrelated business issue. We got off topic for a second and discussed the MLS in general. He made the comment that they were "very close to a Manhatten stadium site." I didn't inquire further, but he acted like it was very close to moving forward. I was shocked to hear this and remain skeptical, but who knows
? The worst soccer teams in leagues around the world tend to be no worse than the worst MLB, NBA, NFL, and NHL team. The competitive balance of the American structured salary system is only noticed over a couple of seasons, not within a single season.
IMHO... the real league in Europe is the Champions Leauge... that is the playoffs. Its the only real parity in all of Europe... most of the leagues are a race by a few teams to one of two places... that top to Champions league or the bottom for relegation.
Classic thread derailment... But, continuing the off topic discussion, I like the two trophies available, the Shield and MLS Cup. It's too bad the NFL doesn't have one and everyone says "only the playoffs" count - why should only the playoffs count? they should both count. Just having a regular season is anti climactic, but making the playoffs the only valuable thing devalues the regular season. I like the balance MLS has.