Brian Quarstad at IMS has announced that he is Bringing IMS to a Close, at Least for Now. I already posted my thanks to BQ for his work, but thought he deserved a thread on BS as well where people can post their appreciation for his work over the years.
I hate that he is making this decision, but I understand it. Hopefully someone else picks up the flame.
Probably the go to site for minor league soccer coverage. And sadly, really one of the only. Brian did a great job covering the major stories the past few years and he will be missed. There isn't really another site out there with a focus on lower division soccer. That is what made IMS and Brian's work so special. And why there will be a huge void until something fills it. BTW, his opinion piece on the recent NASL Cosmos debacle was a must read. And since the rest of the soccer media doesn't really pay attention to the NASL and USL, we won't see stuff like that again. As expected with your predictable NASL tunnel vision. The site did a great job covering the USL, local Minnesota soccer including the Vikings stadium, and even the U.S. Nats and MLS. The NASL on its own probably won't provide enough traffic. I know this might come as a shock to you, but there isn't exactly a massive national interest in the league.
Big loss, he was a wealth of info on the minors. Maybe the new Stars ownership is hiring him. Thanks BQ for your hard work!
It's big loss for lower league soccer. Brian provided great coverage over the years. Hopefully a new site will be able to fill the gap because the media certainly won't start covering the minors now.
This is an enormous loss. I had no idea he was hanging it up. ... ... ... What am I gonna do at work now?
So sad. He was the go to source for me about lower division soccer in the US. Hopefully he has plenty of success in whatever he does next.
I've been thinking about the gaping chasm in the internet presence of lower division soccer news now that BQ has called it quits. How interested would y'all be if there was an SBNation site or something similarly formatted covering NASL for the upcoming season? Get a group of writers together and combine for a weekly report that includes each match (which will be easy to do because all the games are on weekends except for the last matchday) A writer specific to each team could write about that team's story lines or trends or news when something interesting happens. Would any of you visit that site or possibly join a community based site like that for NASL?
^ ^ Depends on if there's real reporting or just blog commentary. The thing about IMS was that Quarstad did the time-consuming reporter legwork on stories no one else was doing. He went out and got hard info that wasn't being published anywhere else on the web. Is there someone else who's gonna do that kind of reporting on the lower divisions?
I agree that we need something with BQ hanging it up. Most of my NASL news these days comes from Facebook, which the teams are admittedly doing a much better job of using than in any season previous. But it's not something that can just be thrown together. As CShine said above, the reason BQ was invaluable was because he was a top-notch (casual) reporter and not just some blogger posting links and speculation. BQ has years of coaching and supporting soccer in the Twin Cities, and it led to him developing a lot of strong relationships that served his readers well. He's also a pretty tenacious SOB. So if you can round up a bunch of would-be journalists (and maybe you can in this economy), I'd say go for it. But it's gonna be a lot of hours and not a lot of thanks--except for on sub-forums of message boards like this one.
Yes, I mean is not like many of us pay to get lower division leagues news, I assume add revenues are limited since very few people click on a news page about NASL/USL news.
Just curious - am I the only one that read the tweet and jumped to the website hoping to read an article?
Nope, I did as well. The11.ca, Steven Sandors website, has regular NASL news as well, thats where I'm checking a few times a week now. IMS really was the best site. So I guess the regular NASL podcasts with BQ won't be happening either?
Well his site may be gone, but he still twitting and retwitting good shit. http://www.xiquarterly.com/2013/03/12/a-bohemian-footprint-supporting-american-soccer-nationwide/