1) If you want to use a model that takes 25k households (of which bars, dorms, and online viewing is not taken into account) and uses that to indicate how many people are watching MLS then that is your perogitive. However, based on the huge uptick in advertiser revenue I'm going to say that the higher ups believe there is much more exposure now than there was 10 years ago. 2) MLS has solidly become the second best league behind Mexico in CONCACAF. Here are MLS teams records against non-FMF teams in the preliminary and group stages since the CCL since 2008 (in W-L-D format). 2008: 2-6-4 (0.83 PPG) 2009: 7-3-6 (1.69 PPG) 2010: 11-5-3 (1.89 PPG) 2011: 14-5-3 (2.05 PPG) 2012: 13-2-1 (2.50 PPG) In 5 years MLS went from having their first teams lose to teams from El Salvador to them sending reserve teams and winning. A lot has changed in 5 years on the continental side.
This! The only thing Sepp Blather is competent at in his job is being a money grubbing corrupt piece of sh*t! He doesn't know what the hell he talks about 90% of the time when it comes to soccer. And when it comes to MLS in North America, he sounds like the garbage man trying to explain quantam physics to a general audience. STFU Blatter, and GTFO now!
Actually, this isn't working at all. There is a lot of people here that wants a better calendar. The way that things are now it's really bad.
I ask this in all seriousness: Has Sepp ever been to an MLS game and, if so, when was the last time he was here? Hell, when was the last time he was in the US?
Although I certainly wouldn't mind MLS being peers to the big leagues in Europe, a more realistic goal during my lifetime would be to become the feeder league, the league all the best prospects want to get into to get noticed by the big clubs. This would work well with the summer schedule, as the world's attention would turn to MLS during Europe's off-season to see all the hottest up-and-comers. Oh, and I want to wholeheartedly endorse the idea of a "You Be the Sepp" forum, where BigSoccer members could post the most hilariously ignorant ideas for "fixing" American soccer. (Although now that I think about it, that's how some people would describe "You Be the Don".) ------RM
He is right about some of his generalities about MLS not being that popular in the US and the pyramid not being strong. The problem with his comments is that he got almost every detail flat out wrong (or 10-15 years in the past). I'd love to see what he would have had to say about the English First Division in 1906.
Like his cronies in the CFU, he's probably too scared to enter lest he be brought up on charges and arrested
I have thought of this. The US must be a real enigma for scum like Blatter. He craves it's riches, but fears the fact that we probably just won't conform and do what we are told. On top of that we might just bite back.
If Blatter had these sort of expectations, then that's his problem. Not mine or yours. Only you control your reaction to various outcomes and circumstances in life. But it's one thing to be ignorant and silent, it's another thing to be ignorant and yet still open your mouth because you actually think you know what you're talking about.
You can never tell with the media, but sometimes you can effectively say something very narrow and fairly true, while implying much greater and gravely false, and the question is whether you meant to do it or not. These quotes first came to me sounding like an implied comparison with China (who a lot of people expect to bid, probably against us implicitly or ex-, for the next World Cup rights), in which he almost came off as trying to imply that promotion/relegation or the international calendar over here are bigger issues than the match fixing and political manipulation that has been rife over there. To paint the Chinese league as more successful than MLS is deluded as to the nature of the challenge, but it's deluded in such a way that you wonder exactly what he's playing at. That's the thing that worries me; he comes off as such a clue********, but he's managed to rise to the head of the largest organization in world sport. You figure he must have deployed some kind of skill somewhere along the line in doing so, and the suspicion is that this skill included more than the occasional well-timed knife in someone's back.
Even more impressive when you realize I transposed the loss and ties for this year. RSL is the only team to lose against a non-FMF team in the group stage.
Wow. Thanks for posting those numbers. Shows our growth, and I cannot wait until we send an MLS Club to the Club World Cup. It's gonna happen. Also feel like the teams we have been sending have been more and more quality. It shows in the records.
The 2008-2012 trend is fascinating, but is it really correct to say that five years ago, MLS first teams were losing to teams from El Salvador?
Actually, what's really odd is that this wouldn't seem particularly true. Blatter's here talking about club soccer as the measure of what the sport has accomplished--but FIFA doesn't really get its money from club soccer, they get it from FIFA tournaments like the World Cup, where the US is already the largest single-country market in the world.