Over 20K average for the first 2 weeks, nice try, but this season will probably be better than last year.
Honestly, I do not think so. The only sport which it might be able to surpass would be hockey, but even that is very unlikely. flower wedding favors
well i have season tickets for the fire. the attendence is ok here, but when i see highlights from other games in mls.com the stadiums look pretty empty. like red bulls at columbus and revolution at dallas last week
so in other words, you saw probably two of the three worst places in terms of attendance (well not sure about fc dallas, but columbus has pretty miserable attendance from i've heard)
It can not happen now. Red Bulls have 24 players on their roster. There are only 10 American born on that team. They can't even field a team of 11 players with all American born on it. When I first noticed this I said that can't be right? I was going to go to last nights game, but changed my mind after noticing that.
Isn't Baseball going the same way? You must also hate Hockey with all them Canadians in the teams. I think the Blackhawks have 2 Americans in the team.
There's a team in north London called Arsenal that a few years ago fielded a starting 11 with precisely zero English players. Somehow, I think the sport is still sort of popular over there, don't you think?
Really, no quotas? In Italy there was a quota of the number of none Italians allowed. Maybe that has changed as well.
That is a different situation. There was a time when the NASL required 2 Americans on the field. Today, American baseball fans seem OK with teams fielding lots of Carribean players. And soccer fans are more more sophistcated today then we were in the 1970s. Soccer will never pass any of the Big 3, though never is a long time. Still who cares. In a country as big as ours, being 4th or 5th is still a big deal. Hockey is a Canadian plot to destroy America
Serie "A" must not have a quota either because Inter Milan often fielded starting XI's that had 0 Italians in them the past few years.
Italy at one time had resturctive rules against foreigners playing in their league. Those rules softened over time, but the real softening is that under EU laws, citizens of one member state are permitted to work in other members states without restriction (though I think with recent members, they have negotiated phase ins, so not everyone immediately moves to London or Paris). So even if the country has quotas, they cannot apply them to EU (and also EEA I think) citizens. So a German player can play in France without being considered a foreign player. Becuase they are all one happy European family. The Euros can and in many cases try to limit non-EU players. There had been limits in some countries, such as Germany or Italy and the UK on non-EU players on the field at one time. I think it had been 4 -- but the rules were so ridden with holes that I doubt they are honored anymore. Italy for example has relatively easy rules allowing descendents of Italian expats to get an Italian passport. They do for non-football reasons -- the Italians are not having children and frankly to pay for the welfare state need immigrants to come there. Politically it is easier to claim they are allowing the Italian diaspora to return home, but it is silly -- at least I have 4 Italian grandparents if I wanted to claim the status (which by a strange quirk in Italian citizenship law, I cannot). A decade or so ago, these South Americn players were showing up in Italy with a passport claim which basically was that they once knew some guy named Giuseppe Not sure what the rules are now -- it seems that there are no real rules, so long as the player can get a work permit.
yeah this pretty much sums it up... unfortunately the MLS won't get more popular until they get better players (among lots of other things), and to get better players they need to generate more revenue so they can offer higher salaries. And to generate more revenue the league needs to get more popular. So yeah its a pretty vicious circle right now.
That was sort of my point, though--how is the presence of foreign talent in the domestic league a sign that the league can NOT be more popular? I would think quite the opposite. Truth.
The question was will "MLS ever pass one of he big 3" If were talking about soccer in general IMHO it already is in the top 3. For example when Celtic came to boston last year they sold out Fenway in 12 minutes. Then there is all the Mexicans and central Americans it would be hard to measure the popularity against other sports. It's something you cant measure with only t.v ratings.
Sorry i dont see how is that valid, Tv ratings do mean alot and alot of events can have alot of people, soccer isnt consistent in north america, inparticular, here in the uS where alot of americans dont follow it alot, there are many other major sports happenning.
yes..."lots" is not the same as "majority of the team." besides the only Caribbean export nations are Cuba and the Dominican Republic. "South American players" would have been a better example. More players have origins in Panama-Columbia-Venezeuela.
Then look at Hockey. What % of all NHL players do you think are American? Do you think Hockey fans care?
Yeah that's what I'm saying. I don't think Americans really care whose playing. I was saying, foreign players don't hold the majority in any one baseball team like they do in European soccer clubs. It's not as prevalent. BUT...If one baseball team DID happen to field majority foreign born players...it wouldn't matter.
Ya know, i have a lot of friends who don't follow soccer at all, and don't know much about it. But they love watching the world cup, maybe it's the way it's advertised, the nature of the tournament and the high level of competition, or a combination. im not sure. i could definitely see soccer passing baseball, given that baseball is like 3 hrs of standing with the ball actually in play for about 8 minutes., but i just dont see MLS as competitive enough to make it grow. Although it is on its way with the talent on teams like NY and LA. i think the thing is that when we sign big players like henry and pretty much everyone but david beckham, the people that are interested are soccer fans, so it makes he league better but doesnt necessarily make it grow. I think C Ronaldo could be a difference maker in the league though, like the next david beckham.
Panama isn't South America. And Puerto Rico, although reducing the amount, is still a Caribbean exporter.