Detroit has to much bad press at the moment. I can see why they left them off.... and the icon wouldn't fit between Chicago and Columbus too.
yeah I was honestly surprised with the lack of Sacramento talk, since the MLS website posts their stuff all the time. What i do not understand is why they are throwing St Louis on there when there is no established ownership group or a USL or NASL team. i wasn't surprised Indy was left out though, honestly I was fine with that cause we are doing well whether in MLS or NASL. But I totally agree that map was a mistake on their part. There is a lot more than just those few
Oh? I'm sure some team will pick him up in the 2nd round of the re-entry draft... He's certainly not going to get the salary he's currently getting, but it's not like DeRo really has any options outside of MLS at this point. So it is either come back to MLS, or retire. Is DeRo really ready to retire?
some quiet talk about DeRo potentially returning to TFC. apparently has business interests in the city, no more of old clique that booted him out of Toronto in TFC FO and getting ready for retirement in year or 2.
Well top German clubs have around 50 coaches and scouts. Then I know Bayern have an addition 40 academy staff. Also some of those reports factor in cost of running the facilities. That's the problem, we don't have the ability to fully staff teams like a Bundesliga team. A German U18 team would have a head coach and assistants who are paid fairly well. I think many levels don't have much beyond the head coach and they aren't paid that well.
Surely that wouldn't matter when you're bringing kids in at the age of 10-12. Also most of the kids that would be superb football, basketball and baseball players wouldn't necessarily develop into good footballers. Lebron James would have a horrendous touch. Being a gifted athlete matters less then in other sports. Actually that's how Germany shifted it's development when they wanted to focus on developing more technical players, as some coaches have said players like Reus or Gotze would have struggled to make it through 20 years ago.
One more thing, I'm pretty sure part of the cost considered as youth development are their second teams. So by that measurement the Galaxy will be able to associate the costs running the USL team next year as youth development.
It's hard to judge how an athlete would fair in another sport. Would anyone have expected someone like John Stockton to be a professional basketball player? Much less a hall of famer?
It makes it far more likely. It's not just his touch, his body type imo wouldn't be conducive to making a highly technical forward. Even if he didn't weight train as much he'd probably always be fairly bulky and large. Actually let me amend that statement. I don't think he would be particularly good attacking player these days. I guess he would make a good defender though, as an attacking player I think he'd be a quicker version of Heskey. People always bemoan the players we're losing players to other sports like A. Football or Basketball but most of them I don't think would become great footballers. It's not just about athleticism, I'm sure Jozy could beat most forwards in the EPL in a foot race. Skills like first touch or close control start to get developed very early and to me those are some of the more important qualities in developing a well rounded footballers. If the currently players in the pool and academies started developing those skills earlier with repetition before they received a higher level of development that would help. "In the past there were a lot of big players. But look at our players now," Dutt says. "You realise that an important thing for a football player is technique and then the height of the player, ordinarily, will be small. [Diego] Maradona, [Andrés] Iniesta, Xavi – all little players." If anything I think American soccer is missing out getting kids interested that don't think they'll be able to physically compete in sports where the elite level of compition is dominated by superior athletes. To me our problems have more to do with average to poor coaching, substandard infrastructure and the lack of a football culture.
You post as if only the guys who turn pro in the big 4 sports pass up soccer and not the multitudes more who don't make it to that level but still choose a big 4 sport or two or three over soccer. Or as if it's only the paradigmatically tall/strong/fast/quick guys, when it's also the guys people call "naturally athletic"--as in they have great coordination and competitiveness and seem to pick up all sports easily-those guys are also in the groups of youngsters who opt for baseball, basketball and football in huge numbers.
Or he could be a Jan Koller (6' 7 1/2", 230lbs - 1/2" and 10 pounds smaller than LeBron). Who knows. It's a numbers game. And if the huge numbers of 6' 6" and above athletes playing college football and college basketball had started in and stayed with soccer, you'd find plenty of frightenly fast and talented soccer players with great touch, technical skill, and tactical awareness. Peter Crouch actually has very good technical skill. Yes, he's an outlier, but at the national team level - they're all outliers. And at the MLS level, being faster than everyone else is often good enough. The fact is, my point stands that the Bundesliga basically gets dibs on the athletic youth in Germany. MLS gets the leftovers in the United States.
I agree that the the majority of kids and young men chasing a dream of playing in the NBA or NFL would probably be best served choosing soccer. There's plenty of talent wasted by people chasing a highly selective sport with limited opportunities which heavily favors those with genetic advantages. If those players chose soccer the pool of players would be higher. I guess I just don't agree with the statement they're taking the best "athletes", and that's why we're behind. That was the point I was trying to make. If we're talking about physical skills, then that's not the reason why Germany develop better players than the USA. Those athletes which the top leagues in this country value, in particular A. Football and Basketball wouldn't necessarily be good footballers, then the onese we're already getting. I don't see it as being as much of an issue. I guess development would improve if we could get their "half-letes", so I get that point, which is basically a numbers game. Still you look at somewhere like Croatia, do you think the depth of athletic talent for Dinamo Zagreb is higher than in the Galaxy academy? Doubt it, the technique of the players is of a high standard, the youth coaching is good, the system helps, that's why they can produce players like Modric. Even if MLS was more popular with kids then basketball, with the same coaching and similar system we wouldn't improve that much. The majority of top clubs, clubs with good development, get their get players in academies the same way as MLS clubs. With "talent days" or tryouts, with a few hundred players, some being preselected. The Galaxy aren't as well staffed but they scout players in many of the non-MLS teams and invite them to trials. Even though clubs do scout outside of their catchment areas most of the players are from the catchment area. Some of the bigger clubs with well renown academies don't astronomical numbers of players that come to the talent days. I think Ajax was one of the biggest I can remember and they host like a 1,000, most being inside the catchment area. The Galaxy get a few hundred when they have their tryouts (as I said before some preselected). Our academies now have similar numbers to European academies, the Galaxy have 133 which is around the average (some Euro clubs include 2nd teams and teams over 18). To me what matters is what technical abilities did they acquire pre academy and how they'll be coached and get opportunities going forward which makes top players.
So the plan is to have Atlanta play in an NFL stadium? I don't like that at all. I thought having a SSS would be a requirement by now. Sure the fan support in Sea makes it work for that market but Atlanta notoriously has poor attendance for pro sports teams. Even if they draw a decent attendance, say 15-18K, that would look terrible in an NFL stadium. Only reason it looks good in Sea is they draw around 40K and completely pack the lower bowl. The turf is an entire other issue. Will the new ATL stadium be grass or turf? I can understand turf in some markets, specifically northern markets but any expansion team in the South East should be required to have grass imo. But I literally hate the idea of yet another team sharing either grass or turf with an NFL team. I don't think we should be expanding into cities unless they're ready to have a SSS. It's one thing if a team like Sea or NE are currently stuck in their current situations, sharing with NFL teams, but there's no reason to allow a yet-to-exist team to plan on sharing a pitch with an NFL team, or college football team for that matter. If you're not ready for a SSS, you shouldn't be ready to join the league. BTW, Mr Don Garber, a good start to transparency would be having available all player contracts like the top 4 leagues. At any time for an NBA or NFL player I can find out their contract situation, years signed, years left and the player salary. It's damn near impossible to find that on MLS players unless you dig up press reports which might have that information from the time a player signs. If I want to find out how many years Luis Gil has left on his contract for example, I can't. Or Nagbe, I can't. Whereas with the NBA I can just go to hoopshype and find detailed contract information on every single player as well as current and future salary against the cap. Fans like that info if you haven't yet noticed. And the NBA Trade Machine, a bit of a game for NBA fans on ESPN isn't even possible to have with MLS since you're so damn secretive. If there was an MLS Trade Machine I certainly would play around with it. It goes beyond the actual rules, MLS in general should be more transparent.
I'm pretty sure the NFL, NHL, MLB, and NBA don't release that information. In those cases it's the players unions.
Indeed, I know NHL best, every announcement ends with "per contractual agreements no financial details will be disclosed" Except dedicated sites like www.nhlnumbers.com and www.capgeek.com will have all the details within minutes. it's a bit a joke, but I assume there are legal reasons to maintain the facade of secrecy.
The stadium would be more like Vancouver's, where they block off the top tiers and turn the stadium into a 25,000 seater and a closer atmosphere. as far as grass or turf, Atlanta residents keep saying it will be grass but I have heard both
My main take away is that Don pretty much admits that the league "evolves" the player acquisition rules with their agenda. The only agenda the FO should have is being the arbiter and making sure all the front offices are following the rules. Naturally rules evolve, but not because today we want to retain this player, and tomorrow we want to buy that guy so we need a new rule for that and next week that team is playing in champions league so we need a new rule for them to be stronger etc ... etc ... He pretty much proudly said that the whole point is to have the system so complicated that only 32 pro capologists will know how to operate it. Kind of disappointing. The rest of it was pretty positive. I'm shocked at how poor some of the media questions were.
If it happens in Mpls it's not going to be at that stadium. Those construction plans are finalized and soccer was not included in the design at all. Also there hasn't been a peep about MLS here for over a year. The only reason this idea still echoes is because the Wilfs floated it at a time when they were still lobbying the public and the public sector to approve the public funds. All MLS talk ended the moment the ink dried on the paper. Not to say that Mpls couldn't happen in other ways. If done right this could easily be another Portland. Mpls is kind of post industrial and there probably still could be land out there for an SSS. One site that was looked at by the Vikings before was an area just West of Target Field (Twins stadium). Real estate prices are reasonable here and we have a generally pro development city council. Also Mpls isn't the kind of city that you need to be in the absolute downtown. This is a spread out city with lots of trendy little neighborhoods all over mixed in with working class neighborhoods. People get around. It's a super easy city to walk in, drive in and it's the bicycle capital of America