I meant what I said and I said what I meant. MLS will be a top league in the World by 2022 one-hund

The Mexican economy has been contracting for the last three years. Immigration from Mexico has also contracted. The drug trade makes things unattractive for foreign players. There may be room for growth but I believe it has plateaued.

 

Mexico Economy is very tied to the USA, so yes when the USA economy stumbles then Mexico also stunbles (much more) but as (if) the USA economy recovers, so will Mexico.

Also Mexico contracted in 2009 and 2010, but since then.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-...elerates-as-u-s-recovery-gathers-pace-1-.html

 

Yes, but even so Brazil's economy is twice as large as Mexico. Brazil as a market place is just as big as France or the UK. Also, I think that Brazilian clubs have only just figured out how much money a popular league can generate in sponsorships. Mexico has already walked down this road in the last twenty years so it's pretty well developed now. When Brazilian clubs get their sponsorship ducks in a row coupled with the quality of the talent they produce they will have a league that will surpass Ligue 1. They will also have the pick of the South American talent just below elite level. I think that the elite talent will still go to RM, Barca, BM and ManU just at older ages. Once this all happens, Brazil should be able to produce a few world beating sides like they did back in the early 90's.

 

You see I totally agree with you in Brazil, I just think you underestimate the growth potential of liga MX.

 

Yeah, could be.

 

Mexico is definitely a strong contender to be one of the top 2nd tier leagues. They are getting better at youth development. Although the Mexico is traditionally ranked below Argentina in league strength, as far as I can tell the average club revenue is actually higher in Mexico and the Mexican league will likely have a brighter future.

I'm not convinced by the Ukrainian league. Though the top teams have done well in international competitions, they have done so mostly by relying on foreign players and the domestic pool of talent is weak. The top teams are not even able to use their full strength in league play because the league limits how many foreign players can be on the field, yet even at half strength the top teams are still much better than the rest of the league. Overall, the league is much weaker then you would think based on it's UEFA coefficient.

The Russian league has more potential than Ukraine, though it seems as if it is being heavily subsidized by oil tycoons now and I don't know how sustainable that is.

 

Quite sustainable, clubs are a status symbol and provide prestige and, in some countries, a political base. So as long as the club confers reasonable intangible but real benefits then billionaires will continue to happily dump money into a club. A similar setup for centuries provided artists with the means to create major works of art.

 

How many MLS franchises have folded or moved compared to European leagues in the same time period? For all the talk about economic instability, European clubs with no spending limits and ambitious owners seem to have more longevity than MLS franchises with profit-seeking owners.

 

I can think of two off the top of my head in the British Isles alone. MK Dons and Kildare Country FC. Considering MLS has only had 3 total (Miami, Tampa, and San Jose to Houston) that doesn't leave much leeway for the rest of Europe.

 

Here's the MLS record:

Since 1996 (sixteen years), two teams folded; one team moved, then later reformed. Ten new teams added by expansion.

Here's the Premier League record in the same time period:

Two teams bankrupt (Leeds and Portsmouth). One team relegated, then bankrupt (Crystal Palace). One club relegated, then moved (Wimbledon).

Here's the La Liga record:

Since 2004 (eight years), twenty-two Spanish teams, including at least six in La Liga, have declared bankruptcy (source). At one point, half of the teams in the top two divisions had gone bust. (Source).

The difference is, of course, that the better-established European brands tend to find new buyers rather than disappearing. That doesn't make them financially stable.

In the last seven years, MLS has not moved or folded a single team, and no team has gone bankrupt. How many European leagues can say the same?

 

Someone should tell Huss that we need the ability to rep certain posts multiple times.

 

Two teams contracting out of twelve is equivalent to fifteen teams going out of business in the English league in less than two decades. If that had happened it would be a scandal. In fact I can't remember the last time an English league club folded.

 

Wow, look at those goalposts move. Somebody should really nail them down...

 

Of course it does. Why didn't the MLS teams find buyers? A system that allows teams to find new owners is inherently more stable than one where teams simply vanish off the face of the earth. Ironically the bankruptcy laws that English clubs use to stay in business were inspired by America. In fact, finding new buyers is not really less stable than having billionaire benefactors bankrolling the losses of the entire league like in MLS.

Well in the Premier League history, there have been 406 completed seasons by any team, with one going into administration. There have been 217 seasons played by MLS teams, with two teams disappearing. So on average, a Premier League team will go bust in 406 years, whilst an MLS team will contract in 109 years. This gives a Premier League team four times the life expectancy of an MLS team, and that's if you consider a club reorganising its debts the same as going out of business altogether.

 

When the two MLS franchises folded, they went from 12 to 10 teams. That's proportional to the top English four divisions going from 92 to 77. If one day the FA said that fifteen league clubs wouldn't be playing next year, it would be a global scandal.

In fact, European clubs are incredibly stable. As long as they have fans, they have a business model. American franchises come and go but European clubs hardly ever go bust, especially professional clubs. Here's a quote from Soccernomics:

What American league with its parity and revenue sharing and spending limits can boast such stability? You may seen a lot of teams go into what they call 'administration'. This is an insolvency procedure similar to the American Chapter 11 which was introduced in the 80s to allow insolvent companies to stay in business. Clubs now use this as a tactic to eliminate their debts, so seeing a lot of clubs becoming insolvent doesn't necessarily mean they're financially unstable.

 

In 1923, these teams were already up to fifty years old, right? When the SE franchises melted, they were, what, five years old? And in a league that didn't really know what it was doing in a country that wasn't sure if it even liked the sport. What is being compared here are some very, very different things and, to me, this conversation is slightly ridiculous.

Would have to say that that is one of the biggest positives for promotion and relegation, to me: clubs struggling financially can cut expenses, drop a league or two, and rebuild. A club struggling financially in the current MLS situation has to hope someone wants to buy them out. If not, then they hope they can sell it to another city. And if that can't happen... let's just say our current setup, a best-scenario for how it can be right now, granted, does struggle with the concepts of flexibility and dynamism. No way to say this for any degree of certain, but to me, if we had a system of 80+ teams in the country over several different leagues, those two teams that died would not have died--simply diminished and dropped a league or two as necessitated by their struggles.

So yeah. Circumstances are vastly different.

 

Moving the goalposts:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moving_the_goalposts

I'd say your two posts are a textbook example of the definition. You went from a sum total comparison between the U.S. and Europe, to which posters proved it was very likely more in Europe, to a proportional comparison between the U.S. and England. Two very different arguments being presented as the same one after you were wrong on the first one.

 

My point is that the criticisms of European football being unstable isn't borne out by the facts. People like to talk about clubs being in debt and going bust, but it's probably a more stable industry than any other. What other industry has a 97% survival rate over 80 years?

 

I don't have the stats for other leagues, maybe you could look into it yourself.

 

Then you have a short memory.

Darlington FC (2010)
Chester City (2009)
Rushden & Diamonds (2006)
Halifax Town (2002)
Scarborough (1999)
Maidstone United (1992)
Aldershot (1992)

And those are just the ones that were liquidated rather than "reorganized."

There's nothing about the MLS system that "prevents" the teams from finding buyers. The problem is that there were fewer people interested in buying a five-year-old American club in 2001 than there are in buying a hundred-year-old Premier League or Championship club today. It's worth noting that since 2001, MLS has had no trouble finding buyers for its clubs, current or expansion, while four English clubs have gone completely belly-up.

This is conveniently ignoring the teams whose financial implosion produced both administration and relegation--for example, Leeds, Crystal Palace, Wimbledon, Southhampton, Derby County, Ipswitch Town, Leicester City, and Bradford City. Meaning, even by your silly math, a current or recently relegated Premier League team is more than twice as likely to have financial difficulties as an MLS team.

And that's in England, of course, the Mecca for football money. You still haven't explained why the Spanish clubs are having such a hard time of it.

 

Yes, actually, a club going into "administration" absolutely means it is unstable. A company cannot enter administration unless it is bankrupt by some relatively straightforward definition.

Administration, like Chapter 11, is not some magic procedure that a company can undergo to get rid of some pesky debts.

 

Not necessarily. In fact they had to introduce points deductions to stop teams from treating it so casually. Even then, a ten point deduction may be considered worth it if it gets rid of debts.

Most of those were non-league clubs. They may have participated in the league at some point but just weren't big enough to stay up. Non-league football will always be volatile because of the small budgets and big ambitions. There aren't many buyers for a fifth division team with a thousand fans.

Still, find another industry with such staying power.

 

Please give me an example of a club that "casually" declared itself insolvent without being in serious underlying financial difficulties.

In other words, all English clubs are financially unsustainable; it's just that non-league clubs fold and higher-division clubs go bankrupt? Isn't that what you've been trying to deny?

 

If a club still exists despite going bankrupt then that seems pretty stable to me. Like I said, if football is unsustainable then what exactly do you consider a sustainable industry?

 

Hey Hey, the Cosmos will be one of the most stable clubs in the USA when they comeback next year.

We will just say the years they were off they were under administration.



Now if someone could just bring back Bethleham Steel!