Lacking Logic: MLS Detractors Miss Point.

Article defending MLS from Footymundo.com by Kid Elberfeld.

"To those who thumb their nose at the product - I have a suspicious feeling you have not been watching. If you like soccer you owe it to yourself to follow the league. You won't be disappointed."

http://www.footymundo.com./feature_detail.asp?featureid=82

Good article (question, though: was LD playing in MLS at the time of the Sydney Olympics?).

But I'm beginning to think that Americans who watch European and South American soccer because, in the words of some L.A. geek quoted in Four Four Two a while back, "the quality is so much better," have a lot to learn from fans in those countries. Just because there is a better team or league available elsewhere doesn't mean you don't support your local team as well.

You'd think that some of the Eurosnobs would follow MLS to fill the gap in their soccer calendar.

If these folks were true soccer fans, they'd view MLS as at least a nice way to keep on following the sport they love over the summer months.

But I get the impression many of them are more interested in putting on the airs of Eurosnobbery than they are in actually watching the game.

To put it in the words I was looking for in my first post (no coffee as of then): it's more of a fashion thing than a fan thing.

I have been watching, and MLS is generally not very entertaining. Thursday's game between DC and Metrostars is great example. "Ugly" is simply not strong enough to describe that game. In contrast, I just finished watching Dortmund and Schalke live on FSW, and that was a much, much better game.

Elberfields's article is a massive red herring. MLS players contributed to US success at World Cup so MLS must be good? That's BS logic. MLS is clearly populated with too many mediocre players who pull down the the collective quality of the league. As such, the fact that the cream of US/MLS players can show on the world stage does not mean the league as a whole has a quality game, in comparison to the top leagues in Europe.

Also, don't forget Donovan is a Bundasliga player on loan to MLS, and the core of the World Cup team was Reyna, JOB and Freidel.

[edited to remove result]

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No, he is a 4th Division player according to where Leverkusen chose to use him. If they are to be believed, he wasn't good enough for the Bundesliga. Same with Twellman, although he is no longer the property of 1860.

Don't tell me that there are no "ugly" games in the top divisions in Europe. Either you only watch the marquee matchups or you are delusional. I have seen some disgusting football played in every league I've seen in Europe (England, Italy, Spain, Germany, France, Holland, Scotland)

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I watched an EPL game last night Liverpool-Newcastle which was some of the best play I've seen in awhile, however, the week before I saw Aston Villa play and that game was every bit as ugly as the Metros-United game. Part of the reason the Metros-United game was so bad is because the field is in such bad shape its basically a sand box at this point. As a matter of fact, Giants Stadium is thinking of changing the playing surface for next year because it is so bad now. I was at the game , it was tough to even first time the ball the field was so bad.

I wonder what you'd call my pick-up game last Wednesday then?

Posts containing personal attacks have been removed

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I'm currently living a cable free existence, so I have to go off to a bar to catch games. The place I go often has FSW on some other screens, and I watch those at halftime. The quality of play in the EPL is better, but I really don't care about the result.

The article makes a point that if you appreciate soccer and you live here, you really should support MLS. See, one of the things those EPL players have is a massive culture that supports what they're doing and stadiums packed with soccer savvy individuals who can even appreciate good defense, a great run, the significance of a TIE(!?), the anticipation of whether the ref is going to show a card--if so what color. We need more of this at our stadiums. Fans in bigger leagues will not tolerate boring play. Our fans are often too dim to know the difference. MLS is forced to market itself to AYSO families instead of the grownups that make a league great. Little kids think McDonalds is good food. It wouldn't make sense to serve them filet mignon.

If you want MLS to be better, make it better by caring and going to games. If you don't want to care, then please just shut up.

Great post. Some of these snobs, I think would rather have no league at all then support MLS. How stupid.

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You guys really need to cut out the MLS "thought police" stuff. It is not a coincidence the MLS city posters here are always hyper-defensive about the league, always quick to shout down anybody who expresses an objective opinion about the relative quality of different leagues.

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Has anyone said that MLS is as good as or better than, say, the EPL?

The gist of the article, and most of the posts in this thread, is that American fans should support MLS if they like soccer, and that the level of play isn't as bad as some pseudo-trendy detractors pretend that it is. No one is trying to make the case that it is superior to European leagues.

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So, your always negative opinion is objective, and those who enjoy the league for what it is are biased?

Yeah, okay.

RS

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Rick, don't worry.. to each their own. I'd rather watch PDL reserve sides go at it than Arsenal-ManU. Hell, I'd rather watch baseball or HGTV than Euro soccer. So I'm just as bad as the Eurosnobs.

Anyway, We are somewhat defensive about the quality of MLS because the people who denigrate really don't know what they are talking about.

Sachin

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Let me start by saying that I am not Kid. He is a friend from Ohio who offered to write for our site. Somewhat ironic but he is a longtime soccer fanatic who is named after a distant relative who once played MLB back in the early 1900's. Anyway, we'll have another column coming from him soon.

Second, as the person who edited the article, let Kid does not say MLS is on par with Europe. Quite to the contrary he acknowledges in the article that MLS isn't on par with Europe. He also says it is worth watching and that the league has benefited our national team.

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The article was trying to make an absolute connection between success of US team at World Cup and quality of MLS. I think that reasoning is nonsense. The article is also criticizing those who express an opinion that MLS quality is below top European standard.

Based on your screenname I assume you used to follow the Cosmos. I used to go to many Cosmos games myself back in the day, of course MLS is not the quality of the Cosmos but that doesnt mean you cant enjoy the games. I have been a season ticket holder since day one of the MLS and it has been great to watch how much the league and the American players have grown in 7 years as a result. On the other hand, the Cosmos were just a bunch of imported stars who were great but they did nothing to improve the american players or national team. As an American, its been much more pleasing to see the growth of the American game in MLS as oppossed to foreign players who would stick around a couple years then retire.

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You obviously have not read the article. Here is a portion of the article where Kid himself says MLS is NOT on par with top Euro leagues.

"All these purported fans miss the mark. The U.S. national team is where it is today because of MLS, not in spite of it. And while no one will argue that MLS rivals the EPL, Serie A, the Bundesliga or La Liga just yet - it boasts a rapidly advancing level of play deserving of respect."

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Point one is certainly debatable. I would grant your point if the only example we had of MLS play during J/K '02 was Jeff Agoos doing his Chernobyl impression. But we also had DaMarcus Beasley putting in some high-quality minutes. And against Portugal, Cobi Jones killed off a game like he knew what he was doing. While Donovan is under contract to Bayer Leverkusan, it's not like he got to develop his game there. And the list goes on.

Point two: well, those who express the opinion that MLS quality is below top quality European leagues are just illuminating the obvious, as if there could be any other relationship between the various entities when some of them are over a century old, and the one is only seven years old.

differing opinions

To the Captain Obvious wanabe who posted "The level of play is better in the EPL"

...thanks for solving that enigma for us.

To anyone citing the dc @ MET game Thursday a terrible game. You're right, but what did you expect? It was the worst team in the league visiting the worst home team in the league. Bitter rivals playing on a cow pasture ripped by gridders and poor groundskeepers. Neither team has been able to find a net at a fishery for months... Ugly physical grabbing and poor officiating ruled the day.

It should have been a poor game. I'm sure LA/SJ will be a better offering tonight. All 5 (including the rematch) should be for that matter.

Do you think everyone in the Bundesliga is as good as Ballack and Schneider? Is everyone in the EPL as good as Owen and Beckham? We sent our best to the Cup, they sent their best, and our guys faired pretty well.

The one thing that gets me the most is the short-sightedness of so many so-called soccer fans in the U.S. If all those people living in America who claim to be soccer fans would get behind our league, we would have an average attendance of 30,000 and plenty more money to buy a couple of world-class foreigners for each team. It's so frustrating to me that these people would rather watch their beloved Man Yoo on tv than go down and support their local team.

I would love the opportunity to watch MLS games every week, but I don't get that opportunity. I'd love to be able to call myself a Revs fan and support the club that represents the place where I'm from, but I don't get that opportunity. And many of those who do have the opportunity are too short-sighted to capitalize on it.

Notions such as "quality of play" are obviously subjective. This is especially the case since the only possible way to objectively measure quality of play is to look at results, and MLS sides have never played any European sides in anything except exhibitions.

Whenever anyone claims that s/he has an "objective" viewpoint about something that is obviously subjective, it is a clear sign of elitism. This is especially the case when the person not only beleives that her/his viewpoint is objective, but that those who disagree with him/her are themselves not being objective.

Richard Snowden fits into this category quite well.

"the only possible way to objectively measure quality of play is to look at results"

wrong, you just need to watch the games. Anyone that knows soccer can see a game and tell you if the quality of play was good/bad in that game.

obviously the pace of mls is slower than mexico and other leagues. When you have europeans/south americans that are used to watching the best leagues of the world obviously they are going to bash mls, so you shouldnt take them seriously and should ignore them.

if this was a korean message board they would be bashing the korean league, thats how it works.