Going to side track you guys a bit, but the "big" OKC announcement today was the rosters for the NPSL and WPSL will be released. I think NASL needs to end this experiment already.
I think both sides feel the same way about each other. It appears to be one of those things that we will never agree upon. Those who love MLS will be happy with the current trajectory of the league, those of us who could care less or support a lower division will continue to hope that our league continues to survive and thrive. If not, we "eurosnobs" will always have plenty of other leagues to follow.
Not that good, not that good, arguable, unproven, unproven. Zusi isn't anywhere near as good as Reyna, for example. Gonzo isn't anywhere near as good as Pope, or to me clearly inferior to Bocanegra. Right? I'm actually pretty surprised this is a controversial point. Are we really arguing whether or not the US has a kind of hole in the core age group for an international, roughly ages 23 through 29? Is it not obvious?
My introduction to soccer was when I was stationed overseas. I was never able to go to a match, but I watched it on TV. I loved it and researched the leagues and thought to myself, "wow, any local team has a 'chance' to make it to the First Division. " I instantly fell in love with that football culture. That is why I say just soccer. All the other American sports are already entrenched in the way they do business. I just feel soccer in its current state of popularity has the chance to be something special and unlike the other American sports.
At this point it isn't obvious either way. The current batch of "young" players haven't had to be tested at the international level because we're at the tail end of the Donovan, Dempsey, Bocanegra, Cherundolo etc, era. We won't really find out where the new batch of players truly stack until after the World Cup and the younger players starting getting more playing time.
Well i am really not sure, which i am aware sort of cuts against my point...not being able to offer a viable solution. But absent a traditional pro/rel model perhaps coming to the realization that MLS needs to be divided itself. This isn't major US sport where there the university system has traditionally served as the alternative to the top division of the sport in areas where no pro markets are established. Or where the sport itself so popular in the culture. I think MLS may consider looking to NASL and USL and saying, develop these emerging markets and at a lower cost, get to know the community leaders, work towards relationships in the community, build a grassroots following and show you can be successful relative to the expectations in market. Then once MLS get to the cap of what they feel a first division should be in soccer (many would say 20-24 but maybe as high as 30) they then try to organize a MLS2. They can work out the business structure of things, but this could be a way for the sport to organically grow at the smaller capital levels, not infringe to much on the business entity structure of MLS which is the major reason traditional pro'rel doesn't happen. Then for vertical integration make it competitive and economic. For example: lowest points in MLS goes down to MLS2 provided winner of MLS2 also meets MLS's economic and stadium guidelines to be D1 as set by USSF. Then over time maybe incorp. MLS3 into the mix. I don't know but the only way i see it working is if these other clubs can grow and build their teams without undue interference and eventually organize under similar business structure as MLS to eliminate. Gives ownership of these other teams a reason to invests their money in soccer, build a good club and if they win, have the option to invest more or get more owners on board to "go up" if they earn it...if they cant afford it..stay in that division until they can and earn it on the field again. Otherwise what we are going to have is either a MLB type farm system which is gonna suck IMO. Or a system where lower leagues constantly fight against MLS where the loser is probably going to be the lower leagues and the incentive to invest in soccer below MLS will be stunted.
Of course, basketball and hockey are pretty run the same way in Europe as soccer and therefore different than in North America. Why do those two sports get to be run in a way that works depending on the location yet soccer must be monolithic throughout the world?
Although that feature of soccer is somewhat true, it's also true that clubs tend to end up at the highest level their cash flow can maintain. When clubs get promoted above that level, they tend to either drop back down because they are unable to spend like their competitors, or overspend and drop much farther when the money runs out. Pro/rel ends up being a proxy for sorting clubs by their financial resources, and it's a convenient way to do it when there are too many clubs to examine everyone's finances. The US doesn't have that problem right now. There's still enough room in all the professional divisions for investors to put a club at the highest level they can financially sustain. Pro/rel may be a possibility in the future, but until the demand for domestic pro soccer increases dramatically, it's a risky move with very little possible benefit.
I know other folks are going to come in here and dogpile you for this. And I agree with them about 90%. But one thing we have in MLS now that we didn't have even 5 years ago (IMO) is a huge, yawning gap between the best run organizations and the worst. I think it was Beckham's 2nd year when the Gals didn't even make the playoffs, and Chivas was in the middle of a pretty good run for them, for example. But with MLS as it is today, you've got a handful of pretty awful clubs (DC, Chivas, Chicago, New England) that, IMO, nobody would really miss. The days when the Gals or NYRB might suck and get relegated and really hurt MLS are, for the time being, gone. So that one standard argument against pro/rel has lost alot of bite. I don't think it's inconceivable that MLS might look at the 4 teams I named and realize those clubs are woefully underachieving and significantly weakening the league, and the threat of getting relegated might get the ownership to give a shit, thus strengthening the whole league by enforcing some discipline at the bottom of the league. This weekend I watched Portland-Seattle, which was terrifically entertaining. At the other end of the spectrum, DC and New England, two of the teams with terrible ownership, was just an unbelievably awful soccer match. It was hard to believe that level of concentration and focus and attention to detail and decisionmaking came from adults, let alone professionals. I sincerely can't imagine such a huge pile of don't-give-a-shit if the bottom team in MLS got relegated.
Legally there probably isn't much MLS can do at this point unfortunately...with the bad teams. The irony is that they probably can, or will be more able to, if the league successfully expands to 28 or 30 teams in major markets, is successful in most if them with engaged owmers, and increases TV money to such an extent that they can handle the bottom half owners more effectively. Even attmepting some sort of pro/rel will be fraught with a myriad of issues in that sort of environment. Still a long, long way away. Still may not even be plausible legally within MLS structure. At that point thise teams could have been sold or improved, etc. Structurally, legally and realistically it's still decades away. It's the way it is. That is the reality whether some like it or not, and I deal in reality. I read books for fantasy and watch movies. Of course this is the .01% that can't come to terms with this rendering it a meaningless internet exericise anyway, but it is hard for me to ignore 95% of reality in my thought process to get "'what I want because I want it".
I was having the pro/rel debate against it long before half these people here even heard of soccer let alone BigSoccer. I know the arguments better than most of them, as I know you do as well. As a former MetroStars fan I can assure you there was some pretty badly run teams in the days when DC, Chicago and LA where run well. The way MLS mediocrity works, no team is ever safe from being at the bottom. In 2009 Red Bull was one of the most historically bad teams in MLS history. DC was in the playoffs the year before last seasons shitty year (they still won USOC). In MLS there is hardly any real difference in quality between teams thanks to the ridiculously low cap and roster rules. The margin of error between KC and DC is pretty small on the whole. What a lot of those teams you mentioned lack, is stadium revenue and good ownership. It certainly makes sense for teams that are struggling at the top to find their feet in a more stable and less costly environment. If a team like DC went down and team with a stadium and an owner willing to spend was able to come up...i see no issue with that, and i doubt MLS would either so long as the 2 leagues are really just the same league from an ownership perspective, sort of like a wholey owned subsidiary of MLS. They could adjust their capital accounts in the LLC every year based on who is in 1 and 2. Well their fans and owner would/should certainly care. But for me a vertical integration isnt about excitement or making the end of season more meaningful. I really don't care about the competitive part of a regulation battle. What concerns me is getting dozens and dozens of cities in the USA behind soccer and having that ownership and investment made freely. I want to see 60 professional clubs or more all run to win, with their own youth set ups and professional player development from coast to coast even in the smaller cities. I just cant see that ever happening, the investment in that, if those people are locked out of progressing their investment to the top in some fashion and told all you can run is my farm team. This is of course a long way off, but when i see MLS start to look to enter markets with NASL teams (a league 3 years old) and jettison the existing franchises it looks on the surface to me to be a calculated move to try and kill off another soccer league. A league most would agree would be charged with developing the game at a less costly entry point.
So, the whole MLS trying to kill off the NASL thing is kinda bullshit. Atlanta has long been linked with getting a team, since the Silverbacks were still in USL. San Antonio is looking to move from the NASL to MLS. Same goes for Minnesota.
Yeah, to me, the "kill off NASL" thing doesn't resonate because I don't see NASL as something all that different from previous 2nd divisions once you take out the Cosmos. As for @Onionsack 's point about teams sucking in the past...it's subjective as hell, but what I see that's different now is that it's not just teams having awful seasons like DC last year or NYRB in 2009, and it's not just one hapless organization. I named 4 markets that really should be helping MLS' median attendance and merchandising and all the rest but are instead bringing the league down. Those 4 aren't that much worse than, say, Denver, but Denver's not as big of a market and is saturated. They're doing about what could be reasonably expected given the Denver weather in March and April. Chicago, DC, and Boston are some of the biggest markets in the US, and all 3 of them at one time were very strong franchises on and off the field. My perspective is admittedly a DC-centric one. For those of you not up on the details, I'll give you a one sentence synopsis. It's unimaginable that Dave Kasper would still have a job if DC United could be relegated.
I remember when DC fans were ready to build giant statutes of Payne and Kasper outside RFK. How the mighty have fallen.
Bradley is, and he's better. Cameron ... i'd put him on par with Pope because he's actually more versatile and has moved to the EPL and is still going strong. Pope stayed. Clearly it isn't. Of course, that's not what you originally said either Bradley, Edu, Zusi, Altidore, Guzan, Cameron, Kljestan, Besler ... ... and actually a move to Europe hurt Shea. ... the injury bug has killed Holden. Jury is out on guys like Ream, Agudelo, Bruin, and a host of others. We are seeing the influence of the first true MLS bred group coming to an end. A group that gave us Howard, Dempsey, Beasley, Donovan, Johnson, Parkhurst .... ... but those guys haven't completely let go yet. After this World Cup let's see how it goes eh ? Most of the guys you're saying are missing are either behind the last stand of your "old" guys, or are in the current group that are now in the spotlight or just hitting it.
Yeah, we're talking about two different things here if you've got Bruin (to pick one among several very obvious examples) in your post.
First, you've shifted your point. Second, to the point you shifted to, Bruin is just an example of a swath of guys in the age group you said there was a hole in. I constructed the names and examples based off of performance both on the USMNT and in league play (wherever that league may be). It's all there is to go on in order to try and compare 10 years a go to today. Your entire point to begin with was pretty subjective (as this discussion is) ... which presents a problem with the discussion from the onset.
Peterson and the league need to worry about Virginia and OKC before they think about adding more teams. http://blog.mysanantonio.com/scorpions/2014/04/qa-with-nasl-commissioner-bill-peterson/
"I don't know if this contradicts your point or supports it, but to me, once you take out the Aron Johanssons and Fabian Johnsons, the top 10 American players don't seem any better now than they were 10 years ago. But the NEXT 40 players are miles better. There's a reason the US completely dominated the last Gold Cup, and likely will dominate all of the ones where Mexico sends a B team due to the Confederation Cup. That reason is MLS. But if MLS is helping the US develop better top class players, I'm not seeing it." The last line there was your original point ... yeah ? You went from that, to: "I'm actually pretty surprised this is a controversial point. Are we really arguing whether or not the US has a kind of hole in the core age group for an international, roughly ages 23 through 29? Is it not obvious?" Those two things are not the same.
You can make an argument that MLS has helped increase the development of players by giving them an avenue to play and get matches domestically. I don't think anyone will argue against that point. But it is fair to argue that MLS has not reaped the type of development and improvement in the domestic player that one would expect over the past 20 years. The fact the USA has not put forward into the world a single world class player in 20 years of the formation of MLS i think speaks volumes. A country with this much population, money and interest in sport should have at some point found and developed a player on par with the world's best. The best we have produced is Landon Donovan and that was 15 years ago. Look at the US player pool and there is a lack of domestically groomed players at the highest level in the sport. We had some decent players like Dempsey, Bocanegra, Howard, etc. but those have been few and far between. While the player pool is deeper than it was 10-20 years ago, it is stocked with mid range talent. MLS has been concerned with growing infrastructure and fees, player development has not been a priority,ever. MLS has to practically force franchise operators to form youth academies and today only about half of them are legitimate academies. Almost none actually develop those players in the senior team construct. All one has to do is look at the direction the USMNT is going to see that the current regime favors foreign trained and developed players over their domestic counterparts. Why do you think that is?
Those are arguments against the development structure, not the MLS itself. It can easily be argued that the MLS has allowed this to happen IN SPITE of a lack of a development system. Do we have 1% players ? No, but we do have world class players. A couple, but we have them. I mean unless you are defining "world class" as 1% players ... even then, there's plenty of countries that don't have that and fit the bill with everything else that is trying to be pinned on the MLS here. And yet it is the MLS bred players that are coming up with the better of the efforts ...