we dont even remotely have enough revenue or attendance to get rid of the cap though. wont happen in my lifetime given the low aims of MLS fans.
I actually meant to say "star" players. There will always be those that come and go, but teams should not have to dump the Monteros, Espindolas, and Olaves to meet the cap. Montero is a marquee player, and Olave is close to that level. There should be a way to keep the upper tier players without filling the roster with guys who do not belong in MLS.
Montero isn't being loaned out simply because the Sounders can't afford him. He is being loaned out because the Sounders are hoping that he will shine in Copa Libertadores and they'll get a big offer from another club to buy him. The reality is that Montero hasn't been getting any international exposure because he hasn't gotten call-ups to his national team and he plays in the relative backwater that is MLS. Montero also has ambitions that exceed MLS so expecting him to stay here beyond his current contract isn't very likely. So the Sounders are presented with a situation where they can loan Montero out, get some allocation money for that loan, free up his DP spot, and hopefully get some international attention so they can sell him, or they can hold on to him and see him leave for free
Yes he would need Libertadores for that, Colombia has too many good forwards for Montero to see the National team (maybe on a non FIFA date friendly played in the USA).
False. We could get rid of the cap now if we wanted to. But that's a dumb idea, because the salary cap is helpful for cost control and parity purposes. I have no idea how many EPL teams are making money, because the cost of business in that league keeps going up each year - just to survive. Plus based on who I support I like the cap. If there were no salary cap imagine how much of Merritt Paulson's money Gavin Wilkinson could have blown on crappy players by now?
Two of the most popular NFL Franchises are the Green Bay Packers and the Pittsburgh Steelers. Pittsburgh as a marquee city is odd enough, but Green Bay? If the packers werent there and you werent from the state, you wouldnt know Green Bay existed. Which gets to the point. What matters in sport is the marketability and brand of teams, not the particular star or city. The NFL is the gold standard for leagues, and I think it thrives in part because it has a lot of teams that are marketable, that have identities that can get the casual fan engaged. MLS needs to cultivate the national marketability and identity of all its teams. Some teams make it harder then others, but if you had an MLS cup final of Portland vs. Columbus, you want to be able to still to be able to sell it, to make the average MLS fan still feel like it wasnt just a game, but it was about two teams fans feel like they know fighting it out.
Marketing. Sounds familiar. Oh yeah, like I said, "Superclubs" have large marketing budgets and that's why they're popular.
The NFL is not the gold standard. The NFL has been a failure on the global scene. Even with globalization the NFL is not catching on around the globe. American football is popular with Americans. But it has nothing to do with the way the NFL is structured that makes it popular. You had the NFL using horrible replacement refs this year. Did its popularity suffer with American audiences? No. Would less parity hurt the NFL's popularity? No. Is parity even popular with NFL fans? No! Go to any NFL forum and bring up a topic about the increased parity and overwhelmingly they will be against it. Some parity is good. But many think the quality on the field in the NFL has gone down with the increased parity. Has the increased parity hurt the NFL fan base? No. Would decreasing parity hurt the NFL fan base? No. Steve Young talked about how the NFL didn't much care that they were using replacement refs because the demand in America for the NFL is inelastic. This just doesn't apply to referring. It applies to everything the NFL does. Some people on these forums make the argument that the NFL is popular because of the way it is structured. This is wrong. The NFL has a commodity that is inelastic. They could change the whole structure of the league and it wouldn't change the popularity. College football has the least parity among all American sports. American football is very popular with Americans and parity or no parity has absolutely nothing to do with it. Why on earth would anyone think that sticking MLS (a sport that is nowhere near the popularity of American football) into the NFL template in hopes that eventually clubs like Portland and Columbus will became our version of Green Bay and Pittsburgh, would be a good idea? And i haven't even mentioned the most obvious difference between the NFL and MLS. American football is not a global game. Soccer is. By not allowing LA Galaxy to be the best club they can be it hurts their global brand and it hurts their pursuit for more prestige. What would be bad about Super Clubs in MLS? I'd love to see LA Galaxy and Seattle Sounders be Super Clubs. The best clubs do not always win Cup tournaments anyway, so the likelihood of one of the Super Clubs being MLS Cup champs every year is not very high. Bring on the Super Clubs. And death to this idiotic the NFL = MLS idea
First you dip 20 years into the past to frontrun on something that no longer exists, then you prattle on about why people watch soccer, and now you just say something frighteningly stupid. The NFL is doing fine globally and continues to grow. The 2011 Super Bowl drew 11 million viewers in England out of their total population of just over 53 million. 20% of the total population isn't bad for a country that doesn't have a team. Try going to a bar in Mexico City and finding NFL games being shown on Sunday, Monday and Thursday, it's easy to do as they're shown everywhere. There are 1 million Mexican kids playing American football. Then there's Japan as another big hit. So is Germany to an extent. There's an American football league in India that live streams all their games online. It's not soccer, yet, but it's growing on an international scale as well as it ever has which is pretty amazing for a sport that originated in one country.
American football is not really growing globally. It's grown somewhat since globalization but not enough to where you can say by any stretch of the imagination that it is a growing international sport. In fact, it's much easier to make the argument that it is a failure globally. The 2011 Super Bowl did NOT draw 11 million viewers in England. Feel free to provide a link for this. All I could find was this NFL-UK forum where they discuss the Super Bowl getting a 1.1 rating on BBC and 235k viewers on SKY Sports. American football is not popular in Japan, Germany, or India anymore than we can claim cricket is popular in the USA because we happen to have a cricket league.
Oh, and kudos on the thread necromancy that was apparently for the sole purpose of prattling on with a never ending windbag Olympics qualifying post. As far as the ratings in England, the BBC pregame show alone drew 1.3 million viewers in 2011. But, go ahead and show you're insanity by tossing out some random 235k number for the game. Then there's silly little things like the biggest success of NFL Europa occurring in Germany and now the GFL and GFL 2 exist where they've implemented pro-rel with 16 teams at each level. Whoops, there are those pesky facts getting in the way of some deranged lunatic.
you can always tell when someone is not comfortable with their argument when they throw out insults. So far you've called me stupid and a deranged lunatic. What was my offense? Simply pointing out the fact that the NFL is not popular outside of North America. You said that the Super Bowl got 11 million viewers in England. Where did you get that number? Out of your ass apparently. I said that according to the NFL-UK forum the game on BBC drew 1.1 and on SKY 235k. You've come back with the Super Bowl pre-game on BBC got 1.3 rating. Apparently you expected me to contest this? Why should I? It's consistent with the #'s I found that counter your bogus 11 mil claim. If anything, i'm happy that you've stopped pulling figures out of your ass. Is the GFL even on TV in Germany? They've been playing American football in Germany at a very low level since the 70's. It's not a part of the culture and its not popular. Just looking at the wikipedia page for the league several teams play in grounds that hold less than 3k
American football is a very difficult game to grow at the grass roots level. Purchase the pads to equip a full team, then consider the basic level of interest you have to get before you can even field a team at any level. Soccer is a global game because all you need is a ball. Its not a question of the NFL not being able to grow the game globally, its the fact that American football is extremely difficult to actually play unless you already have the sporting infrastructure in place. The existance of NFL "super clubs" would do nothing to get over that basic hurdle. As for your question as what would be bad for having "super clubs" in MLS, I think that having certain clubs dominate both media attention depresses fan interest in those cities that do not have one. This causes the problem that the league then becomes dependent on those teams doing well, and if they do not it threatens the league on an existential level. Look at the chaos that Rangers financial implosion caused in Scottish soccer. MLS is further vulnerable to this loss of general interest because it does not have a promotion/relegation system. Having a stable set of teams provides MLS with a much more stable economic model, which encourages investment and improves the value in the league. However, if the title contenders are known before the season, 90% of the leagues results become meaningless. This kind of meaningless regular season will greatly depress interest in the league, as most of what is going on is considered meaningless. You could ultimately see a repeat of the collapse of the NASL, where more and more teams become financially unviable as economicly they cannot compete with the superclubs, and as they lose any hope competitiveness they become financially unviable, the end result being more and more teams folding.
My father-in-law went to Kansei Gakuin Daigaku, an institution that has an American football team. I even went to one of their preseason games when I lived there. To the utter amusement of the full stadium, the American college team racked up 60 points before halftime. Needless to say, the Americans stepped off the throttle, and everyone had a great time. Japanese love American football, in the OMG look at those freaks of nature kind of way. The super bowl is very popular in Japan. Even if they don't really understand the game, they talk about it around the water coolers the following week. American football is, however, nowhere near as popular as is soccer.
How can something be a failure before it even really tries to do something ? The NFL has only tried to "go global" in the last decade or so. Despite that fact, the game itself is plenty popular outside of the US. So much so that Japan, Canada, Argentina, Brazil (2), Chile (2), Uruguay, Costa Rica (2), Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Austria, Belgium, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Maldova, the Netherlands, Norway (2), Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Serbia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, the Ukraine, the UK, Isreal, India, South Korea, the Phillipines, Thialand, China, Australia (7), and New Zealand (3) all have American footall leagues of some sort. Hell, there's even a European League and Central European League on top of all of those. Mexico, Japan, Canada, and England even play college football American style (Canada's with the slight variation of course). Actually, yes parity is popular. People love the fact that even though their team was 4-12 last year, they could make the playoffs this year. That is absolutely a drawing card of the league. College football is not the sport with the least parity in America. You're flat out wrong. For starters, it has 5 different divisions that crown a champion each year. We have 4 major sporting leagues structured in the same mold. All 4 of them are in the top 10 revenue generating sports leagues in the world despite not having anywhere near the global appeal of the EPL .... think about that for a second. Why wouldn't the league want to replicate that ? Why would the MLS want to drown in debt and red tape like the European leagues ? The MLS doesn't have to be global to be huge. Sorry to burst your bubble. Yes, death to the idiotic NFL model that has created the biggest revenue sporting league in the world ... even though the sport is only popular in the according to you.
When we were kids all we needed to play American football in the street was a ball. With soccer you actually need a net too. Anyways, soccer isn't the global game because it only takes a ball to play. There are plenty of sports that have low barriers to entry. Soccer, football, basketball to play in a recreational sense really only require a ball with a basket, goal, and goal line. I see your point that for other countries to get into American football it would take some investment. But the fact that they don't do it shows that there is no demand for it. The NFL is not popular outside North America and it doesn't matter how many times Goodell intends to stage a regular season game at Wembley. Those games will draw well because there is a circus coming to town feel to them. Scottish soccer has much deeper problems that aren't really relevant to MLS and the question if MLS had super clubs. My parents are Scottish and I've spent a lot of time there. There are more fans of Celtic and Rangers even in cities that have SPL clubs(with the exception of Hibs and Hearts). If you go to Dundee or Aberdeen or Inverness or pick any city there are more Celtic and Rangers fans in those cities than hometown fans. Sectarianism dominates the league. It's not a good example when comparing it to an American league. There aren't more NY Yankees fans in Pittsburgh than Pirates fans. A better example if we allowed "superclubs" in MLS would be a league like the Eridivisie. There are 4 clubs that have won the league in the Dutch league the last 12 years with Ajax and PSV winning most of the titles. If we had MLS superclubs we could see something like that where 4 or 5 teams have a chance to win the Supporters Shield each year. The difference is we decide our champion through the MLS cup. So that would mean at least 8 or 10 teams would have a chance. I don't see how this would depress fan interest since every team would still have a chance to make the MLS Cup and then go on a run and win the title. except this doesn't happen anywhere else in the soccer world. I'm not sure why we would think it would happen here. If you put financial fairplay in place where club wages cannot exceed revenues then how would clubs go under? And like i've already mentioned the MLS cup prevents clubs and fans from getting disinterested. MLS would never have true superclubs anyway. The best American players will still want to go to Europe. It will be a league like the Dutch league where even the top clubs sell players on to better leagues. The advantages of giving clubs their autonomy and allowing them to reach superclub level if they can is that it would raise the whole profile of the league. LA Galaxy, Seattle Sounders, NY Red Bull - these clubs should be winning the CCL consistently. While, clubs like RSL would still be able to win the MLS Cup. MLS's top clubs would then be able to put more into youth development and it would help the national side. There are so many positives to taking off the reigns that structuring the league like the rest of the world. And the only negative is something in theory that has never happened to a "proper" league.
What about Manchester, England? Not exactly a place to plop a super-club -- or two -- if you were king of the universe and designing the world soccer landscape starting from scratch.
Untrue. A couple t-shirts set several paces apart on the ground serve nicely as a "net" for a pick-up game of soccer. Did it all the time growing up in the '70s. And the kids in my neighborhood still do.
3rd largest metro in the UK. It's exactly the kind of place you plop a superclub in if your domestic league is arguably the best in the world. Who cares about starting from scratch, hypotheticals are irrelevant to the discussion.
Yeah, whenever we played street soccer as kids we just made whichever team got scored on go get the ball. With the goal posts be marked with whatever was convenient and the cross bar being roughly the maximum height of the goalie. If we played on an actual soccer field the game would occasionally turn into rugby. Ahhh, youth...
a litte off topic but the biggest reason the NFL hasnt been able to globalize because they create pathways for foreign players . For example Japan and Mexico has had college football for over 60 years so why hasnt the NFL put scouts into those two country? They want others to do that for them.
Really? Maybe it's because the players in those areas haven't been good enough, yet, to play in the NFL. Let's not ignore the part where several foreign players have made the league, including a few from Nigeria. If a player is good enough, the NFL will find them.
The only way you can get into the NFL is through highschool then college . It has made it virtually impossible for foreign born palyers to get into the NFL. The ones fron Nigeria were born in Nigeria but grew up and raised in america.