Considering the current MLS clubs are contractually bound to avoid doing your first and second points making them even more mountainous. Your third point is bound to continue happening (either directly or through MLS putting teams in cities with NASL squads and putting them out of business). And your fourth point about the level of play isn't as important as NASL's media footprint is. Sadly the level of play has far less to do with it than $$$ of which NASL has almost none compared to MLS. Pro/Rel isn't happening so that's a moot point (not with MLS setting up its own version of MiLB). It would take NASL a couple of decades to grow to where MLS is today (if it's possible at all) and that's just to make them equal to today's MLS. MLS isn't going to simply stop and wait for NASL and will continue to grow itself. By that time it'll be too late for NASL to be anything but what it is today... the D2 minor league that wishes it was bigger. And of course that assumes an MLS supported USL doesn't grow to the point where its also biting NASL on the ass from below.
If Merritt Paulson had decided to rebrand the Timbers when they went into MLS, that team would not have been MY team. They may have become MY team over time, but because the brand was the same, they stayed MY team. We're brand loyal. That doesn't make the NASL Timbers and USL Timbers and the MLS Timbers the same team, nor the NASL Strikers and the neo-NASL Strikers. The legacy is with the brand.
It's obviously off-topic, but I was thinking the same thing when I saw the graphic. GLOW was campy, trashy, phony, and contrived, and I loved watching it too. They were essentially mocking the then WWF, and did an entertaining job of it. Now back to our regularly scheduled program.....
The first "if" is if the MLS owners/investors decide to scrap the current MLS, liquidate the league and allow the investors to buy their share of MLS that each currently owns and operates. Pretty big if. Right now all player contracts are "owned" by the league, which is a private company that has 21 investor groups. For a team to go "superclub" they would have to get 11 (maybe more) investors to say "yes, spend away!" Some of those investors include people who operate Sporting KC, RSL, and the like who have an interest in winning, not just getting a return on their share of MLS.
That's the spirit! No one is going to take YOUR adolescence away! (That's like saying you are just going to ignore gravity or the boiling point of water or supply and demand because they just don't suit you.) No one denies your right to support a team as vehemently and loudly as you want. You have A team called the Fort Lauderdale Strikers. They are NOT the same club that moved to Minneapolis, nor are they the ASL one from the mid 1980s. Because those legal entities ceased to exist, the way businesses cease to exist under actual laws and reality. Actual laws and reality don't mutate based on your refusal to recognize them because it's inconvenient for your immature world view. If I opened a nightclub in Parsippany and called it Studio 54, could I claim that Mick Jagger used to party at my place back in the 70s? If I found a 75 year old guy who kind of resembled my late grandfather and legally changed his name to my late grandfather's, could I claim he was my grandfather? Would he be? What if I really really really WANT it because my days are so much easier that way? You have a right to be delusional, I guess. You have a right to ignore, you know, actual reality, I guess. And people like me have a right to tell you this: Grow. The. ********. Up. Your constant "I don't care what people like YOU think, with your facts and your common sense and your reality, because this handful of people in their late forties and fifties are THE ONLY HUMAN BEINGS WHO MATTER" is exasperating. And "mind-numbing legal definition?" Where the ******** did you go to school if these concepts numb your mind? Enjoy the team you have. Just don't try to tell us it's the same club, and please, OP, stop with the idea that nostalgia trumps everything. It doesn't. The recent rise of soccer in this country has been largely fueled by young people who didn't grow up with the original NASL and if the names and history DO resonate with them, they're just posing and co-opting a history they never had.
Or, and even more likely, the history which is being co-opted is minor league history from this millenia which those fans do remember. Minor league teams wore the names Timbers, Sounders and Whitecaps for a longer period of time than the NASL teams of the same name.
Freddie Goodwin who lives in Seattle who was a coach for the Kicks owns the old NASL name and he said I will never give up the name or something like that. I think he played at Manchester United.
With a title of "Random Question: MLS teams returning to NASL?" followed by five pages of posts, I have no deal what in the blue hell this thread is
That sounds about right. Although Kenn joined in late with one of his figurative bitch-slappings, so it isn't all bad
Says the pithy, smarmy and condescending bigsoccer cliques that like to make such pronouncements to characterize any discussion they don't approve of as a "circle jerk." If you don't like it, don't post. I didn't, until I saw some info from the original poster indicating he had more than a basic knowledge of the situation even if I consider his premise far-fetched. Simple, eh?
Where did you see this "information". Because on this thread he's come on like a junior member of the NASL's marketing department trying to convince us that just because some MLS teams share names with old NASL teams that they'd suddenly feel compelled to move to the far inferior D2 neo-NASL simply because of "tradition." Never mind the financial, legal, or marketing realities of the situation. The whole premise on its face is just asinine. But if you or he have some actual inside information you'd like to share that might change that, feel free to share. Otherwise it remains a VERY stupid concept that will happen about 2 seconds after the Easter Bunny murders Santa Claus and declares himself King of the mole people. And that's not just in BigSoccer cliques, but in reality too.
Yeah, NASL seems like the place to be. http://www.expressnews.com/sports/s...ter-Denissen-signing-5118538.php?t=7e0a8ec8f0
No and not really. Even bringing in Ray at the end to coach wasn't enough for me. IMHO an MLS team could have worked right there if it had been named the Ft. Lauderdale Strikers right from the start. Then I and others would have been much more interested. Then it might have had enough support all along that someone would have been willing to come in and take it from Horowitz instead of it just dying. And Miami FC? Words to describe what a cluster frak that situation was barely exist. And it wasn't just the rebrand, it was getting Tim Robbie to come in, reaching out to the city of Ft. Lauderdale, making at least a slightly better effort that has nearly quadrupled attendance since the Miami FC debacle.
The Robbie's have a University of Minnesota soccer stadium named after themselves. I think Tim's mom grew in Minnesota somewhere.
Grand Poobah Know It All graces us with his "wisdom" again. You go out of your mind swearing at people simply because they don't agree with your point of view. How many ulcers have you gotten thanks to arguing inane crap on Big Soccer? You're ranting and cursing at me because I don't give a shite about your legal entity ceasing argument, and you're telling me to "grow the frak up"? Really? I get it that it's your schtick to be crotchety flaming internet soccer posting guy. I am myself even amused by it from time to time. But sometimes it is just old and beat to death. You contrive ridiculous irrelevant comparisons to attempt to ridicule people. At least stick to the topic at hand. Being a fan isn't an experiment in legal studies. It's about feeling. Good, bad, somewhere in between. When you sit in the stadium and watch, the idea is for it to invoke some kind of feeling and emotion. You do get that right? Belittling fellow soccer fans for how they feel about supporting their team, trying to tell them that what they think is stupid because you've defined the legal status of their club, frankly it's pathetic. At the end of the day it doesn't even matter to you. You're not a Strikers fan or a Quakes fan. All you're looking to do is snicker to yourself while you attempt to flame people. And spare me your next diatribe about "anonymous internet guys." I don't claim to be anything other than your average soccer fan, so who I am is not even relevant.