These are both easy answers: 1) It can, and it is, both. The Utah Jazz are a model for consistency in the NBA, in an age where players get ridiculous contracts, salaries are insanely bloated, average players make ridiculous amounts of money, and very very specific teams are loaded with talent (and are quite frankly the only real teams that have a chance to win the title). in the NBA there is one thing and one thing only to player for, the NBA championship. every year there are MAYBE 5 teams that actually have a chance to win it. if you look at history, there have been maybe 8-10 different teams that have won an NBA title in the last 30+ years. if you are not one of those handful of teams that actually have a chance of winning a title every year, you better figure out how to be consistently decent, enough to make the playoffs every year, and have a loyal fanbase so you can make money. that is the Utah Jazz. that is the NBA. MLS is completely the opposite. there is so much more parity (despite what the graphs we have poured over say) in this league, you start the season and there are at least 10+ teams that actually could win the title. there have been a lot of different teams that have actually won the cup and there have been other teams to win other competitions. there are a lot of different things to play for and ways to go about doing so. the parity in the league means you can go from the worst team of all time (nearly) in 2005 and winning a MLS Cup just a few years later. when things like that are possible there is no point in settling in, becoming complacent with mediocre to pretty good records every year. when you hit a time like RSL has now, you might as well blow it all up and rebuild because if you have a smart organization (like a believe RSL is) than you can be right back in the Cup hunt within a few years. 2) First of all, there is no way anyone can say that the Jazz possibly could have won a championship, you can make hindsight predictions, but nobody really knows how it would have gone down. the Jazz of the 90's were an outlier. they had roughly a 4 year window to win a championship with 2 of the greatest players of all time, they just ran into the greatest player of all time and gave a good fight. trying to compare NBA teams of the 90's with teams today is an absolute crapshoot. that league has changed more than any other in this country, things have gotten entirely out of hand and there is no question that the league loves its favorites (read: big market teams). a small market team like the Jazz probably will never win a championship again. the only team that has a legit chance this year is oklahoma city. it seems like the league plays up a darling small market team, be it OKC, San Antonio, Portland or whoever, every few years and lets them ride it. the utah market had its chance, in the 90's, and didnt grab the bull by the horns. they probably won't have another chance. the D.Will lead Jazz had a legit chance in 2007 to go to the finals. that team was good, it had depth and if they had made the finals i believe they would have won the championship in 2007. they got swept by the Spurs and that was that. the league changed quite a bit the next few years and the Jazz lost it as a team. there was so much volatility within the Jazz as a team and organization from 2008-2010 there was absolutely no chance they would have come close to winning the championship. now, there is some thing to be said about how MLS itself has changed in the last 5 years with beckham, henry, the DP rule, salary changes and other stuff. but there are still plenty of examples of teams going from downright awful (look at KC) and completely changing it around in 2 years or less. RSL has shown itself capable of doing that. with Kreis' system doing an extended "passing of the torch" type of thing with a gradual rotation of new blood in/old blood out does not seem to be working, it takes at least a year or two to learn how to play the RSL way. we've brought in a TON of new players over the last few years, most have been cast off, few seem to get consistent playing time outside a couple favorites (for better or worse). favorites seem to be the problem with Kreis in that what should be a transition actually hasn't been at all. Kreis seems more adept at taking a clean slate and filling it instead of transitioning, IMO. clean house except for a few key guys, bring in a new crew, take a year or two to get up to speed and go for it all.
"Once in the organization's history" is not an acceptable frequency. We've already met the "once" threshold---the 2009 MLS Cup. We want to win it it often....plus other hardware.
I have never seen so many soccer threads turn into "my college team is better than your college team" arguments. The sooner Ute and Cougar fans realize that neither team is really that good, and that neither program has been as good as their fans believe, the better off we will all be. Here's to hoping RSL can do what it takes to get back in CCL next season. I personally enjoy the CCL runs RSL has made, and have been bummed more when they lose out of it than when they lose in the MLS playoffs.
this call up a other MLS teams and see who they want and what they'll give you. We aren't going to get better without having to make some difficult decisions. Also, this year on these "tours of (insert continent)" how about we come back with something better than Tanaka...
We haven't seen how it turns out, but i'm certain Viana was part of that too, but we couldn't get him before the season started.
From my understanding, Viana was a player that was recommended to Dunseth by a buddy of his that is an agent or something of that sort. He approached RSL with it, and they took a flyer. I could possibly be wrong, but I thought this wasn't the work of Garson at all, just having the right "friends"
http://www.deseretnews.com/article/...ior-of-Costa-Rican-soccer-team-Herediano.html Info given in that article makes Herediano's performance at Rio Tinto even more impressive. The article says that the herediano players didn't even have enough food to eat for the trip.
now that I think about it some more, I believe the cheap hotel part of the story and they didn't have coats to wear part of the story, but I'm a little more skeptical that they didn't have enough food to eat. Whomever wrote that article should have done some more follow ups on that question - like what meals did you eat when you came here?
and for their success they get Monterrey. I want to say I think LAG/Seattle are good enough to get past these Mexican teams, but it is simply not true. LA is going to play 2 road games and Seattle has to play the team that dismantled them last year.
Probably not until MLS raises the salary cap enough to compete with teams like those we keep facing from Mexico. Would be interesting to know what the team salaries are for Monterray and Santos.
LA has a better shot but Santos and Monterrey are for real. Beating either would be monumental. It's painful to watch because knowing that, we were pretty close. Within a good bounce or two.