WHEN WILL MLS ADMIT CHIVAS USA IS A FAILED EXPERMENT.

Not a monopoly but it's at least somewhat compromised. I think the border crossing wait time would be too much for me. I checked just now and its a 1 hour wait at 6am PST. In any case I know the local newspaper takes it seriously.
http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2012/sep/25/soccer-insider-xolos-are-becoming-san-diegos-team-/

 

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I meant to say Orlando or NYC2 would replace CUSA.
I know what Garber is saying right now to give them a chance, but seriously, 1 more year would be the max for me and then its final decision time. "Use it or loose it"

 

If NY2 is a shoe in for team #20 the only rebrand I see in Chivas's future is purple and rhymes with
Shcmorlando Tity

 

Sherlock Tits!!!

 

Where are they going to play in San Diego, exactly? And what about that team just over the border?

Never mind. This whole thing is a wankfest because you people don't have shootouts and uniforms and American announcers and poor crowds in Kansas City to kvetch about.

 

And after today, maybe not even Chivas to kvetch about.

 

I would hope that MLS is smart enough to know winning or losing games isn't the basis for this type of decision. Honestly, a dispassionate view of this suggests to me it just hasn't worked, even after the most recent "re-boot." I don't see a villain here. I think given where MLS was at, it was a decent idea at the time, different approaches have been tried and tried again, the league has been involved . . . and it just hasn't worked.

Personally, I would suggest they continue to monitor attendance through the rest of the year, but if it is still languishing I wouldn't re-brand or re-locate or build a new venue, I'd just chalk this up to a learning experience, pay Vergara his money for the operating rights, offer to keep him as an investor in MLS, LLC if he desires so he can still be involved, contract the team and move on.

I appreciate that both fans, the ownership and MLS have invested a lot of time, effort and money here, but unless the data the BofG sees looks very different that what the stadium crowds look like to us, at some point the simple business decision -- and on the numbers it's probably not even a tough call -- is that these resources are better spent elsewhere.

 

While the points about marketing and crowd size are still valid, I hope some of the critics of Chivas USA's player policies will check out comments made by Sandon Milbut in other threads where he points out that 6 of the team's starters Sunday were Americans, as were two of the substitutes.
It appears that Chivas USA is playing more Americans than any other team in MLS.

 

Because they don't need to move or contract the team. Anything that could be gained by selling the team and moving them to Orlando is also gained by selling the team and keeping them in LA. Chivas's problem isn't the brand or the location, it is the POS ownership group. Get them an ownership group that cares about the MLS team and they'll start doing well..

 

One doesn't preclude the other. I'd contract the team and disperse the players, then make a decision if Orlando is a market that works for MLS. If so, sell them an expansion team. In other words, don't be so hung up on fixing Chivas USA that you potentially jump from one bad decision to another -- uncouple them. Let Orlando in (or not) on the merits when it's ready with players it selects in the normal expansion draft process, don't rush it because Chivas USA needs to be dealt with. And don't saddle Orlando with the baggage of fans claiming they "stole" Chivas USA from them.

The same applies to the suggestion that they should just move them to San Diego or elsewhere in LA or wherever. San Diego was considered the first time around, and if Chivas isn't working, that doesn't suddenly mean the issues in San Diego are resolved and they can just move them down the highway.
If MLS wouldn't put an expansion team in a market at this time, it shouldn't move Chivas USA there either.

 

I think you need to ask what MLS is trying to achieve. Every expansion decision is about building a stronger league. Somewhere along the line this became about a league trying to salvage the team, and that time, effort, energy and money is better spent elsewhere IMO.

 

Three words for you:

Sporting Kansas City

Get a new owner in place and the primary problem with Chivas will be resolved. There is no reason that LA shouldn't be able to support two teams. The problem isn't the market, it is the owner of one of the teams.

 

Although the problem may be the market a little bit. The Galaxy don't exactly pack the stands either. And they have a prominent, home-heavy but star-studded roster, with a history of dominance in the MLS Cup. That city is just not gonna get behind its team in the way that some other MLS markets do.

That said, KC did win the Cup in 2000, and fewer than 10k people showed up.

 

I'll see your Sporting KC and raise you one Chicago Fire, one DC United and one FC Dallas. It's not a magic solution.

Really, who are you trying to save the team for? If you re-brand it and move it to another stadium, do you think the die-hard Chivas fans will be pleased? Everything unique that attracted them to the club in the first place will be gone. At some point, what MLS would be left with is so different from what was originally intended I don't think the default position should be to save the team just to save the team. If it's really that important to get another team in LA (and personally I'm not sure it is), it might actually be better for MLS to leave the market for a period, sever all connections with the current group and come back in a few years with a new ownership group and stadium plan that works. MLS is still in the market, after all.

 

Dallas? No owner and then Hunt, but never a "new owner" since then.

 

And yet the Galaxy had been the standard that other teams were compared against in regards to attendance up until the arrival of Toronto. That being said, with a population of 12-18 million, depending on which measurement you use, a team in LA does not need to have the populace behind it as much as a team in a smaller market.

Another thing to consider is that this isn't an either or proposition. There is no reason why Chivas can't continue to exist while the league continues to expand. We aren't talking about a situation where Chivas is keeping another, more "deserving" market is being held out of the league.

 

League as operator. Hunt as operator. New boss same as the old boss.

 

I'd point out that going for a single ethnic group, whether they are American citizens or not, is discriminatory. The thing that would bug me the most if I'm looking at that policy w/out factoring in the discrimination is that CUSA is actively trying to be a farm team for their parent club in Mexico. The MLS is its own, independent league. We don't need a Liga MX farm club.

 

But CUSA being a farm club for a Mexican team at the expense of all of the other teams in MLS (because of the allocation rules) IS a problem. I'm not saying that there can't be an LA2 team, but what gets me is that Chivas isn't even TRYING TO COMPETE. Their goals are not in line with the other teams in MLS.

 

Which, again, is an owner issue that can be resolved without relocating the club, or contracting it...

 

Just to be clear - your problem is the fact that Chivas USA is owned by the same guy (and is aligned with) Club Deportivo Guadalajara?
The fact that they play mostly American players is just an additional issue for you?
I don't know man, seems like you just have a bunch of complaints about the team in general and will probably never be happy. I wonder what you would think if, over time, the MLS and Liga MX grew closer together - with more friendlies and tournaments and such - as MLS eventually grows its finances to a place it can compete for better players.

 

Another general thought. The attitude about Chivas USA making MLS feel "minor-league" because of the CD Guad link is a perfect example of how/why most Americans will never feel comfortable with relegation. People here seem to have a chip on their shoulder about "minor league."

Just the other day my brother-in-law was bitching about how come the players in the Seattle-Portland game weren't as good as players in "Europe." I laughed at this. One, "Europe" is a pretty broad designation, I'm sure the players in that game were better than the ones fielded by most teams in Europe. Two, he wants/apparently demands only to see the best players playing in MLS, despite the fact the guy has never paid a dime toward a season ticket, or team swag, or anything else that would actually support the growth of the sport here.

This whole "we are too minor league" or "we don't want to be considered minor league" mentality is ridiculous. Get over it and appreciate the game here for what it is.

Hell, CUSA hasn't even looked bad with their new players. It certainly isn't any worse than the ethnically diverse pile of crap they put out on the field last year.

 

If that happened, that'd be great. The fact that the players are American is not the problem for me, and I don't know how you're misconstruing my posts. The fact that the club has decided that it will not just actively pursue players from only a single ethnic group, but ONLY choose players from that ethnic group, even going so far as to sell off almost all of the players that are not of that ethnic group. Does that clear it up for you?*

One thing I do like is their uniforms, so there's that . I'm not sure why you seem to be surprised to see a poster that doesn't like the way that CUSA is run at the moment in a thread titled that Chivas USA is a failed experiment. I think that the idea that has been thrown around here to market CUSA as 'the blue-collar team' to LAG's 'rich person's team' seems pretty neat. It's obvious to me (but heck, that's just my opinion) that the strategy to market the team to Latinos has basically failed, and the way that the team is being run now suggests that the management is going to continue down that same path marketing-wise (e.g market the team to the Latino population in SoCal/Mexico), but in even more aggressive ways. If that doesn't seem like CUSA's strategy, let me know. If that strategy has more merit than I'm giving it credit for, let me know.

*I know that tone is hard to figure out on the internet, but that sentence is not intended (typed) as a sarcastic/patronizing one. Legit question.

Oh, do you mean new ownership or something like that? Maybe I'm not quite getting you here... Help me out here.