So we are still talking about an African-Canadian in the USMNT forum? This is how MLS players get over hyped. A player does something and fans go nuts. Davies hasnt had a good season. Davies hasnt had a good run of games. Davies didnt even play a solid 90 minutes. The kid is a big prospect who Vancouver lucked into getting. There is nothing systematic about his development. It was pure luck of an extraordinary athlete.
Not for me. I find the EPL is a little like those trophy hunting expeditions where a trap is baited and "big hunters" from Texas pay big bucks to shoot the bear that ambles into the trap in search of a good meal. The big time hunter gets to go home with a bear rug which he can use to entertain his female prey. To me that's not sexy. I've been enjoying the Bundesliga. They have a certain culture and a passionate fan base. My other league is MLS and I am enjoying its development. You never know what you are going to get with MLS. It keeps surprising, mainly on the upside.
The Bundesliga is OverHyped IMO. The last non-Bayern winner was Dortmund back in 2012. Several seasons has Munich winning the league as early as late March.
I disagree. Having 4 good teams in a 20 team league like EPL and saying "oh, we're the best because we won UEFA CL" is fool's gold But I'm not into league comparisons which I find really boring so I'll stop there. I know there are many who can argue leagues ad infinitum. They never get anywhere. Different countries have different reasons for wanting the leagues they have and that's fine. I like BL because the players leave everything on the pitch. When I watch EPL I have to sit thru a lot of bad footie.
I think you are missing my point....by a wide margin. I am not saying that they can compete. In fact, I have said that I am not qualified to make a real comparison between the leagues. The most important reasons (for me) are that 1. I do not really follow the EPL (other than a game or part of a game here and there) and 2. There is no head to head competition between MLS and EPL (which is the only way to get a semi accurate estimation on the relative levels). As far as your question, I think you over simplify it. Money is obviously extremely important but if it really was that simple, there wouldn't be much need to play the games would there? If you look at the EPL, for example you can say that SOME of the teams that spend more money do better than SOME the teams that spend less but I'll ask you a question...similar to the one you asked me. How do you think a team that spends $18.2M can compete with a team that spends $183M? The answer is, so far, pretty damn well. It may change later but Sheffeld United 13.5M pounds (approx $18.2M) is currently in 5th place on 17 points, compared to Man U 141M pounds (approx $183M), currently in 7th place on 16 points. Of course the current results may change as the season goes on but the reality is that if you look at the numbers in the EPL (not just Sheffeld and Man U), the only thing it really seems to tell you is that there is a lot of money being wasted. Perhaps a team that does a better job scouting and spends their money wisely (and has greater access to young players from S. America that wouldn't yet automatically qualify for a EPL work permit) really could compete with a team like Burnley, Westham, Southampton, Watford, NUFC, Bournemouth, Brighton. Again....read what I said carefully. I do not believe this is an argument, in any way, that ANY teams in MLS would be competitive at ANY level in the EPL.
The league is an absolute joke. The fanbase is small but cant believe there that many naive fans out there. 1193671790645530624 is not a valid tweet id
Some scenes from the "MLS World Cup".... 1193633805786943488 is not a valid tweet id It is just one play, but it looks like there couldbe some issues with his technique. Jordan Morris Forever. pic.twitter.com/441vR199mk— Gabriel Pirlo 🇺🇦🇺🇸🇵🇱🇮🇹 (@GabePirlo) November 10, 2019
I got a post deleted by a moderator that jokingly said that in line with the other 4 US sports the mls champion would declare themselves world champions.
Article (Dutch) with an extensive interview with Leerdam: https://www.voetbalzone.nl/doc.asp?uid=362385
It doesn't help MLS that the 4th and 9th (T) teams on points were the ones in the final. Single elimination is "exciting," but it's not a great way to determine the best team.
Well, after over a decade of reading these forums I've finally felt the need to make an account... to ignore some posters. Amazing how hateful (not even critical, just straight up hateful) some people can get over their domestic league. And since I'm here, I might as well post some of my thoughts. I just want to point out that it's normal around the world for countries to call up players from their domestic leagues. Even Brazil and Argentina do it quite frequently and they have an abundance of players playing in the top 5 leagues. They could easily make up 2 or 3 teams of players from just those leagues yet they constantly call up players from lower leagues. It's almost as if there's more to picking a player when making a squad other than just seeing what league they play in. Now back to the USMNT who barely have about a handful of players starting in the top leagues. It's only natural that most of the team will be made up of domestic players since that's what Berhalter and his staff are more familiar with. Klinsmann called up a lot of players from Germany. Had we hired a Danish coach, we'd probably be seeing more of Sabbi and Amon. That's just how it works. And one last thing I've wanted to say for a long time and I'll most likely get sh*t for this but I don't care. The Zardes hate is just stupid. Dude doesn't deserve the hate he gets. With half the skill and talent of our other attackers he still manages to produce at a similar rate. But people seem hellbent on trashing him cause of his first touch... and most likely cause he plays in MLS. Not me though. I'll always support and applaud any player who works hard and gives his all to this team despite of his shortcomings. Except Lovitz. He sucks.
Wait, MLS is a joke because someone who is trying to cash in on Seattle's MLS Cup win is an idiot? I don't get it.
Really good work here. Two 30 second clips of less-than-stellar play really allow us to conclude that, yes, MLS sucks. Never in the history of the sport has a championship match been crappy, or at least had two 30-second clips worth of crappiness.
It looks like we have another naive, uneducated MLS join the forum. It is amazing these people dont understand why the criticism turned to hate. The leagues failure to achieve what it was intend to contributed to the stalling of improvement of the USMNT for over a decade, but its direct intervention has actually harmed it greatly. I just want to point out that over 50% of the players at the last world cup played in top 5 leagues. Most teams that dont have a top 5 league may call in some players from their domestic leagues, but the ones that call in a large amount rarely do well. Even Brazil and Argentina follow this pattern. Sure they called in some domestic players, but only 3 and 4 collectively. Let's look at the four semifinalists, which included two countries with top 5 leagues. England - 23 France - 9 Croatia - 2 Belgium - 0 Country Players Percentage Outsidenationalsquad Lowertierplayers England 129 17.53% 106 24 Spain 81 11.01% 64 2 Germany 67 9.10% 52 5 Italy 58 7.88% 58 0 France 49 6.66% 40 1 Russia 36 4.89% 15 0 Saudi Arabia 30 4.08% 10 0 Mexico 23 3.13% 14 1 Turkey 22 2.99% 22 0 Others 241 32.74% 146 1 Total 736 100% 527 34 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_FIFA_World_Cup_squads#Croatia
I like watching MLS. I think it has made great strides in the last decade in terms of quality of play. Doesn’t mean it is competitive with European top division teams, but I agree with rankers who would put it on par with good second divisions (538 and a recent survey of Euros who came to MLS). That seems about right. And that’s not an insult. More importantly, it continues to improve. It used to be a hack-a-thon with no flow, and relatively little skill. Designated players aside, the average player is a lot better than 10 years ago. The fans are showing up, which needs to translate into improving pay for the non-star players. More clubs are drawing > 20k/game, and some are drawing much more. They need to plow that $ into salaries. Pay for the bottom 2/3 is too low. I want USMNT to feature players playing in the top leagues in the world because those are our best players. That doesn’t mean I need to trash MLS 24/7. One doesn’t follow from the other, and when people here dumping MLS daily continuously like a broken record, it’s a drag for s9me, boring for others, no matter how cathartic it is for you.
The game was ugly. Those were just two illustrations of what occurred often throughout the match. What were the highlights other than the second goal and one decent save.
It is a joke for many reasons. This was just an embarrassing moment. If I have time later I will try to make a list. The commentators of the game in the US are a joke, but these MLS guys are just ridiculous.
I think that ussf/Berhalter/arena have a MLS bias but it doesn’t mean that I hate MLS I think that it’s bad for the USMNT I don’t think that any MLS players are good enough For me, it’s as, if not more, important to call out posters who go too far when their “criticism turns to hate” than to criticize the Pro-MLS bias. That’s not productive as we’re not at the point yet where our team is too good for MLS/B2/championship. I’d like for there to be a level playing field and an acknowledgement that generally players in the majors are better and therefore deserve the benefit of the doubt that seem to primarily go to MLS players currently. it would be nice if Berhalter/MLS backer would occasionally call out posters who go too far but that rarely happens.
There have been comments from players from Europe that MLS is harder in some ways because of parity. While it doesn't create super teams that can compete with other countries super teams there are no games off and every team is tough to beat unlike a lot of even top Euro leagues. They thought that made them play more consistently because they couldn't coast in games. Add in travel, climate and different surfaces and they names it a much bigger challenge than they thought it would be. If the level keeps increasing while the rest should stay the same it will become on e of the toughest leagues to play in. Go back 10 and twenty years and then project the next ten.
I think this would be more true except for expansion. Some of the new small market teams are pretty bad as they don’t have the benefit of parity or being in a huge market (ATL/ LAFC).
Well Minnesota fit your criticism the first couple of years but they made big improvements this year. Will Nashville and Miami go the Minnesota/Cinncy route or the Atlanta/LAFC route? I'll guess Nashville underwhelms and Miami goes splashy.
I imagine most offensive type players have a much harder time looking good on lesser teams than the better teams.
I'm sure the El Salvadorean league is also really hard to play in... What you reference almost seems like backhanded compliments. It is hard because of travel, playing surfaces, poor teammates, thin rosters. Nothing really about the competitive level or speed of play. The pursuit of being a "Top League" has probably hurt MLS more than helped it. They have spent most of their existence trying to get non-soccer fans to come to games. Meanwhile, there are two giant potential fan bases here; one they have sort of started to market to, the other they have never tried to market to. The Lakewood, NJ minor league baseball team draws reasonably well. Even though there are three MLB teams within 1-2 hours. The same can be said all over the country. Millions of people attend college football games with NFL franchises nearby. The Single A, Lakewood team, the Nebraska Cornhuskers, don't go around telling people to wait until they are great. They market a fun time. There are a few million soccer fans that watch EPL and other leagues. But they are not flying to England to see games every weekend. They are available to be MLS fans. The broadcasts don't even overlap. MLS has not only ignored these people, who are already soccer fans, but they have alienated them with strange rules (mostly gone) and a message that tries to gaslight them.
no question but it’s all relative. NUFC would look great relative to Championship/B2/MLS teams but don’t find it easy in the majors. that’s the point I’m trying to make.