That's the Man City years that saw them flirting with relegation every season or two, and finding Mid-table as relief from those worries, right?
I guess I enter this thread at my own peril. Anyone like me whose affiliation with US soccer dates to NASL days is understandably cautious about rapid expansion and the possibility of a speculative bubble that could burst and ruin the league. It's hard for me to understand how a club that averages 15-20K (mostly paid) attendance with little TV revenue could be worth 200 mill or more. But that said, MLS has has been pretty consistent in limiting expansion to cities with relatively deep pocketed ownership groups and realistic stadium plans. It's a much more fiscally responsible financial enterprise than NASL. All I have to say about the Cosmos (and Red Bull and NYCFC) was on a banner I carried into RFK back in the day, "Bite the Big Apple, Don't Mind the Maggots."
First, are you going to be remotely respectful or should I change into my flamesuit? Are you going to prove my point that most of BigSoccer routinely engages in a self destructive pattern of ridicule, belittlement, marginalization, and outright holier-than-thou condescension? Because that seems to be a common theme over the past few years. I date back to the old NASL days, I was part of the Pele generation. I didn't start playing youth soccer until I was 10 years old, but that happened to be the very first year youth soccer was available in northeast Oklahoma. I never thought I'd see the day when I actually feared MLS becoming too similar to the old NASL for my comfort level. But here we are. The old NASL is part of MLS history, as MLS's roots were formed in an effort to curb the financial excesses of the old league, including its overexpansion. I've had to correct older Tulsa fans from time to time, because some of them swear up and down they saw Pele play for the Cosmos against the Roughnecks at Skelly Stadium, but that never happened, as Pele retired the year before Tulsa got an NASL team. Bechenbauer, Neeskins, Alberto, Chinaglia? Yes. Georgie Best and Johann Cruyff? You betcha. The old NASL seemed to have stabilized for the most part with 24 teams in 1978, 1979, and 1980. To be sure. NASL rosters were dominated, by and large, by Europeans, while my childhood franchise had a lot of English and Northern Irish. With 20/20 hindsight, I consider these players to be "soccer missionaries" as they constantly did camps and after their playing days were over, several of them made a home in Tulsa and started a vibrant club soccer scene here. As a kid playing youth soccer in little old Tulsa in the mid and late 1970s, we'd dream about leading the USA to its first World Cup qualification since 1950. One of us, a Roughnecks ball boy and son of one of the owners, did indeed go on to play for the USMNT... Joe-Max Moore. But back in the old days, despite my team having two Hermann Trophy winners on the roster (Joe Morrone Jr and Billy Gazonas and even Taylor Twellman's dad Tim played for us), American players were relegated to role playing and rarely were treated as leaders on the pitch. Then there was Team America... TRIVIA QUESTION: How many countries qualified for the World Cup between 1934 and 1978? ANSWER: 16 In 1982, 1986 and 1990 the World Cup expanded to 24 teams, and it was the Canadians who qualified in 1986, while we qualified in 1990, two years in which the old NASL was non-existent and the future of the sport was left to the indoor game, something really disappointing for all of us who thought the outdoor game would be the "Sport of the 80s." Pro/Rel was a foreign concept in that era and the Transatlantic Cup wasn't as big of a deal as it probably should have been IMHO. The sport was highly Americanized, with no ties and an elaborate points system where you got 6 pts for a win, and an extra point for every goal you scored up to three, win or lose. Americans hate ties, I guess... unfortunately, Howard Samuels died in the middle of trying to save the league with a hard salary cap. and so did the league after 1984... So, when MLS started up, all of us wanted to give Rothenburg, Abbott, Hunt, Anschutz, Kraft and company every possible benefit of the doubt. It sure beat making the goals bigger and changing the rules. At my first MLS game, I immediately noticed the quality of talent not being up to what my admittedly rosy NASL memory remembered, but that was all fine after seeing an American, Marcelo Balboa, take his team on his back and lead them to a win over the KC Wiz... the pinnacle of MLS for me had to be the USMNT in their 2002 World Cup win over Portugal after none other than Giorgio Chinaglia told us we didn't have a chance in hell of winning. I'd always thought single entity was meant to solve the problem of too few committed owners for the original MLS and the old NASL problem of owners going in too many different directions. I never thought it'd last through expansion to 20 teams and beyond. And I expected Don Garber to keep his word that the league would "pause at 20," which they didn't. Even that wasn't a dealbreaker for me. Fine, face the old demons and expand to 24, then stabilize yourself until TV revenues grow and convince your critics you're not going to use expansion fees to offset annual losses the way the old NASL did. I wanted a lean, mean, 18-24 team MLS with Americans continuing to be the stars of the show rather than the supporting actors the way it was in the old NASL days. A smaller league IMHO would allow for a stronger D2 to emerge in a lower division pyramid that had traditionally suffered from annual instability and incompetence. And maybe someday, a strong enough D2 to stand shoulder to shoulder with an MLS that jettisons most its single entity trappings in favor of fully independent clubs that act like real clubs... not outlets trading TAM for GAM and vice versa. As for Pro/Rel, once I got away from the BigSoccer echo chamber, I listened to our fans, listened to the 120 strong supporters group I co-founded, reflected on several years of efforts to sell rich people in Tulsa on a D2 team after signing non-disclosure forms for both the USL and NASL, and realized most of these fans were not eurosnobs or anglophiles. They were just very passionate soccer fans who wake up early on Sat and Sun mornings to cheer on their favorite European teams. Fans that are far more sophisticated and Pro/Rel interested than I and my friends were back in the old NASL days... From my perspective, there needs to be a strong differentiation of lower division non-MLS independent American soccer from its non-soccer minor league domestic counterparts for it to be successful in the long term. For me, an MLS that uses USL as an expansion market incubator, putting its thumb on the scale for Cincy last season, followed by Nashville this season, needs to self reflect on what is truly best for the game before it expands past 28 or 30 teams and is tempted to try to turn lower division USL into its reserve league. I mean, when do MLS teams stop entering US Open Cup in the Round of 32?... asking for a friend... And if USL wants to call itself "The Championship" and "League One" and "League Two," shouldn't they put some substance into all that window dressing and attempt to embrace an open system? And since MLS needs to connect with the non-MLS world, once it overexpands (my opinion) to 30 or 32+ teams, maybe it'd be better off splitting itself in two rather than expanding to be the same size as the far more popular NFL and NBA while overspending itself to pretend it's one of the top five leagues in the world. Excuse me, but in some ways, all this heady talk of MLS expansion for fees that keep getting exponentially higher reminds me of the heady days when we were told the NASL was going to rival the big four American sports in short order... My two cents.
The one thing MLS has not done is "expand rapidly". The NASL went from 12 to 24 teams in 2 years. 2002-10 teams, 2019-24 teams, That's 14 teams in 17 years* or 2007-12 teams, 2019-24 teams, That's 12 teams in 12 years *the entire history of the NASL was 17 years.
Wait, are we doing old US Soccer teams playing European opponents. Well 100 years this July, Bethlehem Steel went on a Scandinavian Tour. That seems a lot earlier than the Cosmos. Or are we doing favorite soccer memories Personally, one of my favorite US Soccer memory is the 2000 Australia Cup/Tournament for the USWNT. The WNT just won the world cup and then basically went through a lock out/strike. The USSF called up college players (including a person I knew). That team won that tournament and we act like it never happened.
I can't recall. Was it a strike or a lockout? And poor Lauren Gregg. She was the head coaching heir apparent for how long? This was her moment to shine.
I often think about how far professional soccer in the US has come since 1996 (it is pretty amazing). I also often wonder if it would be farther along if the NASL had been managed properly and it had succeeded. Would it be even more main stream than MLS is now? It would have celebrated its 50th year last year. Not saying pro soccer would have been further progressed, but just saying I think about it. Not sure how you judge that. I guess I wonder if TV contracts would be even bigger, player salaries even bigger, would we see younger global stars playing here, more US stars being produced...things like that. I know in the end it doesn't matter because NASL wasn't managed properly and didn't succeed.
The big difference between the two situation is that MLS is also requiring the teams to make commitments for the future, specifically, stadiums. I think sometimes people underestimate how important and how hard it is to get stadiums built. I think it can be reasonably argued that a league starts with its plans for stadiums and everything else falls out of that. This is also reflected in the emphasis on academies. This will increase the number of quality American players, but isn't going to really payoff for at least another five years. Again, a forward-looking vision that the NASL didn't have. If MLS were to die next year for some reason, it would still leave this great wealth of soccer infrastructure to build a new league from, something the NASL didn't do.
1) Nice biography 2) MLS makes so much money by keeping costs as low as possible, shared revenue and, the big reason SUM. We obviously dont have the financial documents from a private company but good folk here have looked at what is available and made some great deductions. 3) Without the support of MLS, it isn't hard to imagine USL not being able to stabilize itself into it's current 3 team form. 4) Have you seen League 1 and 2? What makes you think those leagues, and team owners, are in any position to move up the ladder? Heck, the Championship teams are so far behind MLS there's no way they can move up. Maybe one day but I doubt it. Now once USL fleshes out the bottom 2 leagues and there's some semblance of parity, they might do pro/rel. Which is almost exactly what the league president said. 5) Anyone who doesn't support domestic soccer because of pro/rel is a snob and almost certainly will find another lazy excuse to continue not supporting it. 6) What advantage does pro/rel provide again? 7) Donnie G is a spokesman for MLS owners. At least as far as we are concerned. Take everything he says with a grain of salt. Or a pound, more like. 8) Of course the league wasn't going to stop at 20. What in American sports history made you think that? 9) What everyone else just said
Everything comes back to Tulsa Never makes a coherent point as to why MLS shouldn't go past 20 other than "I want this". This has been the same song and dance for literally years.
I would argue that Pro / Rel actually widens the parity gap between the elite European teams and everyone else. Case in point: My team in the EPL...Burnley. Their goal for next season is not to win the league. It's not to qualify for Champions League. It's not even to qualify for Europa League. No, my beloved Clarets have exactly one goal. Finish 17th or better. If you have that as your goal, "playing your kids" is not an option. You have to survive. That's it. You know you can't compete with the Big Six...so you don't. If you're in a lower division, trying to win promotion, same thing. Winning is everything. Here is MLS, there's more parity. There are more possibilities. You can actually have Three Year Plans.
I think a lot of people forget this. I feel that at some point the top spending teams may want to form a new league(like I believe the EPL did). I hope that MLS releases the purse strings before then though. If they do not, then the next TV contract will still be minuscule compared to other American sports. "You got to spend money to make money."
Honest question: Did the NASL ever have the same lineup of teams/cities 2 rears in a row? I don't think they ever did. Did they ever have a year without at least one team moving or folding?
You like 3 year plans? How about the fact that having awful seasons is not punished at all? So - tanking pleases you? I do not support pro/rel but lets not pretend like the American system is anywhere near perfect.
Is there any incentive at all in MLS to tank? Seriously. I remember back in the day there was a Don Garber "You Suck" Allocation that RSL seemed to get in perpetuity during their infancy, but is that still a thing?
I know I looked this up once. Ah, ha. I did. Earlier in this very thread. I posted this on page 13: Original NASL, changes after each season 1968 - 12 teams folded after the inaugural season 1969 - Baltimore Bays folded 1970 - KC Spurs folded 1971 - Washington Darts moved to Miami 1972 - No teams moved or folded 1973 - 2 teams folded 1974 - No teams moved or folded 1975 - 2 teams moved 1976 - 2 teams folded, 3 teams moved 1977 - 4 teams moved 1978 - 2 teams moved 1979 - No teams moved or folded 1980 - 3 teams folded, 4 teams moved 1981 - 7 teams folded 1982 - 3 teams folded 1983 - 3 teams folded 1984 - final league season It actually happened more often than I remembered. Although, on the farm in Indiana we didn't get that much NASL news in the early 70s. The high-point was the 1978-1980 period. There were 24 teams in 1978 with 2 of them moving after the season. Those 24 teams played the 1979 season and the same 24 teams started in 1980.
Awful seasons are punished economically by reduce attendance. There's incentive to improve. There's also some time to do it in because you aren't up against a win-today-or-die reality. Having to throw in everything now and sacrifice the future to avoid relegation is like trying to build a retirement nest egg in just one year. No sane person buys lottery tickets as their retirement plan because they presumably have more than one year to get where they need to be. So, yes, imperfect or not I'll take three year plans over pro/rel.
Is that true in most markets though? How many terrible seasons would it take for say, Portland to have terrible attendance? Lets look at the Galaxy - attendance only slightly down through a terrible stretch.
In Toronto it took five bad seasons. That was starting as an expansion team, though, so the fans may have been more forgiving than they would be today.