I love what Minnesota has become. Atlanta and Minnesota are showing that you can have a real atmosphere outside of the Pacific NW. Austin had 30,000 depositors for season tickets (though I don't know what that does to their initial plan to buy a 20,000-seat stadium). I think things are changing, but the league can screw it up by allocating all the gains to owners.
Indeed. Remember the Orange squad was just one penalty shoot out goal away from a consecutive Final place in the WC2014 with a squad constructed for the majority from Eredivisie/Feyenoord players. It's about what the players bring to the table that matters....and a good/excellent coach
MLS isnt structured like other leagues so it like comparing apples and orange slices. These comparisons are done by MLS fans to attempt to eliminate players from the USMNT. These are also the same annoying people throw around the term "euro pixie dust". Is the league really much better than it was a few years ago? Bringing in more foreign players has helped but on what basis are you claiming the average american players are improving? Are you talking about the last guys on the bench? Your comments on attendance is backed up by facts. The league average attendance in 2019 is down almost 4% since 2017. The only teams that had their highest attendance this year are LAFC in the their second season and Portland who added more seats. It is interesting how many teams peak attendance was was in their first couple of years and how far it had dropped. Check out MTL and NYC. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_League_Soccer_attendance MLS is a failure at what it was intended to do. It has yet to help the game in this country and it has harmed the USMNT. The league has grabbed for power and control of the game, while pushing others out and then not done what is necessary. It has created a ton of naive and unkowledgable fans that further make it harder to advance the game. On top of it, these fans will accept what ever they are fed and will turn around and say anything to prop up the league.
I find it very hard to believe a player felt extra pressure to play consistently in MLS than in a top league. Can you provide links? It kind of goes against what just about every MLS player has said who went abroad. Yes, it is challenging ways that have nothing to do with being a better soccer player. You really think the league has improved that much in the last few years?
It was a nice PR article and not a scientific study. You think maybe a guy who comes to another country and is being paid to play in their soccer league might say nice things about the league when asked? It may be not entirely naive to take any player comments like the article referenced with at least the tiniest grain of salt rather than parsing each word as absolute truth.
While I agree, soccer in general, has many issues in different situations for determining a "winner" that are less than ideal. The most obvious is penalty kicks. That being said, there should be an alternative. Home and away can be improved upon also. Perhaps 2 out of 3? Unfortunately, I really don't have any good suggestions.
Stadium isn’t built yet. The subscriptions were taken two years before the first game. I don’t know if they are planning to build a bigger stadium than they originally intended or not. They have just broken ground and play starts in 2021.
I can't remember who was talking about this but he wasn't saying MLS was harder. He was saying in a lot of leagues you had a few top teams that were great but then it dropped off and a lot of the lower teams you could kind of coast against. Because of parity there aren't any of the super clubs but there aren't a whole bunch of patsy's to relax against. He said that meant he had to play hard every game instead of just those against super clubs.
It seems to be doing quite well in it's main goal of being a sustainable and lucrative long term business.
I agree. It was designed among the ashes of NASL failure, and meant to equalize costs so as to control them and let a critical mass of teams survive economically while the sport grew. It is a socialist design meant to prevent a winner-take-all few from killing the rest of the teams. I think it has been very successful at that project, and the growth is now happening. But the bottom end of the salary scale for players is too low.
Yup. That's actually the goal. Now I do think a lot has the potential to change in MLS as part of the upcoming CBA negotiations. So a lot of this discussion is moot. The salary cap is going to change, free agency is going to change, the players want a lot of this TAM/GAM to become simplified, etc. etc. We don't know to what extent it'll change, but it'll change. Now, development of American players and being a sustainable/profitable business aren't mutually exclusive goals. Just like it isn't for Anderlecht, Dinamo Zagreb, or Boca Juniors. The challenge has been that clubs like FCD that are putting their eggs in the development basket aren't getting attendance. If FCD signed Chicharito tomorrow, watch them sell out every home game. Watch their jersey sales skyrocket. They're not doing that. So in effect they're sacrificing profits for development thru the academy. FCD, by the way, is one of the most successful franchises this decade in terms of wins/points/trophies. I saw a recent column that had them as the 5th most successful US-based team in the decade according to those metrics. And for most of the decade they were at or near the bottom in terms of salary outlay (as were NYRB).
Miami just picked up Ulloa.https://www.mlssoccer.com/post/2019/11/11/inter-miami-add-victor-ulloa-growing-roster-fc-cincinnati Inter Miami have acquired midfielder Victor Ulloa and the first pick of the 2019 MLS Re-Entry Draft (Stage 1) from FC Cincinnati in exchange for $50,000 in General Allocation Money, a 2020 MLS SuperDraft third-round selection and the 26th pick of the 2019 MLS Re-Entry Draft (Stage 1), the clubs announced on Monday. Out of contract following the 2019 season, Ulloa signed a new deal with the expansion side.
The problem is that the terms great and easy to win are used in exchange with each other. It's not the same. You often (most of the times actually) see mls fans (=fans of level playing field/closed leagues) telling with the end table result in their hands and the number of wins of the top teams and those of the bottom teams quoting how much better the mls system is. What those people donot grasp is that the end result is a result because a result is reached. It says nothing about the effort that had to go into a match to get that result. With a table in your hand you can make static claims like Ajax has won every match, except for two draws and RKC is the end tail team with one win. So it's just cruising for Ajax in relation to the bottom teams. The same is being said about the epl, with the epl table in their hands as proof. Ajax however had a big fight to get a win over RKC. Those same people throw in the possession numbers of Ajax vs RKC, but forget that possession isnot equal to threat. That same RKC came to Rotterdam to play Feyenoord, not doing great at the moment but still a team with a salary budget that dwarfs that of RKC. Within 15 minutes we were 0-2 down and only in the dying minutes we managed to get the winner behind their goalie. So the end result in the tables satisfies those mls fans perception, two losses by the bottom dweller and wins by the moneywise powerfull clubs, but it doesnot reflect the real effort that went into getting those points. In fact the bottom dweller gave more of a fight than the nr 4 that was beaten by Ajax this weekend. Statistics without context mean nothing. The same applies to the epl. So to connect that with the mls vs other leagues standing, simply going by the numbers and telling mls clubs will do just fine or better than the bottom half of the epl table is using stats out of context.
A fine depth piece. No problem there. Another FC Dallas developed midfieder Lest we forget, a starter on the FCD team that won a Supporters Shield a few years ago.
That makee no sense. They still have to perform or they would lose their spot. Also, every game matters as every spot in the table has financial implications with extremes at the top and bottom. Compare that to just needing not being in the bottom half with no repercussions besides the offseason starting sooner.
That structure may have been needed initially, but it has always harmed the american player. The structure has actually slowed the growth of the game for at least the last 10 years.
You are now bragging about developing an MLS journeyman. FCD is probably the best in the league and they still havent promoted a youth player and developed him into a USMNT starter level player. Cannon is close, but still not proven. It is all hype until the players actually perform.
Shrug. Not every homegrown academy player is going to be a star. Central midfielders from the Dallas academy who are playing at least at an MLS level right now: Weston McKennie, Emerson Hyndman, Kellyn Acosta, Paxton Pomykal, Brandon Servania, Chris Cappis, Edwin Cerrillo, Thomas Roberts, Victor Ulloa. Five of 'em have USMNT caps. Weston McKennie was at FCD for 7 years. He moved to Schalke and was playing first team Bundesliga soccer within a year. Schalke didn't develop him. FC Dallas did. For those paying attention.................
Oh, I didn't know that. I love the atmosphere there now. And I am happy for Adrian Heath, who seems like a good guy.
None of them are stars. Schalke took a u19 player and turned him into a Bundesliga/USMNT starter. Those who have been paying attention, the biggest issues for development in MLS are at the ages between 18 and 23 and that players just stagnate after a few years.
I almost forgot they got the new stadium as there were plenty of other teams that had drop offs like that. You should look at the club by club stats in that link I provided.
Looks like a lot of clubs had a slight drop off in 2019. That's worrying. I still think that the game on the field is a much more attractive product than it was 10-15 years ago. I am not disputing points being made here about % of American players.