This is something I'm of two minds about. Do I think MLS, specifically, needed AEG to survive long enough to become truly viable? Based on how significantly the league contracted in the early 2000s, I'd say that there were probably no other ownership groups with enough money to sustain the kinds of losses MLS was incurring. So in that sense, yes, they needed AEG. Does that mean professional soccer needed AEG to survive and grow? Not necessarily. Does it mean that the blatant manipulation of rules to benefit specific teams should be overlooked or forgiven? No. Does it mean that the current version of MLS should be viewed with less skepticism now that there are more ownership groups? Definitely, no. The single entity nature of MLS guarantees that there will never be anything approaching transparency with regard to MLS policy. The league owners may disagree from time to time on direction, but that information never makes it to the public because it would compromise their position against the player's union and the ticket purchasers. Businesses are not transparent by design, and single entity is uniquely obfuscated. I certainly don't harbor the same hate of AEG that a lot of Quakes fans do, mostly because I have no illusions that pro sports are fair. The fact is that the owners are all on the same page, they are all complicit, so AEG's wrongs are the league's wrongs. You either accept that and continue to enjoy MLS soccer because it's the best option available to you, or you don't and you stop spending your money to support it.
The bottom line is AEG, coerced, bought, defrauded , cheated themselves , their fans and the game. This doesn't mean we as fans have to stop or can't support the league because of what they did. I mean I'm sure we all want the league to succeed regardless of AEG's crooked past.
I want the San Jose Earthquakes to succeed, and survive, in whatever league they happen to be playing in at the moment. I don't take it as a given it will always be MLS, and I would not shed a tear at MLS' demise, provided the Quakes survived. I have no vested interest beyond the Quakes in the success of MLS.
After the old NASL folded in 1985, there was no other league for the Quakes to play in. Quakes owner Peter Bridgwater enrolled the team into a fledgling league , the Western Soccer Alliance. Soccer fans went from watching first division Europeans and Latin Americans to watching a bunch of college and high school all stars. That wasn't a great time for the game. If MLS were to fold, I don't think the other leagues, the New NASL, NISA or the USL would be a much better option. Therefore, if that is the the case, of course I want the league to succeed.
. . . another league will come along. There are now soccer-specific stadia within which to play. And frankly, I care much less about the quality of play than I do about the community of fans supporting their local Club. I am sports fan more than a soccer fan, and if I cared about quality of play, I'd root for the Warriors, but I don't follow the NBA, because the league became dead to me when the Braves left Buffalo 40 years ago and remains so today. And if I were a soccer fan who cared first and foremost about quality of play, I'd wake up early on Saturday mornings to watch EPL on satellite, forsaking MLS, which is apparently what a lot of soccer fans do. MLS' redeeming feature is the club sensibility among its fans, a feature it repeatedly tries to f*ck up.
It would be nice if this game was broadcasted or streamed but I'm not holding my breath. If we have to wait another 2 weeks for our Quakes to play I'm going to lose a little interest.
Given that the Mexican national team is playing Iceland in a friendly at Levi's Stadium the day before the Quakes/Leon match, I anticipate that interest in the latter will be attenuated at best. I will be curious to hear what sort of turnout this game brings. If the crowd isn't thin, I will be really surprised.
I think we'll see a lot of bench guys, at least by halftime. It will be fun and interesting given all the new faces.
Hoping TT, JY, Hyka, Joel, and Affolter get a fair amount of playing time to help shake off the rust...
According to my rep, we will see the benchwarmers out on the field Saturday. So...yay! Let's hope it's warmer than the last one too.
And in other news, the Quakes will not and should not buy out Simon Dawkins! Oh wait, that was Colin Etnire's previous "wrong!" article.
From Etnire's commentary: ". . . club legend status is earned not necessarily by length of tenure, but what you gave to the club. Paul Gascoigne is a first-tier legend at Tottenham Hotspur but spent even less time with that club than Landon did before he made his big money move elsewhere. In my opinion, a four year tenure that spectacular, with so much team success, is something to be thankful for. Especially because there’s no way it would’ve happened without him. . . . "I think it really must be emphasized again that San Jose never owned his rights, nor did MLS during the time he played in the Bay Area. . . . San Jose just happened to be the club where he was allocated. He actually said years later he’d only been to the Bay Area once before despite growing up in Southern California, and had more or less nothing to do with the choice of where MLS put him. . . . Donovan asked for his coach to transfer him back to the states, surprising everyone. From there, there’s admittedly a bit of chicanery, but none of his doing. . . . his allocation to Galaxy was hardly a fair process. But that still leaves the league, Lalas, and Phil Anschutz with more of the blame than the player himself. ". . . Even if Landon had made the choice himself, I wouldn’t hold it against him. If we expect loyalty to anything, it’s perhaps to the place that raised you, and for Landon, that was precisely the Los Angeles area that he was returning to." (Emphasis added). Good thing Etnire is not writing code for a living because logic utterly eludes him. "What you give to a club," first and foremost, is loyalty, so disloyalty is necessarily disqualifying for "legend status" with that club. Admitted "chicanery" in Donovan's relocation to "the Los Angeles area" could not have been "none" of Donovan's doing simply because "more of the blame" falls on others. Either all the blame falls on others, or some must fall on Donovan -- and some blame is sufficiently disqualifying for club legend status. And, finally, "if we expect loyalty to anything" in the context of a Club it is to the Club. A wartime defector, who discloses intelligence to the enemy for a promise to be able to quickly return home to his family, is not celebrated; if apprehended on the battlefield, he is summarily shot. Being a good husband to a B-grade film star won't forestall the firing squad.
In addition, there is the comparison to Paul Gascoigne, who left Tottenham for a team in another league altogether, Lazio. I don't know of any Quakes fans that had any ill will about Donovan going back to play in Germany. That is the analog to the Paul Gascoigne move to Lazio. Now if we want to look for an analog to the Donovan defection to the Gals, a better one would be Mario Goetze's defection to Bayern Munich from Borussia Dortmund, a move to a team's bitter rival. Here's how Goetze's move to Bayern was received by Dortmund fans:
Donovan is deserving of both the praise and damnation he gets. No MLS cups without him. No relocation of the Quakes to Houston without him engineering a move to LA.