Most definitions of a generation is 20-30 years, so we are on several generations at this point. The difference between the US and most other countries is that we have multiple sports leagues that are more popular than MLS. For most other countries "football" was the only game in town and therefore became embedded in the cultural and social fabric of those countries. And though England has only 20 teams at the top level, the next tier down, the Championship, has 22 teams, and they averaged about 21,000, which is about what MLS averaged.
We will see over the next few months if this team has any ambition to be good, or if we’re just treading water. If I have to bet, I bet that we do not display any commitment to winning. So sad. Go Quakes!! - Mark
This thread was created over 5 years ago. What are the next few months going to tell us that we don’t already know? Almeyda already told what he expects the roster will look like next year - mostly the same as this year, and he hopes to keep Espinoza.
I feel bad for Quakes fans that weren't there for 2001 - 2005 and have never really experienced what's possible in San Jose with a little passion and vision.
Yes, I'm not sure where I got 75yrs, maybe that's a "lifetime" rather than a generation... So it's been 3 to 4 generations since the late 70s by the table linked (https://www.careerplanner.com/Career-Articles/Generations.cfm) However, I think you can put another data point into the discussion and use the year a viable professional league existed, which whacks down the US capability considerably since there was one in the 70's that disappeared in the mid 80's and now there is one since the mid 90's. The other leagues discussed started in a "one generation" span between 1888 and 1929. From my own personal experience, I played AYSO, middle school, high school that was it... I went to camps that had top college players as coaches and Earthquake players who also participated... Yet I did not really understand what the game looked like, when played well, until I randomly came across a UHF channel out of SF in 91-92 that would show a Serie A game every Sunday morning. I saw games with people like Marodona (Napoli), Lothar Mathius, Andreas Brehme & Jergen Klinsman (Inter) & Baggio (Juventus) playing. But not just the stars, what floored me was seeing defenders who had no issue passing the ball around in their own end... Just seeing that changed the way I looked at the game and the way I played for the next 15yrs or so until 4 knee surgeries put me on the sideline. MLS is not Serie A, but it sure as hell is better than NCAA, so a kid getting to see MLS is going to get a better take on how the game should be played than some drills in a camp in the 70s followed by a 16mm movie, sponsored by Coca-Cola, of Pele showing skills. This is one of them:
During that time, or rather from 1988-1993, KTSF Channel 26 in San Francisco , the Rai USA showed Serie A matches. Defense reigned in Italy in those years with the great Milan teams fielding Maldini , Baresi , Tassotti and a few others. Napoli also had great defenders and mids like Fernado DeNapoli and a younger Ciro Ferrara and Fabio Cannavaro. The idea was to defend and counterattack which is something Italy at the time did best. Italian players weren't great goal scorers on the international level but they always held their own with players like Baggio, Zola, Mancini , Vialli and all the foreigners like Maradona , Guillit and Marco Van Basten to name a few. That was the golden era of Italian soccer. I've yet seen anyone in MLS play like those players. Even when Nesta and Pirlo came here at an advanced age, they seemed to lose something in the translation. Whether it was tactics, age or surrounding players, those guys seemed lost in North America.
I think the idea, or hope, or foolish fever dream, is that now that we’ve spent real money on a magical coach and coaching staff, and now that we aren’t paying for Dom or Stahre anymore, and now that we see that even with the magical coach that we just aren’t quite good enough, maybe now we’ll invest a bit more in the team. Of course, that’s probably bullshit, and we may very well still be paying Stahre, and possibly even Dom? Didn’t Stahre have a three year contract? How long was Dom’s last contract? How can we be so freaking inept?! We don’t have a paying sponsor for our stadium. We don’t have a sponsor for our jerseys. We don’t have any big time DPs, excepting Wondo, who’s getting long of tooth, and is more or less homegrown in any case. (Homegrown in so far as we didn’t go scouring Latin America or Eastern Europe for him. He came from our own backyard.) I keep hoping for some decent moves by the club. Let’s ditch some of our underperforming players, and pick up a couple of good players, maybe a couple of million a piece. (Which is way, way, way under priced for a DP these days.) But I expect nothing at all. We’ll make some more half-assed, minor league moves and pretend that we’ll be competitive, and then be mediocre again. I’ll be drinking more and watching less this coming season. Go Quakes!! - Mark
The Athletic: How MLS’s burgeoning elite are starting to set themselves apart in a league built on parity "If you’re putting together an MLS aristocracy, those seven clubs are a pretty good starting point." -LAFC -Atlanta -Toronto -Seattle -NYCFC -LA Galaxy -Portland If Portland can be part of that group, any team can be, if they're willing to spend the money... Inter Miami will probably make it 8.
Exactly why Portland increased the size of their stadium - they need to keep up with the bigger markets. On an infinite time line, assuming MLS continues to grow in popularity, Portland will no longer be considered a big team in the league. On the other hand those same assumptions work great for San Jose (Bay Area) as we have the potential to be one of the greatest markets in the world.
John Fisher is likely to outlive Arthur Blank (odds offered on a strictly actuarial basis), so Atlanta should join San Jose at the kiddie's table at some point.
That article also made an interesting point that Chicago is spending big on their roster but it’s not a great strategy because they aren’t spending big on the things they need for long term sustainability - academy, technical staff, analytics, scouting, and so on. The other big market teams are all investing heavily in all of those areas.
So then, we've got the perfect formula here: we're not spending big on ANYTHING. Perhaps there's something to be said for consistency...
Not sure how engaged I can be without seeing some effort from the club, some indication that they aspire to more than mediocre. Otherwise, I can better things to do with my time. Sure, I’ll try to watch games, I’ll follow them online, but I’m not going to invest too much time and energy in a team that thinks missing the playoffs — again! — is OK, and that we don’t need four or five new starters. Go Quakes!! - Mark
I haven't seen anyone post about the survey they sent out yesterday, but there were a few open-ended questions. I made some pointed recommendations that will be familiar to everyone on this board.