Columbus is an on the field example to follow I think. their problems are all off the field. watched them a bit last season during the playoffs and they seemed to have a very cohesive unit. good chemistry with decent talent. I would like the team to get a big name tho even if it's only for a year haha
The "it's always worked in the past, and it should therefore work in the future" argument has some powerful counter-examples. Like this one: http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipelin...how-not-to-do-it-breaking-up-ammonium-nitrate Not that I disagree with you about Cincy and Nashville. They'll be fine. Mostly I just wanted to share this story, because it's insane.
Chances Cincy uses all three DP spots first year? If/when they do...surely they'll go the young South American route? No disrespect to Ohio but it might be tough luring an established name there without really opening up the checkbook (a la Rooney, and DC as a city is relatively well known overseas).
I'd guess low, but 1 or 2 well used DPs and TAM could still build us up as competitive. I think you're right that we should look for value south rather than aging European. I'd take a Valeri or Martinez over Rooney any day and you're right we aren't a known city outside the US.
It would be nice if they could use 1 or 2 during this summer's transfer window. Not sure if there are USL rules that could prevent it, or if they have flexibility in structuring a contract so that it complies with USL this year and MLS next year. Not sure how good a choice Rooney would be. He only has a couple of years left, tops. That may be a good addition now to set a tone for the club, but I would hope that they look more at DPs in their prime playing days.
It's a balancing act between preserving competitiveness and getting better players on the international market. One way to set up a league would be to let everyone spend however much they want. However, this would produce the competitive imbalance that characterizes most foreign leagues. The opposite way would be to give equal shares of the combined revenue that goes to MLS and limit spending to that. However, that's about $3m per year (I guess) which doesn't buy you much. MLS uses the second approach as a base, but then introduced the designated player to allow teams to use their own money to get an attacking star (#9's and #10's, in their words). Having stars around benefits all the teams while just one star doesn't affect the competitive balance too much. Once MLS saw that having one DP didn't upset things too much, they added two more. A few years back they realized that teams needed to improve performance from all the starters, not just the three stars. So they added TAM money which is restricted to the "middle class" players and comes from MLS. Once they realized that that didn't upset the balance too much, they added "discretionary" TAM which has the same restrictions but is paid for by the teams, not MLS. It's a convoluted system, but it's in response to the competing goals of preserving competitive balance while improving quality and not overspending on players.
Cincy has a dilemma. The USL crowd is large but ticket prices have to go up due to the salary requirements of MLS. However, they will go up again in 2 years once the stadium is complete. I see a Minnesota situation. You want to get fans hooked so you keep prices low. You can’t buy much talent with that. Once the new stadium is open it can charge more and thus get more talent. Anything other than that is a charitable donation by Lindner.
The only tweet or comment that deals with people not liking the lion was by Brian Strauss (his name is written in Russian in the tweet, so look for that in post #295). Otherwise it doesn't seem like this is actually anything with traction. Kind of ironic in that when I was younger, and even today to be honest, a certain group of people argued it was ok to discriminate against another group of people for a supposedly chosen lifestyle the first group didn't approve of. Hatred and discrimination are wrong, whether it is directed at people of faith or because their faith teaches another group of people are "lesser than" or inherently immoral. I'll just leave it at that or this will go way off topic and bring in the wrath of the moderators.
I am sorry that has been your experience. The world has to learn you can disagree with someone and still love them, treat them with respect and equality. Christians and non Christians fail at that every minute of every day. Love can exist outside of agreeing and disagreement does not have to equal hate.
the weather is going to be so nice for the open cup Wednesday. 65-75 degrees and sunny with a slight breeze. tree pollen finally dying down taking the kids and wife to the game, going to be a very nice evening
Yes, there is a first time for everything. I guess call me when it happens. You could literally insert Orlando, Atlanta, LA2, Seattle, Portland, Toronto, etc. into the whole "I don't know. Its an unproven market, the league is expanding to quick" debate. Until someone on that side of the argument is proven to be correct, I'll continue to LOL when they post.
As an atheist I think you should delete the last paragraph, unless you want to digress into a whole other conversation.
Well it doesn't restrict the amount paid to up to three big names per team. A salary budget is set by MLS at the beginning of the year. GAM and TAM can be used to bring teams under the salary budget. So a team can spend $1.5 million of TAM on top of the salary budget but it effectively doesn't count. GAM and TAM can also be traded, usually to compensate a team for signing a player instead of a transfer fee. Tradability is where TAM differs from the basic salary budget.
It always comes up in conjunction with the CBA. Most teams control their stadiums now so there is a suspicion they move profits from the team to the stadium entity in order to continue poor mouthing. But MLS teams probably depend on the national media and merchandise contracts to a great extent. Not many teams make very much in local media revenues or local endorsements, at least compared to their player or stadium costs.
Teams also have 2.4 million worth of DTAM. This comes out of the owners pocket, so here in Chicago we won't see this EVER being used.
Total amount of TAM is 4 million if that 4 million is 2.8 Discretionary TAM 1.2 million TAM. There is also GAM soon to be Youth Allocation Money.
I thought the media and merchandise contracts were run through SUM. The team investor/operators (aka owners) are shareholders in SUM. SUM also has sells the rights to the USMNT and other CONCACAF things. The NHL has player salary caps of about $75 million. Anyhow, that would put MLS above the median EPL team salary.
I spoke to Berding at a fan meet up about team finances. He stated there was an expectation to lose money the first five years. When they turned a profit in their first year it gave them a lot of confidence to expand staff and be more ambitious. Even with these increased costs the club turned a profit in year 2 so the club went out and spent big (for USL) on players and it helped with the expansion push. With this year 3 still seems set to be another profitable year. My guess is things have gone so well they are fully expecting to lose money moving to MLS for a bit and are fine with that. We know the revenue from sponsors will dramatically increase. Going from Toyota to Mercy Health is a gigantic leap in the shirt sponsor value with it being among top of MLS. I do fully expect my tickets to cost more (I spent $25 for a $10 ticket tonight to see USOC, so expect that to be MLS rate for the Bailey). Lindner loves Cincinnati and FC Cincinnati is his big public legacy project. He dropped $200 million on the upcoming stadium project so he clearly believes in it and may not be bothered if over his time owning it he just breaks even. For some billionaires money doesn't have the same meaning it does for us average folks.
He sees the opportunity to do something good for the city to rival his fathers legacy (i.e. saving the reds from being sold and moved) and make a long term investment that could have a massive payout for his fam in 20-30 years ala david stern (the racist la clippers owner who bought the franchise in the 70's and made billions selling). it's a risky bet but huge potential payout.
Just a small correction for accuracy. David Stern was the commissioner of the NBA for 30 years (1984-2014). Donald Sterling was the owner of the LA Clippers who was forced to sell his franchise.