News: Friday, June 23 , 2017

What They're Saying: Dax McCarty
"You can take the ginger out of NY, but NY will still be red. Good luck to my boys in the derby this weekend!!"

-- Chicago Fire midfielder Dax McCarty, who was surprisingly traded from the New York Red Bulls in the offseason, expressing his support for his former teammates in Saturday's match against archrival New York City FC. (@daxmccarty via Instagram)

 

Pro-rel is the wave of the future here, and it always will be.

 

We have seen it all before but it is still so damn apt.

 

I found this one interesting. If you're the type of player who isn't good enough for the top two flights in England, going to the States and getting your education half paid for, with a shot at MLS, that's a pretty good deal for the more academically inclined.

 

I can't recall if I saw Valeri "Vako" Qazaishvili in a WCQ match or not. Hopefully he can come in and contribute right away. He is still fairly young at only 24 years of age.

 

I never realized before that that guy looks exactly like Peter Wilt.

He's going to find a back door way of getting himself back to MLS (on the cheap) and some manner of relevance if it takes every last nickel a whole bunch of stupid suckers has.

It's snake oil for the semi-well to do. "See, here's how you can parlay a couple million bucks into a team worth $200 million in Boise Idaho.

All we have to do is a) start a team and b) get USSF and MLS to change a couple of minor rules and voila! Youre a sports mogul.

But as long as there are gullible, ignorant soccer writers out there willing to write down whateber he tells them and pass it along as if its received wisdom instead of complete crap he'll always have an audience

Pro/rel is the key. Without it all he's got to peddle is a few years of massive losses in monor league soccer until your wife demands that you stop burning money and you shut it down.

But with pro/rel as the nom-existent main selling point, all of a sudden it makes sense.

Assuming you're a moron.

 

Well, that article was misleading in that it didn't talk about the Tinfoil Ted Talking Points of the Charleston Battery or Central Jersey Riptide climbing all the way up the mythical ladder to MLS.

It was about Minor League Soccer in general, and the idea that there can be lots and lots of smaller clubs in smaller cities that can be viable. I suppose that could be true in theory, but I think we are a long way from those kinds of clubs being truly sustainable.

But leaving that aside, having Pro-Rel within the strucutre of the alphabet-soup of lower-level leagues is not a bad thing. But it should be economic pro-rel, not based on having one good or bad season on the field.

 

https://www.mlssoccer.com/post/2017...-chicago-fire-fc-cincinnati-us-open-cup-match

 

TBF, it was not another Tinfoil Ted/College blogger bit of drivel. Pro/Rel was mentioned as a potential feature of lower leagues in the future, and not a priority for right now. Overall, it was a good read.

 

With the other supporter owned rivalry that MLS likes to ignore when doing these things.

 

He's a coach now, he's matured.

 

It's The Hudson Derby.

 

"Currently, 12 teams are in line to join the league, which will add 28 professional teams in the next few years."
A bit misleading.

 

I agree. I don't know all the economic affects on the owners but on the face it seems pro/rel from 2nd division down could work. I think it would definitely bring another level of excitement to the lower half of the pyramid. I understand why it won't work at the MLS level and have accepted that. As a fan I would love to see it in the lower levels. As always it is easy to down other peoples money.

 

Could work and "is somehow desirable" are two different things.

D2/D3 pro/rel would be like rearranging the deck chairs on the Lusitania.

If anything I think it's a bad idea. It would break up rivalries for non-business reasons. While the TOA/USL1 split was a business/philosophical/economic/owner's decision split that broke up the budding RailHawks/Battery rivalry, having regional rivalries destroyed because one team got promoted or relegated is the proverbial cutting one's nose of to spite one's face.

And it ignores the whole raison d'etre of pro/rel. There is no surplus of teams in the United States. Pro/Rel is the Musical Chairs solution to having more teams than possible spots in a given level.

At the size of the United States, with the number of markets capable of sustaining a minor league team, you could probably have 50-60 teams at a given professional level if you break them into regional divisions. Which would have the added benefit of stability, lower costs, and higher probability of developing rivalries.

Artificially constricting leagues and forcing pro/rel on them because "that's the way things are done" is the tail wagging the dog.

Just because it's not viable for England to have 72 teams in the Championship with three regional divisions, that doesn't mean the United States (and Canada) should adopt the English model.

 

With my team of course. I hope all of these teams get 11 red cards each.