Indy has signed Mexican legend and defensive midfielder Gerardo Torrado. He's obviously at the end of his career at 37, but he's definitely good enough for this level. He should be one of the better midfielders in this league and an instant starter. Not to mention it'll bring a bunch of Mexican national team fans in to watch him play.
True, but he did come from Liga MX which i'd say is a pretty big step up from the NASL. So I'd think he'd be able to play at a somewhat high level.
Torrado is very good. He has been a mainstay at Cruz Azul, a team that hasn't won a lot of titles in Mexico but they are usually competitive, for a long time. Cruz Azul did win the Mexican title a couple of years ago. That team also won the CCL. He was on the Mexico squad for the 2002, 2006, and 2010 World Cups. In 2010 he played in all of Mexico's games at the Cup. He is older now, obviously, but his skills are not based so much on athletic ability as they are on technique and positioning. The only negative for the Eleven is that he is not a goal scorer but we should have the ball a lot more often with him in midfield.
but how much of that has to do with the mexican teams starting their season earlier than mls? i don't think the liga mx teams are that much better than mls at midseason levels. this seems like a good signing. i hope it's not kleberson 2.0.
Eh, maybe a little bit but there is little doubt in my mind Liga MX is a better league than MLS as of right now. I think it's fair to say MLS needs to win the CCL once before that can change.
There is an objective ranking system (as objective as ELO can get) for this sort of comparison. http://footballdatabase.com/ranking/north-america/1 Clearly, Liga MX is the better league at this point in time.
I agree with most of that, not sure how a team like Olimpia is better than the Galaxy though for example.
i don't want to take this thread too far off topic but... galaxy and dcu would like a word. granted, a lot has changed since 2000, but i think it's safe to say that mls teams have improved relative to mexico since then. and i'm not saying mls overall is better. the budgets alone suggest otherwise. i'm just saying it's not night and day like moving from epl to mls is. how do those guys calculate their rankings? my understanding of elo is that it uses a competition factor. if that competition factor favors liga mx over mls, obviously the liga mx teams are going to have a higher rating.
Upon further examination of the website, it doesn't appear to be accurate/updated evenly across all leagues. Only one team from the NASL (FC Edmonton) is in the rankings for example. I'm guessing its very Euro-Centric and discount NA ranking accordingly. I apologize for my error. Maybe there is another ELO list for NA, someone on this board makes one for the USOC.
The problem with club rankings across nations, especially outside Europe and South America, is that there are too few games. The problem is especially marked with MLS because there are no MLS teams that consistently compete in continental competitions year after year, and even worse if your ranking updates are spotty. Olimpia may also get extra points for competing and generally doing well in UNCAF club competitions.