No, there's an anti-football bias from the liberal U.S. sports media. Danny Kanell claims there is a "war on football" that the "liberal media" loves
Worst part of Leicester's title win getting so much press in the U.S.? "Gasp! There are no playoffs in soccer?! This sport is even lamer than I imagined!" It's easy to question ESPN's commitment to soccer sometimes when they employ f***wads who are paid to dish out takes like this. How can you not love the soccer??! A team's season ends with a tie and then you win the title because another team tied too! Woohoo!!!— Danny Kanell (@dannykanell) May 2, 2016 Oh...so they still have to win those remaining two games to win it right?? Oh that makes more sense https://t.co/X64l7M9cqR— Danny Kanell (@dannykanell) May 2, 2016 So do they have 2 meaningless games left or not?? So confused right now. Oh they must be friendlies https://t.co/L9P943VOdj— Danny Kanell (@dannykanell) May 2, 2016 Mad soccer bro's are the worst....sorry for tweeting about your sport. I'll go back to doing it once every 4 years like everyone else.— Danny Kanell (@dannykanell) May 2, 2016
This post is literally the first time I have seen that attitude employed, so I'm not sure about the "no playoffs" thing being prevalent. I went out of my way to watch SportsCenter, too. Of course it's still early. Then again, Twitter was made for uninformed planks to troll people who are entirely too sensitive and insecure about their sport. I suggest watching that Heineken commercial on a loop until you stop caring what assholes say.
And it's no different from a US team clinching first seed with games left to play in the regular season. Those games become just as meaningless.
Yeah, I don't get it either. The worst I saw yesterday was some pretty girl slur-reading the copy in front of her and sounding a bit like a doofus but otherwise giving a fair summary, before handing to the Big Boys hosting the 10 or 11 pm show (who were much more polished). (Seriously, the girl seemed enthused, but sounded like she was 4 appletinis in the bag)
College football analyst, mouth-breathing hot-take artist itching to replace Skip Bayless at the First Take desk and one of the reasons why I barely watch BSPTMZ outside of live sports coverage.
Someone should explain to him the difference between league and cup formats. The cup is already a knockout competition like the playoffs and the league is a round robin system. Also, winning the domestic cup and league is not an end in itself like winning the NFL playoffs is, but the beginning of international competition between clubs. Most Americans will never know any of this because sports media prefers not to talk about soccer. You'll hear more about NFL draft grades today than you will about the Champions League semifinals or anything related to MLS. Yes the media is at fault, but U.S. Soccer has the biggest blame and this Kanell guy is right in that most Americans only care about soccer every four years. The U.S. would rather stay in CONCACAF and be virtually guaranteed a World Cup place every four years rather than go to CONMEBOL where more fans would be interested in club soccer and the national team would have better competition. Kazakhstan's jump from Asia to Europe has paid off. As a result you have a CONCACAF Champions League that nobody seems to care about, a Gold Cup where every winner but one has been either the U.S. and Mexico, and World Cup qualifying away games that are relegated to BeIN Sports. How do you expect the game to grow in any significant way? On top of that U.S. Soccer runs MLS on the same business model as the NFL, NHL, NBA, and MLB. How about differentiating the product through promotion/relegation? If you live in a city without an MLS team, would you rather see your team win the NASL/USL or get promoted to MLS? How about running the league on the international schedule even if it means going up against the NFL? Let's face it, if soccer ever becomes mainstream in the U.S. it'll be because more than 2% of people saying it is their favorite sport, which is what it is now. Trying to appeal to casual fans is good for awhile but at some point you have to try and take some risks to win more committed fans. There's never been a better time to try and grow the fan base. Football has seen youth participation plummet after the discovery of CTE in football players so soccer has as good a chance as ever to get young kids interested in soccer. But big changes need to be made.
You seem to be glossing over the facts that 1. CONMEBOL will agree to take us, and 2. CONCACAF will let us go. The latter (especially if you throw in FIFA) is so unlikely as to be not even worth discussing.
While Danny Kanell seems to be an exception to the rule, most American sports fans do understand things like the standings, and clinching first place and being mathematically eliminated.
Neither one of those reasons is the biggest deterrent to it happening. The biggest reason is that U.S. Soccer likes the status quo. Why leave when you're basically qualifying for every World Cup at every level? Plus they have the best of both worlds politically and competitively. Mexico is the only other big fish in a small pond, yet there are a bunch of small Caribbean countries that make CONCACAF much more influential on the world stage (as seen during the FIFA elections). The problem with all of this is that the game in the U.S. will never reach it's full potential, whether in terms of fan interest or the level of play. Didn't Australia get pushback by the OFC when it wanted to leave for Asia? They simply appealed to FIFA and they were allowed to leave. I'm sure it would be just as straightforward if the U.S. wanted to leave. FIFA wouldn't allow a bunch of Caribbean countries to hijack a U.S. bid to CONMEBOL especially since from a marketing standpoint FIFA is supportive of countries like China, India, and the U.S. trying to grow the game. And judging by the decision of CONMEBOL to host the Copa Centenario in the U.S. even after the corruption scandal broke, i'm sure they would fully support a U.S. move since that would also bring Mexico on board.
I have doubts 1) that CONMEBOL would accept us, and 2) that actually provide much stiffer competition in World Cup qualifying. The reason? Because CONMEBOL would have to change its World Cup qualifying format. CONMEBOL is already at the maximum size at which a continent-wide round robin is possible. Adding the US and/or Mexico would force CONMEBOL to split qualification into two groups. That's bad for CONMEBOL because Brazil and Argentina would virtually never play each other in qualifying again. And it wouldn't help the US much because the US would end up only facing two or three strong opponents, as compared to a status quo where the US faces all of the best teams in CONCACAF. The US will play two opponents that were in the last World Cup knockout stage in the Hexagonal. If we were to seed CONMEBOL World Cup qualifying groups based on performance in the last World Cup cycle, the US (having also been in the knockout stage) would also face two opponents that were in the last World Cup knockout stage. This is nothing like Australia's situation, where the next best team in OFC would likely struggle in the AFC's final qualifying round.
Brazil is currently tied for 6th place in WC qualifying and you think the U.S. would steamroll through CONMEBOL WC qualifying? Only two or three strong teams? So if I'm understanding correctly, CONCACAF qualifying is harder than CONMEBOL. Do you also think that World Cup qualifying away games for the U.S. team would be relegated to BeIN Sports like they are now or would there be more interest in showing them? I could go on but my post wasn't just about WCQ. How much more competitive and how much greater interest would a Copa America with U.S. and Mexico have over a Gold Cup? And is there any comparison between international club competitions between Copa Libertadores and CONCACAF Champions League?
You keep laboring under the assumption that we could just walk out if CONCACAF and into CONMEBOL just because we want to. You also completely misunderstood the post you were quoting. For strike three, you act as if the rights for away qualifiers are not considered valuable because they were obtained by what you think is a rinky-dink operation in BeIN. 1. Away rights are held by the home team, always and forever. They determine who they sell to, if at all. 2. BeIN is basically Al Jazeera Sport For America and France and Some Other European and African Nations Who Don't Already Have the Bazillion Al Jazeera Sport Branded Channels Already, which means, among other things, that they have nearly limitless resources to throw at re-sold TV rights.
Do you understand what I'm saying? CONMEBOL is harder now, BUT if the US were to join CONMEBOL, then it could not maintain its current qualifying format. No team would ever have to play both Brazil and Argentina again. They'd have to split into two groups, and we'd have to play only two or three top-tier teams since the others would be in a different qualifying group. Also, only three countries in CONMEBOL have winning records against the US in the modern era (since 1990): Brazil, Argentina, Colombia.
Also, for the record, BeIN Sports is incredibly wealthy, and got those CONCACAF qualifiers as part of its effort to break into the US market. Al-Jazeera Sport (same network, different brand) is a major international sports network with worldwide distribution. It's likely bigger than any US sports network in the Central American countries that sold their TV rights to it.
Kanell played for two football teams I like, the Florida State Seminoles and the New York Giants. He was also drafted by, but did not play for, another team I like, the New York Yankees. UEFA used the July 2015 FIFA Rankings for the World Cup 2018 draw. If the 10 CONMEBOL countries, USA, and Mexico were drawn into 2 groups of 6 using the July 2015 FIFA Rankings, here are what the pots would have been with each country's July 2015 FIFA Ranking in parenthesis: Pot 1: Argentina (1) and Colombia (4) Pot 2: Brazil (6) and Chile (11) Pot 3: Uruguay (13) and USA (34) Pot 4: Ecuador (35) and Mexico (40) Pot 5: Venezuela (45) and Peru (46) Pot 6: Paraguay (56) and Bolivia (66) Therefore Argentina, Brazil, USA, and Mexico could have been in the same group. Argentina and Brazil would be separated if they were two groups and they were the top two CONMEBOL/USA/Mexico countries in the FIFA Rankings, but that isn't always the case.
You're assuming CONMEBOL would be silly enough to put the two traditional powers in the same group because FIFA Rankings are great.
Those rights were actually originally purchased by Traffic Sports in a bundle. They bought all the World Cup Qualifying rights for many of the Central American and Caribbean teams. Were there bribes involved? Maybe. Traffic then offered those for sale to various broadcasters in the different countries as package deals. You want the USA @ Honduras game? Then you have buy all of the Honduras home games not just the USA game, etc. BeIN bought the whole bundle for the United States because ESPN and Fox Sports were not interested in buying a bunch of games that they don't have the programming space to air and that they would have trouble selling to sponsors. Does this imply that ESPN and Fox do not value the USA games? They appear to value those games but not at any price or condition.
Wow, that Danny guy actually works for ESPN? I thought he was just a random Twitter dude based on those tweets. Sounds like he just doesn't understood standings that award points for wins. I suspect he's the type of American sports fan that doesn't know a thing about the NHL, let alone sports leagues outside this country. And some quick google work shows he's the type that jokily dismisses the science of brain trauma. Color me unsurprised.
Page 28 (the page that says 26 at the top) of http://www.fifa.com/mm/document/tou...ionsfwc2018russia_short_e_v210415_neutral.pdf says "Any seeding based on team performance for each confederation’s preliminary competition shall be based on the FIFA/Coca-Cola World Ranking." Therefore, CONMEBOL couldn't automatically separate Brazil and Argentina.
Former FSU quarterback. Former failed NY Football Giants quarterback. Spouts idiotic opinions on any number of sports. He often appears on Finebaum (who actually is a soccer fan) during football season.
A lot of people especially in NYC are anti soccer. Especially guys who play softball and think that is real baseball. Then your coaching a kids soccer team then they go on a diamond with no parks department permit an start hitting softballs were the kids are practicing. So the kids have to worry about getting hit by softballs. Then you tell a parent to tell them to stop and that the kids will be off the field in ten minutes. Then those mutes are still hit balls into where the kids are playing. Trying to intimate the parents and the kids to get them to stop early. So you stop early then one of the coaches who is pissed off. Picks up one of their softballs and starts walking to their batting cage. One of their players asks for the softball the soccer coach keeps walking towards them. Then when he gets close he picks up one of their metal softball bats. Now they want their stuff back. He tells them it's now my bat and ball. So they think their is safety in numbers there 6 against me. So I hit one of them with their soft ball. Then I hit the ring leader and a few others with the softball bat. Then I said who else wants the soft ball bat? Then I left with the bat. I like to collect throphys.
This is the same moron who tried to make a big stink when the concussion movie came out by claiming there was a "war on football". So take anything he says with a grain of salt. He is the guy you debate with at the bar for about 5 minutes, then as his positions become more indefensible and he gets louder you move away and ignore. Ignoring him is the best tactic. He appeals to the mouth breathers who only think their are two sports, College football, and Spring College football.