That's fair, the name lives, the amateur club doesn't. MLS took a long time before it used that name ... I guess there was plenty of opportunity for an amateur team to use it but didn't ... and I am pretty sure the fans of the area had some input too. Fair enough, don't really care one way or the other to be honest.
This for example, i know we are playing the best Wilmington has to offer. When we play TFC2 i know we are NOT playing the best toronto has to offer. Our oldest rivals are Montreal, and i would like Rochester to still play the best Montreal has to offer. Not for Rochester to go there and play on a training ground against second hand montreal players. Do you see where i am coming from? Its very easy for you to say youll support them no matter what because you have a d1 team. However here, try telling your friends and other people to come out to a match to play a 2 team and they ask "what are they minor leaguers?" "i dont want to pay to see that" when not to long ago Rochester WAS the best team in the country and playing against the best in the country. Sporting KC was extremely close to becoming the Rochester Rhinos! Think if that happened how you would feel about having a former d1 team to then playing in d3 against your rivals back ups to back ups!
You expect to play the best in the country while playing in a minor league. It doesn't make sense to me. Go watch a MLS team.
Rochester is a MINOR League team. Yes they are minor leaguers, they are not a Division 1 team, they do not compete in MLS against Major League Soccer. You better tell your friends and yourself that Rochester plays in the lower leagues or the delusion will continue. Do you go to a Rochester Red Wings game and expect them to play the Boston Red Sox and not Pawtucket? You keep on saying Rochester was the best team in the country playing against the best. They beat Colorado in US Open Cup in 1999 in the US Open Cup. They STILL play in the US Open Cup. They never were a part of top division play since 1996.
I believe I responded to this concept in a manner which makes it obvious I understand this is your thinking. I'm just saying it's odd that even if TFC2 are more talented than Wilmington, you'd rather see Wilmington's team because it's as good as their owner can afford ... not actually based on that talent in the squad. Caring more about the name on the crest than the talent on the pitch. No problem, I understand and it's fine if that's your position ... I just don't really understand it. Carry on!
I go to games carrying about the talent on the pitch as opposed to the crest on the opponent ... that wouldn't really change. Sorry. I'll be going to some Swope Park Rangers and rooting for them against the OKC Energy and the Real Monarch's/S2's/Timber2's alike. The crest doesn't matter ... my team and the talent on the field matter more.
Different MLS teams view their USL team in different ways. Some use them as a combination of USL level talent, MLS reserve level and some academy players. Those seem to play at a higher level and others a purely a development took and use mostly academy and what would be similar to PDL level players. Also, some team promote the games more and have better attendance. But most don't view it as a profit center and really just as an expense to prepare players for the MLS squad.
It's just words. People say words and believe that that gives them meaning and truth, when they don't. Almost no one alive has meaningful memories of seeing Bethlehem Steel FC play in its original incarnation. A few historians have studied them. More of the Johnny-Come-Lately crowd who latch onto American soccer history in an attempt to give themselves instant bona fides get honked off about it, but it's nonsense. Uh, no, it was started by a corporation. Seriously. It was a corporate team. Funded by a corporation. They hired professional players from overseas, gave them jobs in the factory and played. It didn't start with amateurs and later become something. A team that hasn't played a game yet is a "turd." Okay, then. Love of the game my ass. You should really read up on the history, noob. You don't know what you're talking about. ( a ) Very few people remember Bethlehem Steel to begin with. They played their last game in their original incarnation on April 27, 1930. Eighty-five and a half years ago. You'd have to be in your nineties to even have a vague memory of them. ( b ) Not a whole lot of people remember who won the US Open Cup eight years ago, much less eighty-five. ( c ) It's not terribly likely this new club will be a "money maker" because most lower-division sides are not making money. And this is a developmental side, whose primary purpose is to...develop players. Tell you what: you don't want to watch MLS2 teams, don't. No one is forcing you. You want to rail against the corporate-ness of it all, and claim that players in the 1920s played for the love of the game, fine. But that ain't the reality in which we live today. All this pining for the good old days - especially from people who not only have no idea what "the good old days" were, if they ever existed, but who weren't around for the real dark ages - is tiresome.
Some people like to watch soccer matches. Funny, I know. But some people don't get all caught up in nonsense from the 1990s about who was almost an MLS club and who is whose fiefdom. Go watch the games. Or don't. Your choice.
They'd go up and go bankrupt. This isn't Europe. You get that, right? No, you don't get that. If you think for one second that players on the MLS2 teams wouldn't crush your bullshit Sunday league team, you're choosing not to live in the world in which the rest of us reside. These are professional players. Young, fit, professional players and your team is full of guys who smoke a cigarette at halftime. But wait...you just said you wouldn't have a problem with promotion and relegation. You know the flip side of promotion is relegation, right? So just like if a "dominant team like Rochester" would go up (even though they'd be a small market, underfunded team that would get its ass kicked and go bankrupt - hell, they just about went bankrupt anyway), someone would go down. And if you're okay with one side of the equation, you have to be okay with the other. A supporter would have to "be okay with that."