Pre-Charlie Finley A's. Charlie was many things, but he wasn't someone else's water boy. Unfortunately with relocation we effectively went from being the Yankees 4A farm team to the Oakland Athletics. You look at the roster of the early 70s Oakland dynasty (5 AL West titles and 3 straight World Series wins) and compare it to the last few years of the KC Athletics and you might weep.
Wait, what? Viable how? MLS had a reserve league, but they felt there wasn't enough development going on (what with guys being brought in on weekend contracts and Alexi Lalas lacing up the boots just to make up the numbers, and those guys basically playing each other). So they had their reserve teams play in USL. Only, oddly enough, for the most part, asking people to pay to watch players who aren't quite there yet 17 times a year seems to be a stretch. But that's not why those teams exist. So now you want them to slide those teams back into their own league? For what? So the attendance figures look better? Why the ******** are some of you people so goddamned obsessed with the aesthetics of this? These teams do not exist to sell tickets. Most of them do not have the infrastructure to do so. (And yet, often they outsell the Charlotte Independence.) So what kind of beauty contest do you think is going on that simply has to be won by having NYRBII play TFCII in a separate league? That's not what MLS technical staffs care about.
Well that's the Rapids excuse for a reserve team, so they're just falling in line with the rest of the 2 teams.
So everyone seems to be all about Keaton Parks these days because he "plays" for Benfica. He has pretty much entirely played for the II team that draws an average of 594 fans a game in a league that has an average of 1159. Yet people think it is good because he is at a team with better facilities, better coaching, and he can get some occasional first team minutes. But you put the same system in place here and people complain about it. A lot of that is the typical inferiority complex that most soccer fans in the US have (there is a reason why we clamor for full caps for kids playing in Europe that have less than 200 minutes of D1 playing time). The other part is that we have believed all the hype English announcers for the EPL spew, so everything needs to be done the English way because the EPL "is the best". Of course we also scream that MLS should do more to develop talent and so they do by making II teams and immediately people complain because it "ruins the second division" because it isn't what they want (yet all of them will fall over themselves if there is an American playing in the second division of Spain with Barca at any point).
I never knew attendance had any baring on how a player or a team plays. I guess you learn something new everyday. Anyway, he may play with the II team but he trains with the first team.
A lot of people train with the first team and don't get minutes there. That means they ain't ready. That's true here, Spain, Turkey, Vietnam or wherever. That's why there are reserve teams of one sort or another.
70% of the players and 75% of the managers in the Premier League are domestic. If you want to watch English style football watch the Championship, where a dozen passes between the back four followed by a hoof downfield is called "passing football".
It doesn't but I sure seem to hear a lot of people say that players need a better environment than playing in front of 600 fans playing for NYRB II. And your second part proves my point about the MLS II teams in USL. There are tons of people who view MLS II teams as stupid and a waste of time but they operate exactly how someone like Benfica does. Keaton Parks playing in front of small crowds and training with the first team is viewed as a good thing. Eric Palmer-Brown training with the first team and playing with a II team in USL was viewed as a bad thing and he "needed" to leave to play in Europe. One scenario is good because it is in Europe. The other is bad because it is in America.
Fun fact: Four players who had 20 or more appearances for 2016 USL Champion New Red Bulls II were in the starting lineup against Atlanta United last weekend.(Ryan Meara, Tyler Adams, Florian Valot, Aaron Long) Sean Davis, another starter in that game, played 11 games with RBII that same year. The Baby Bulls played that season with the second lowest attendance in the league with just over 500 and change coming to see them play every home game. Those five players helped the team beat the league leading Five Stripes on the road in front of 45 thousand fans. Second team attendance really doesn't mean anything.
The final NASL team fell in USOC tonight, so no NASL fanboys pounding the Twittersphere about how the refs favor the MLS team. TBF, tonight was Jacksonville’s 4th USOC game and to win that many games in a row is hard, even if you are going against inferior quality teams. Tonight’s NASL killer is Miami United, which is a “professional” NPSL and also took out Miami FC.
Not just technically. They are playing in the NPSL this year. Their identities are a little murky, though. The Cosmos are playing under the Cosmos B name which was previously in the NPSL but it sure doesn't look like the same team. Jacksonville was in the NPSL as Armada U23. They are just going by Armada this year and their roster is not confined to Under 23s. Miami FC seems to be pretty much the same team but they are calling themselves Miami FC 2. Neither Cosmos B or Jacksonville Armada U23 qualified for the Open Cup with their play last year. They, along with Miami FC 2, were allowed into the Open Cup as if they were new teams that didn't have a chance to qualify. All of that seems to keep the door open that they could come back next year as the revived NASL or something else, claim that there was a hiatus for their identity as NASL teams, and these NPSL teams would go back to being reserve/developmental teams.
I know this will shock everyone, but... The USSF has informed #NYCosmos owner Rocco Commisso that it won't deviate from its normal sanctioning process. Commisso says this will effectively terminate his proposal to inject $500 million in a revamped #NASL. Story to come.— Jeff Carlisle (@JeffreyCarlisle) June 1, 2018
Commisso’s response to USSF’s rejection. Nothing we haven’t seen. Just more kicking and screaming because he didn’t get his way. http://www.nycosmos.com/news/2018/0...should-not-have-participated-in-deliberations
What's really sad is this guy has enough money that he could do a lot of good for a lot of people. If soccer is his 'thing', then get involved in the community by setting up soccer camps, teams, leagues, etc in areas where kids don't have a lot of options or activities available. Make something of his life. Instead, he's going to piss it away on frivolous lawsuits that aren't going anywhere. Sad.
Love this gem: "In these circumstances, USSF’s decision that NASL’s only alternative is to apply for annual sanctioning under anticompetitive Professional League Standards, which the USSF has designed with MLS to make it impossible for a new entrant like the NASL to meet, is disingenuous, unlawful and against the best interests of soccer in this country," Commisso wrote. Hmmmm...........seem to recall that the Division 2 standards were revised on the NASL's request, along with the NASL's input to specifically deter and keep USL from becoming a Division 2 league.............