I followed MLS since day one, do you recognize names such as Cienfuegos, Diaz Arce, Cerritos, Jorge Rodriguez?
Yes, we all know who they are. We've watched this league for years. It's ok, nobody got your previous post.
.... you're joking, right ? Do you recognize names like Dir, Dodd, or why a Texan would have a soft spot for Jason Kreis ? Takawira ? Why it's awesome to see Lagerwey as VP of a team in the league ? Get the blue perfect hell out of here with that shit.
I should report you for a personal attack. My point was MLS is small potatoes because you have larger more successful leagues that capture the passion of US fans. The WC is popular because its nationalized and a event that happens every four years. Soccer won't truly matter in America until the domestic league MLS becomes a mainstream popular attraction.
Yes. Nobody here doubts that. Well, maybe OP does, but he's just some stud, shot-calling Latin streetballer with amazing abs who knows how to win. See, was it that hard to write coherent sentences? That's a helluva lot better than that block of jumbled text you posted before.
So he can give himself cover and never concede the point. It's the smartest thing I think he's ever posted...except that everyone can see right through it.
Here's my question, if AgueluluMerengue doesn't even have basic cable, how does he have a "latino package"? I don't know how the cable providers operate in California, but here in Mass., I can tack on extra packages to my cable lineup for a set price if I'm already a cable subscriber. i.e., I've got a "sports entertainment pack" that costs me like $8 a month and I used to have a "news and information pack" that cost $10 a month on top of my regular cable bill. I can't just get ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, and premium channels.
I am sorry for steering this discussion toward cable TV. But so be it. Nah, my only options in Boston are Comcast or RCN. The last I checked, even Comcast's "basic cable" option, for like $29 a month, included ESPN. I know plenty of people who don't have cable, some of whom just have one of those adapters and get network TV, but without subscribing to some sort of cable package you can't get premium channels.
Among some, certainly. Just did. For you. Not for millions of others, apparently. How, exactly? I'd love to hear you expound on this rather than just drive by and hope that proof by assertion will work. Arena Football averages less than half the attendance of Major League Soccer. Arena Football has had numerous clubs fold or relocate over the years, actually went away and came back (twice), gets very low TV ratings, openly embraces its "gimmick-ness" and has teams called the Thunder, Kiss, Power, Shock, VooDoo and Soul. They used to wear Zubaz pants as game uniforms. They've had felons as owners and a mini-strike resulting in guys coming in off the street to play in a nationally-televised game. Have you seen anything like that in MLS? So where is the "Arena-football like vibe?" MLS has had zero teams fail since 2002, has expanded without contracting, is adding more teams and owners of substance, has built infrastructure, has major sponsors and television contracts in two languages. So I'm curious where the "vibe" comes from. Or is it just jfastaff, professional moron, attributing his own immature feelings to millions of other people based on.....I don't know, Twitter? To whom? And, again, it doesn't seem to bother the six million people who went to games, the people who have bought into the league, the sponsors or the TV networks. Oh, Europoseurs, certainly. It's a problem to them. And there'd be another problem if it weren't that problem. Because they always look for a problem. "People." This is great. Just "people." There are people out there, and those people - kabillions of them, I'm guessing - want to support a club. You know what else these ********ing people want? Single table, for you to put the home team first, no playoffs, every team to be named "FC," promotion and relegation, British announcers and to call the league "the MLS." They're whiny little brats who would find some other reason not to follow the league even if all the other things happened. And for the eighteen millionth ********ing time, you moron: MLS DOES NOT "OWN ALL THE CLUBS." The 51 percent bullshit has been repeated ad nauseum for years and it's not true. Owners own the clubs. Single entity means the league holds player cards and takes some team revenue off the top, and national revenue, and pays players. They don't OWN THE ********ING CLUBS. The idea that you can't support the Houston Dynamo or the Chicago Fire because "MLS owns them" or they're not like Crystal Palace or Fulham or Al-Ahly or whatever other bullshit you want to spout is nonsense. It's not true at all. We don't know if it's "the vast majority." We've known for years that there's a disconnect. How big the disconnect is, we don't know, because estimates of the actual population of "American soccer fans" vary. But you've obviously done the research. I mean you reject MLS, therefore "the vast majority of American soccer fans" also reject it, I guess. QED. There's a reason no one takes you seriously: you're an idiot.
We need to assign this post to a macro so anyone can just press two keys and make it happen. Also, we should print it out on a massive poster and hang it from the tallest building in every MLS city.
Soccer will always be a segmented audience. It is what makes this sport unique from other US sports and creates unique challenges. There will always be those who will want to watch different leagues for whatever reason. Liga MX is still the most popular league in the US and... 1. doesn't have the best players in the world 2. doesn't have single table champions 3. has franchises 4. has playoffs 5. doesn't have free agency 6. has lower division minor league affiliates Everything that people say is wrong with MLS, Liga MX has and still destroys EPL in TV ratings. In fact the last numbers I saw when America won the league had higher TV numbers in the championship game then Fox pulled off for the CL final. Unlike other US pro sports, a certain percentage will always care more about other leagues or care about International games more than club games. There is just nothing we can do about it, no format or no amount of money will ever change that in this country. So yes, the sport of soccer will always be more mainstream than MLS. Hopefully the pie grows and the percentage of MLS fans within that pie continues to grow, but there is almost no chance that MLS will ever be equally as popular as the sport of soccer in the US.
I know almost all of these points have be hashed and re-hashed and hashed browned on every thread but still have some points... The US is not the only country where the domestic league is not as popular as leagues from other countries. This is the case in Ireland and Scandanavia, also the case in Australia, South Africa and much of Asia (I am sure there are other examples these are just ones that I am personally aware of). It's not a uniquely MLS "problem" and doesn't necessarily demonstrate a massive failure on the part of MLS. As others have pointed out MLS has improved massively since the it began by pretty much every metric. But the single entity does matter. At least to me, and to others. I have been told it doesn't, that if they had the players of the premier league, or La Liga nobody would be talking about the format of the league, but I am saying it does. If Rodger Goddell and the NFL office had helped facilitate Peyton Manning going to Denver I would be furious. If Richard Scudamore was working behind the scenes to bring Cristiano Ronaldo back to Man United, you know for the good of the league, I would be livid. And these very things do happen in MLS.
The NFL DID facilitate the signing of Peyton Manning to the Colts in the NFL draft. He was not free to sign with anyone he wanted. The set up that soccer teams have internationally is different than what happens in the US, and no one is furious about the other sports. Is single entity a step further than drafts in other leagues? Yes and no. While all the contracts are centrally located and there are rare instances (Becks, Dempsey, Donovan, Bradley) where the league as a whole made a move in order to bring the player over for the improvement of the league overall it is rare. What MLS teams do have that other US pro leagues do not is the homegrown system that goes down to schoolboy age now in some markets. I'm not sure if you are a basketball fan, but could you imagine if Jabari Parker could be available to the Chicago Bulls right now because he played for a Bulls sponsored AAU team? That would be incredible, it would be a earth-shattering development in the NBA that could significantly change the league and allow teams to stockpile talent locally and not rely on the draft. It would be a really really big deal. Well MLS does that now. You can argue that despite having single entity, that it gives its clubs freedoms that other major league teams do not have (even baseball has amateur drafts).