My Dad told me. I trust him. He said the coverage was so bad they used to miss goals. Of course there was no live coverage of the professional leagues until the late 1980s. So this was my idea/fantasy posted in the NASL thread. Imagine how far $250 million plus whatever Palmer and Silva wanted to put in too. Plus they'd have huge leverage over the direction of the league. Invest the money in USL2. I've included the 3 stooges' teams in USL here and the committed USL expansion teams in USL 1* USL 1 Austin* Birmingham* Charleston Battery Charlotte Eagles Charlotte Independence Chicago USL* Colorado Springs Switchbacks FC El Paso* FC Cincinnati Fresno FC Indy Eleven Las Vegas Lights FC Louisville City FC Memphis* Nashville SC North Carolina FC Oakland* OKC Energy FC Orange County SC Penn FC Phoenix Rising FC Pittsburgh Riverhounds SC Reno 1868 FC Richmond Kickers Rio Grande Valley FC Toros Sacramento Republic FC Saint Louis FC San Antonio FC Tampa Bay Rowdies Tulsa Roughnecks FC USL 2 Bethlehem Steel Real Monarchs Seattle 2 Portland 2 Red Bulls 2 Swope Park Rangers Atlanta 2 LA Galaxy 2 Toronto 2 Miami FC Jacksonville Cosmos South Georgia Tucson Greenville Chattanooga Connecticut Milwaukee Omaha Rubber City Charlotte FC Detroit City Kingston Stockade Others The idea of having B/2 teams in D3 shouldn't be a problem as it happens in many other countries. Once you increase the number of conferences it shouldn't be so obvious.
No, Europe sees football no differently to other industries, hence the Bosman ruling. MLS would be a single entity and its clubs franchises. Try working in the offshore oil and gas industry and treat each rig, platform, refinery or other physical location as a different company. Europe treats clubs as individual companies because they typically are. MLS is different so I'm afraid you're wrong on its status. Now I don't know if workers can legally refuse to work in a particular location under European law, but if it was part and parcel of employment within the organisation, I doubt you'd be there too long.
I forgot about the possible legal actions between Larry, Curly and Mo and Bill Edwards and Silva's comments about Steve Malik.
“I haven’t seen the details but I think it’s great if [Commisso] is willing to put up that money to make it go." - Tim Kelly I mean, that's basically what I said! But "I haven't seen the details" looks pretty non-committal to me.
That's not the case. If someone starts a company, hires 28 players to create 2 teams, and organizes friendly games between them, that's a single business. That is effectively what MLS does except teams choose their own players. If players are traded various ways can be used to compensate the selling team, but real money does not exchange hands. That's not the case. For instance, MLS forces existing teams to make over half their squad available in the expansion draft. Existing clubs can protect up to 11 players but the rest (with minor exceptions) must be made available to new teams without compensation. This is standard in the US and Canada and also used in Australia. Technically yes, MLS could force teams to "buy" or "sell" players but chooses not to. A franchise agreement usually includes a clause that allows the franchisor to shut down the franchisee's business if they do not meet certain standards. For instance if a McDonald's franchisee decides that his staff must wear Burger King hats McDonald's can shut him down without compensation.
The issue here is that USL's structure (i.e. single entity/franchise model) runs counter to how they envision a league. This does go back to @feyenoordsoccerfan's question about 'leaving the MLS', though. Can a team leave the USL? When Indy11 joined, did they lose rights to their club? Could the Ottawa Fury leave USL for the CPL? Or would they basically need to shut down (or sell) the Fury and start up Ottawa FC or something?
I suspect there is a termination fee as there is/was in NASL. Maybe USL would be willing to waive this fee in the event of Ottawa joining CPL. I know that MLS supports the venture.
https://www.soctakes.com/2017/10/31/usl-franchise-agreement/ "The most troubling aspect of the agreement, from the standpoint of those whose personal preferences match the way the sport is structured in the rest of the world, is when it comes to trademarks and intellectual property. If a franchise is not renewed or terminated, the franchisee is obligated to “not compete in a rival league,” defined as the NASL, NPSL or PASL (and perhaps now amended to include UPSL) for two years. In fact, per the franchise agreement, the league can continue to use those trademarks for two years into the future. However, if the USL were to fall below the USSF minimum number of teams requirement, teams would be free to move to rival leagues." TWO years!
It must be negotiable because Charlotte Eagles, Dayton Dutch Lions and Wilmington Hammerheads moved to PDL.
Why are you still using FC Twente as an example? Their attendance has been capped by the size of their stadium.. They added 10k seats to their stadium after the 07/08 season and immediately saw a bump up to their new stadium size. Then they added another 6k seats after the 10/11 season and saw a 4k jump in attendance the next season.. Since that time, they've lost 4k in attendance as their performance dropped due to their financial issues..
You may be interested in this:- http://www.european-football-statistics.co.uk/ Shows clubs attendances in the UK since pretty much the inception of the football league, you can see a club by club record too. Shows the post war years were (unsurprisingly) the pinnacle for large attendances but it also shows that right now they are as healthy as they have ever been. The dark hooligan riddled days of the early 80's seems to be when attendances (in the UK anyway) were at their lowest.
Twente has been creating an academy system in the US for some time.. They currently have the Dayton Dutch Lions, Houston Dutch Lions, Cincinnati Dutch Lions, and Florida Gulf Coast Dutch Lions.
Me too! Stamford Bridge was VERY different back then, truth be told it could be pretty unpleasant at times, but at least you could turn up on the day and get a ticket!
Italian attendances are pretty weak in the early stages of the Copa. Maybe the fans have come to expect walkovers. Copa Italia 2016/17 4th round Genoa 4–3 (a.e.t.) Perugia - 4,764 Torino 4–0 (a.e.t.) Pisa - 10,875 Sampdoria 3–0 Cagliari - 4,479 Atalanta 3–0 Pescara - 6,344 5th round Milan 2–1 Torino - 13,892 Lazio 4–2 Genoa - 10,000 Roma 4–0 Sampdoria - 33,507
It was when we won 2-0 there to go up and there were two pitch invasions. I remember a corner flag whipping past my ear.
IIRC USL is not "single entity" like MLS. It's a franchise system similar to MLB so the league owns some intellectual property on each team but the owners own each specific club. USL also has an out clause. Ottawa can (and probably will) leave for the CPL but they have to pay a fee. The exit fee is actually pretty typical among american college conferences with the fee being scaled to how much notice a member gives before leaving.
I was there when we celebrated by running on to the pitch because we had just avoided the drop to the third division by securing a point with a 0-0 draw against Boro'! Never dreamed of an Abramovich happening back then! Though I think the 2 most important people in Chelsea's resurgence are the (unlikeable) Ken Bates and the late great John Neal.
Doesn't work that way in MLS, because of the way the league is structured. Technically, there is only one club in MLS, and it's called Major League Soccer. The individual teams have been given freedom to make their own personnel decisions and the league simply signs the paychecks, but all players are under contract not to the teams but to the league. This is not the same as most franchise arrangements. In the early years of the league, the league in fact made some heavy-handed moves, such as reassigning Carlos Valderrama from Miami to Tampa Bay in 1999. MLS did that to keep a star player on the field after the Miami coach dropped him from the squad for for arguing about tactics. There hasn't been anything similar since 1999, but it shows what the league is still technically allowed to do. There was an antitrust lawsuit filed against the league over its structure, and the court ruled in the league's favor, finding that players had ample alternative opportunities for employment and MLS was doing nothing unfair to prevent players from going elsewhere. Also note that MLS is doing nothing to prevent other leagues in the US from being sanctioned as Division 1.
According to that link I pasted, USL keeps the team's IP for two years after leaving. So Ottawa could leave, but they couldn't leave and join CPL as the Fury.