That's long been my argument against pro/rel. Where's the infrastructure? It simply doesn't exist in this country.
No roof? No problem! The proposed @MLS stadium was designed with heat mitigation in mind. #RisingAsOne pic.twitter.com/5VArPUZmVd— Phoenix Rising FC (@PHXRisingFC) March 15, 2018
Jesus The Christ. btw I've also seen Jesus Tapdancing Christ which cracks me up.........although not everyone in this part of the country appreciates the imagery.
Is this the same tech that Qatar promised? Pro/Rel is idiotic if the difference in money between divisions is as large as it currently is. A significant amount of Championship clubs are teetering on financial problems. Ellis Short is willing to sell his club for FREE if someone takes on the debt. If the business plan is basically "find a sugar daddy" to support the club, then they only survive as long as the sugar daddy likes his little pet.
It looks like someplace in England, if'n ya axe me! And I didn't realize there were so many deciduous trees in Arizona. They take a lot of water, if ther's one thing there is a lot of in Arizona, it's rainfall. So much that the original European settlers there wanted to call it "New Belgium."
Hey @Ismitje, the last sentence of this post is appallingly racist and conspiratorial. This isn't the Breitbart comment section.
Yea the taxation part of it has been in place for some time from what I remember. Most countries bet on the foreign fan spending being high enough to more than offset the costs needed. Completely agree that this last part about having a FIFA Lane is absurd. Don’t remember hearing anything about that in 2002 or earlier. Anyone in FIFA expects to be treated like kings, screw em.
This. And yet when I mention the idea of MLS teams needing to stand on their own feet and not overspend (within reason, they don't have to be in the black exactly) people think that's an unreasonable standard. If the only way for a Colorado to be successful is for KSE to spend part of their vast resources on the team far beyond what the team can return, that's a problem for both Colorado and the league eventually.
Even more fundamentally, pro/rel would scare off the investors of the desired calibre in the first place. The set of people who are willing to own a team that is sure to be part of the top-flight league is a whole lot bigger than the set of people who are willing to gamble on a team whose value could suddenly bottom out. The pro/rel goofballs will retort: "But what about the purchases of English clubs by super-rich investors?" Of course the answer there is that those teams have long histories going back to the early part of the 20th century, or sometimes even to the 19th century. This is what drives those teams' values, despite the chance (exceedingly remote for the biggest teams) of relegation. None of this is comparable to teams that have not been created yet, or to teams that were created after football had already become big business. Another problem is that the pro/rel people really don't understand that we want the richest possible owners. (As I am reminded whenever I am stupid enough to argue with one of them.) The funny thing is that I agree with the pro/rel crowd in principle that the super-rich are by necessity scumbags. But if we can convince those scumbags to use their money to fund our entertainment, we definitely need to do that. Speaking as someone who supports NYCFC, Chelsea, and the Nets, I have already made my peace with the idea of my teams' owners being very bad people. Rational fans must compartmentalise. The worst thing is that these people fetishise pro/rel as some kind of essential feature linked to the heart of the sport, rather than grasping that it was simply a workaround to provide league spaces for more teams than the Football League could accommodate at its founding in the 1880s. I try to explain -- futilely, I know -- that the American baseball leagues that were founded at roughly the same time (the National League dates to 1876) did not use that model, that that model has never been used in any league in any sport in this country, and that to introduce it now when the initial investment is the highest it has ever been would be absurd and counterproductive.
I've never looked, but I wonder how many of those investors bought clubs that really risk relegation. Hell, even Venky's bought a Blackburn side that was no real risk to fall as far as League One (relegation from the EPL to the Championship was never far from our minds though) until Venky's themselves ran it into the ground.
As long as I don't support the team, soccer needs more owners like Venky's. You had the advertisements. and the protests (It has happened more than once which is just great)
The way to deal with a stupid demand like this is to say "Sure, no problem!" then forget to do it. What's FIFA going to do?
Pro/Rel is based on high popularity, small countries, and high concentration of clubs. All of which is not currently true in the US. When there is alot of teams in a reasonably small area where its impossible for dozens of teams to play each other its time to have multiple leagues in a sense competing with each other.
At 120 degrees in the middle of the summer, there is no way this is feasible. I lived in Arizona for 6 years. Playing through the summer, even with nothing but night games will be impossible with an open air stadium.
Probably because this isn't baseball. Field dimensions are going to be the same in ever stadium and there is only so much you can do with a rectangle shaped stadium unless you have billion dollar budgets like the NFL.
I wonder how the "Real Feel" Temperatures in Phoenix compare with the humidity on most evenings in Houston. Looks like summer air temperature lows are about 5 to 8 F cooler in Houston than Phoenix, but Houston has super high humidity raising the "Real Feel" considerably. I wonder how players and fans managed through Phoenix Rising's season last year. Is it something where season-ticket attendance is sustainable on a 1-year basis, but eventually the high-paying fans give up as ongoing year after year ticketholders?? I do think one of the issues that limits attendance at FC Dallas and Houston Dynamo is that "major-league" sports fans in those cities are coming to expect air conditioned comfort (Texans, Astros, Cowboys, and in 2020, the Rangers all playing indoors). Only the Texas soccer teams will play out in the elements.
John Horgan being scared of Andrew Weaver isn't really a good excuse in Vancouver. Even the Mayor (who comes from the same political stripe) isn't happy Disappointed the bid for Vancouver to host FIFA World cup not proceeding. City was all-in. Looking forward to other opportunities to bring world-class soccer and sporting events to Vancouver in future. #vanpoli— Gregor Robertson (@gregorrobertson) March 15, 2018