The Galaxy and MLS have been around long enough that I was a Galaxy fan before having kids, have raised 2 kids while being a Galaxy fan, and within a couple years will be back to being a Galaxy fan with no kids in the house... at which point I might even have enough time and money to go to most games again....
Interesting to see how many have cut back their posting due to time-sucking young'uns. Where are your priorities guys/gals? Babies are resilient - they can go a few days w/o food I think.
The analysis from the Bigsoccer Galaxy fans is, in general, about 10 times higher quality than you'll find on any social media, and about 5 times higher quality than you'll find on any television broadcast....
I don't know. Maybe you blocked one too many fellow posters for disagreeing with you? Personally, I'm rarely on BigSoccer during games as I like to focus on the game. Also, if the Galaxy do poorly, I'll check out until hope is restored.
I think I'm on this same boat with @GalaxyKoa. When MLS was beginning, I was excited that there would be a domestic team and league to follow. It would be an American league with mostly American players. It wasn't going to be pretty or awesome like established leagues but to see American players playing commieball was surreal. I don't believe that MLS has an obligation to develop players for the national squad but the 2002 World Cup squad was very special. Then came the transfers of promising Americans to other leagues, the Beckham effect (I'm thankful for his contributions), and the league has changed. I stopped following the league years ago but I still love my Galaxy.
I don't understand this line of thinking. And I'm coming at MLS much more recently than you, as I wasn't a fan in any kind of serious way until around 2005. But there must be 10x the number of professional American players, many of which are able to make serious money playing right here in the US, compared with where MLS and the US pro soccer scene was back when MLS was just starting up. All that growth is part and parcel of the modest globalization of MLS and the US soccer market. I love the current MLS with its foreign "slightly" past-their-prime stars and international influence (both the aging stars and more recently, the young up and comers) In fact, if they go to a model of needing only 50% of the senior roster to be US citizens, I think that would be perfectly fine. And how can you argue with Klinsman's response to when a Dempsey or Yedlin leaves MLS, that it creates a new opening for another aspiring young American player?
Part of the problem is that we would expect a foreign player who is brought in to be better than the American player who would sit. But too often we see inferior foreign players take over for the better American player [this difference discovered after the fact of the player's arrival] who the FO kinda pushes into playing because otherwise that investment is starting to look really bad. So think of de la Garza, and Omar, and Romney, even Steres, being eliminated or benched to make room for some of the truly awful SkylCrud types who stagger in to profitably embarrass themselves. Think of players like Gerrard and Gio having been consitently played over a Lletget. This, of course, is found across many teams in the league. So even my pathetic Revs spill out cash, by their standards, to very average to truly poor foreign defenders, while trading away or ignoring the homegrown talent that is promising but needs its opportunity on the field. A team that consistently aims at developing the American player, as central to its future, is rare in MLS. I do wish it was different. Now, would this enhance these boards? Let me tweet you about that.......
Is that a reference to Zlatan? Would it be more accurate to have said "a bit more than slightly in some cases"?
Those are decent points, but a bit one-sided. I don't see how MLS rules are to blame for inferior European players (or Mexican or South American players for that matter) being brought in at the expense of Americans. For every example of a bad foreigner coming in to take away an American's job, there are just as many, or more, foreigners performing better than Americans and being major contributors. Don't tell me you'd rather see Jamison and Lassiter playing game after game instead of Kamara and Zlatan. Each team has the freedom to select the best team they see fit, with the restriction of having to have mostly Americans, and only a handful of foreigners. What's so wrong with that? If a team ever brought in a player who they knowingly thought sucked just to sell shirts or to throw away their money for no good reason, then shame on them, but I'd say that would be extremely rare. Personally, I'm not at all in favor of an all-American team, because it would probably fare about as well as an all-Mexican team, if not worse. There just aren't enough good American players out there. The good ones already fill the bottom half of MLS rosters.
Sounds corny but people here really care about the team. It's not news to anyone here that removing Ciani and Skjelvik makes the team better.
Ok - know who he is, just didn't get the context. Now I get it. I still tweet at him on occasion. I think he just ignores me these days.
I've been posting less because I haven't really gotten to see any of the games and so I just basically read the reviews when I have time. I've been incredibly busy at work and don't have nearly as much free time anymore. Plus there's the new grandbaby.... But I definitely enjoy this place and don't want it to end. I'm counting on us making the playoffs, which I can't believe is still possible!