Relatively new soccer fan from the US (2+ years as a more consistent watcher/follower) and when I chose a team to follow I picked Liverpool. I don't know how much I considered the MLS at the time, and it seemed easier picking a foreign team to follow than one stateside (geographically I guess Sporting KC is closest and has some other ties to where I live in Omaha). I did think about following the domestic game a little more closely. Then I got really into Pro/Rel. I will admit I like the idea very much, and it caused me to almost view the MLS disdainfully. It's not lost on me that: 1) in Liverpool, I've chosen one of six teams to have not been relegated in the, and 2) I've only really known closed systems (school size being about the only thing causing teams to move up/down classes or divisions). So what makes MLS such a lighting rod for this? I didn't go into it having any real opinion of soccer other than I didn't really understand or care to for years. I grew up a college football fan 1st (the state of college soccer probably better in the thread devoted to it), then NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, etc. I am not clamoring to see those changed, why is it so much easier to feel that for the MLS?
Before I get to the question I will say that it is not the MLS, it's just MLS. There is no the in front of it. Just like there is no the in front of MLB. No one calls it the Major League Baseball, same goes for MLS. Many MLS fans see it as you are trying to troll or insult the league, I just see it as bad grammar. It doesn't sound right. Now, I too like pro/rel, I find it interesting and hope to someday see it in American soccer however there are several important reasons why it doesn't exist currently. 1) MLS started from scratch. There wasn't any reliable structure beneath to promote from. 2) The league early on was hemorrhaging money and introducing pro/rel would have killed the league. 3) The big 4 leagues in America, which are all in the top 5 richest sports leagues in the world, are run a certain way. Copy the proven product instead of introducing a completely foreign way of running a league to the American people. MLS will cap off at some point and the 2nd division is getting stronger and better supported. The sport is getting more popular here and more people are understanding how pro/rel works around the world. There is talk of pro/rel in between USL and their D3 brand so soccer fans in this country can see how the system will work here. Maybe one day it opens all the way. I started out my soccer fandom as a fan of Chelsea. However in FIFA, I started a managerial career with an English League Two team, Plymouth Argyle, and I started following them for real as well. I watched them on some shitty internet stream gain promotion to League One 2 seasons ago and it made me more excited then when Chelsea won the CL. I do hope to see pro/rel one day but it's a long way off.
Thanks for your reply! RE: "The" MLS I think it was generally oversight -- I see I wasn't consistent in my usage or lack thereof. It certainly wasn't intended to offend or make myself look less knowledgeable than I already am! I was a little worried that my post might seem like a troll job after I sent it. For any who may have felt that way, it wasn't. I think it's about my journey to embracing the sport and then finding my way to the top domestic league. It just seems like there is so much passion between fans of MLS and those who feel it's holds us back.
The increased importance of national team competitions in soccer is a big factor, especially given that many U.S. soccer fans of a certain age grew up with no domestic league to follow, thus the national team was their entry point to the sport and remains the team they feel the deepest connection to. For many it just feels natural that propping up the national team should be the priority above league success. Compare this to NHL fandom, where the idea that a team should prioritize the development of young American talent over doing whatever it takes to win a Stanley Cup would be ludicrous. That's pretty much how U.S. sports work in general. Aside from the kneeling controversy in the NFL, our landscape is actually anti-nationalistic in that's about winning with the best players, regardless of what country they come from. For a large chunk of the sporting public international competition is just a sporadic spectacle where we cheer "Team USA" for a few weeks before turning attention back to the real sports. Also, I think some insecurities regarding the U.S. being not that great at the sport come into play, so railing against a significant part of the U.S. soccer scene assuages that to some degree, helps one feel like they are one of the few who "really" understand the sport.
I think those are really interesting points. Even when basketball falters for the US national team, they will right the ship the next Olympics and I don't think there is ever a feeling that it has any bearing on who is the best. While MLB has a fair share of foreign-born players, the international game never seems important. Americans love a US Hockey win, but it's not an expectation. The NFL is almost exclusively made up of American players. I definitely don't equate the USMNT success with MLS or vice versa. I will say that I would love to see more American players, a trend that I thought I read was dropping (similar to the NHL, so maybe no impact on the fan bases for each club). I also hear terrible things about the college game, which is something else I tend to like about the other major US sports.
The College game get a a bad rap. It's been propping up and supporting MLS and NT for decades. Can it be better? Absolutely. Will it? If you're unfamiliar with the governing body of college sports lemme just say that it's unlikely to happen anytime soon. Then again, they're quickly being displaced by pro academies so in either case it's not a big worry
We have the fiasco with the Columbus Crew owner. Also, as much as it fabulous we have new stadiums like LAFC and DC, it's 2018 and we still have shit like this:
That said, if you had pitched the idea in 1994 of a professional soccer team making their home in Yankee freaking God bless America Stadium they'd have put you in the looney bin. It's not great they play in a baseball stadium, but the specific stadium is very significant to how far we've come.
I support the oldest professional soccer team in el mundo and it took exactly 50 years before we got our own stadium, so I have no problem waiting.[emoji6] Actually Yankee Stadium isn't a bad place to watch soccer. I've taken several friends to watch their first MLS games there and they've all thought it was pretty cool.
Have to disagree with you there on that one. I was there for the first time last night. It's a horrible place to watch soccer compared to the many other fine stadiums in MLS(I've been to 3 - Stubhub, RBA, Philly,)
Agreed. As for MLS SSS's I've also watched games at Toyota Stadium (or whatever the Bridgeport now calls the place), BMO Field and Crew Stadium and they are all better than Yankee Field for watching soccer.
I was in the front row about 10 feet from the pitch by the corner flag down the third base-line. The view in 2nd tier along the third base-line sucks but I'm sure the denizens at the back of the upper tier at Old Trafford would be envious.
This is an important factor, IMO. Having watched MLS since 1996, I think pro/rel, along with artificial turf in some MLS venues, is simply the excuse du jour for the same group of people who have railed against some aspect of MLS or another since the beginning and who will always find a new excuse to rail against MLS.
Americans love conspiracy theories. But the fact is the USSF is primarily an amateur organization run by volunteers, whereas MLS is run by highly experienced professionals. That gives MLS a huge amount of leverage. But that goes for most countries Real, Atletico and Barca run Spanish soccer, the Premier League top 6 the FA etc. Germany may be an exception because of fan ownership.
Yep. Recently I've even seen MLS bashed for building soccer stadiums, the suggestion being it's a binary choice between nice facilities or player development and MLS chooses the former because of superficial reasons. Pretty hilarious.
Most of the trashtalk we get is from British fans, or fans of English football, and that's because of the common language. I'd like to know from German and French fans what they think of MLS and MLS fan culture. If you are the ultrasensitive type you can always point out that only 7.6% of Americans claim English ancestry.
I think a lot of it is a product of today's society. Everyone wants everything NOW. The haters conveniently forget that MLS has grown faster in it's first 22 years than the big 4 American leagues did. MLS was essentially starting from scratch, and in a nation that largely dismissed the sport and considered it un-american. It took the NHL nearly 50 years to expand from it's original 6 teams..........
Not disputing your general point, but the "Original 6" is a misnomer. There were more NHL teams than that for many years during the NHL's first quarter century or so, and the six teams in question comprised the entire league for only about a quarter century, from World War II to the expansion grouping in the late 1960s.
Who can ever forget the Tonawanda Kardex? http://americanfootballdatabase.wikia.com/wiki/Tonawanda_Kardex
People (speaking about Americans here) who are into professional soccer are often attracted to the bright lights. And I agree it is much easier to enter into following an EPL team due to no language barrier, easily accessible games and information, geographic proximity is not a barrier to entry, and it is packaged as a entertaining product. Whereas MLS has its own redundantly named website to generate content for consumption since there is (or was) a general void of professional soccer writers, American fans in soccer somewhat feel they can only follow local teams (whereas EPL fandom is easy and everywhere), the games are less accessible on TV if you want to follow a team from outside your location. Streaming options are changing that. The MLS TV product is second rate especially for regional broadcasts and also for national broadcasts. The production and directors in EPL are NFL equivalent professionals and have a similar number of assets. MLS games on ESPN/FOX are not and have about 1/4 the number of cameras at a game as an EPL game has (10-12 versus around 40), and likely less experience on how to package a good soccer product (Ex: A recent MLS match on Fox was zoomed in too far to really watch the game, they got the message at half and a wider shot was done in the second half). How does this translate into MLS and pro/rel? Look at the origins mostly. Professional sports (mostly baseball in the US) had a fight over whether one could have a monopoly over a market. The monopolizing baseball owners won, rival leagues merged or dropped lesser performing teams. Later, they were legally allowed the ignore anti-trust laws. The owners of teams in the English FA didn't run a monopoly, in fact, they had too many well performing teams and had to find a solution to it: Pro/rel. Also, they never even broached the topic of monopolizing a market nor sought legal immunity. As stated above, MLS started from scratch where a lack of popularity was real as opposed to an abundance of popularity. Pro/Rel is a solution to a popularity problem not a prescription to induce popularity. Also, the model of centralized ("closed") leagues is quite successful. To circle back to the TV product, fans of EPL (and other top Euro leagues) see this very slick, polished professional product on TV, believe the hype, and think it must be because of this league mechanism built generations ago is the key. When in fact it wasn't the key to popularity of the sport because it was popular before pro/rel was established! Lastly, some fans want the gratification of having the best now, and think pro/rel is the solution to emulate. MLS found a solution to the problem of no soccer league and had good examples to follow (NBA, NFL) and one to avoid (NASL). They chose a path to viability and some fans think this is not "pure". I chalk it up to ignorance.
Similarly I was surprised at how much I enjoyed watching the USA qualifier at Busch Stadium in St. Louis. Obviously a better venue for baseball, but unless you were in the left field seats that were away from the touchline, the views of the game were actually quite good. The great atmosphere from St. Louis folk who hadn't had a men's national team game of any kind at all in over 3 decades helped too.
The Football League introduced a second division when it absorbed the rival Alliance League and a couple of teams from other leagues. The 3 strongest Alliance clubs joined an expanded First Division. I'd love to know where the idea of promotion and relegation first came from.