we need to find a way to help a few more Central American countries improve. Costa Rica was a struggling banana republic in the early 1990s, now it has the fourth best economy in Latin America, a result of American private investment and a accommodating and effective central government.
Not exactly the type of investment I suspect we/CONCACAF can effect now, but, hey, every fact and idea helps! Speaking purely from a competitive soccer standpoint, it seems CONCACAF is hampered by it's make-up even within Central America. Looking at populations figures vs. soccer pedigree it appears 10M residents is a crude demarcation of where national teams have a degree of respectability, with nations like Sweden, Portugal, Czech Republic and Belgium chiming in. Below that it seems the team's competitiveness will be highly cyclical and highly relative. A quick glance at 2016 population estimates and you can see why CONMEBOL nations have the deeper talent pool. 128,632,004 Mexico _16,672,956 Guatemala __8,189,501 Honduras __6,150,035 Nicaragua __6,146,419 El Salvador __4,857,218 Costa Rica __3,990,406 Panama ____366,942 Belize 209,567,920 Brazil _48,654,392 Colombia _43,847,277 Argentina _31,774,225 Peru _31,518,855 Venezuela _18,131,850 Chile _16,385,450 Ecuador _10,888,402 Bolivia __6,725,430 Paraguay __3,444,071 Uruguay It's tough to foster consistently deep talent pools with less than 10M residents, let alone run viable leagues to produce such. And of those CONCACAF nations many of them are culturally tied to baseball ahead of soccer. Meanwhile, the three Caribbean nations with more than 10M residents (Cuba, Haiti and Dom. Republic) are all economically poor. El Salvador exhibits a strong soccer culture and it would be nice if they could begin to match Costa Rica's on-field success and develop stronger local teams. They are, comparably speaking, the low-hanging fruit if the confederation wished to help sponsor investment into the game there. If any of the next three larger nations above them could follow suit that would be great. Help them get more quality fields, stadiums, coaching clinics, etc. Jump start the next generation of players, and maybe down the line this bears fruit at the national team level.
Aren't you including the semifinal round, though? I'm comparing only to the Hexagonal, because that format would be in six-team groups.
As this thread weaves and bobs one thing I am still not clear about is what part of "US Soccer" are we talking about? If we mean the US Mens National Team results I would say we are right about where we should be. We are regular qualifiers for the W.C., and semi regular advancers to the r16. We are not seen as powerhouses, but nor are we viewed as push overs. Our rankings seem to move between the low teens and the low 30's which is right about where we should be. So the program as a whole is neither under or over achieving. If we are talking about players you could argue we are slightly under achieving in turning out an elite player. But we might have a few in the pipeline at the moment and creating an elite player is a notoriously difficult thing to do from the top down. If you mean MLS I would argue here again we are slightly under achieving but first you have to define what the goal is.
Denmark has a better record in the Euros than Sweden or Belgium. Ireland has produced some good players over the years.
I was including the Semifinals, but for just the Hexagonal the average strength of opponent is 103.4 which is less than the 118.2 for the second, fourth, sixth, eighth, and tenth best teams in CONMEBOL.
Or the fact MLS is less than 25 years old, people seem to forget how young football is in this country.
Isn't it fair to say though, that Irish prospects (from NI or ROI) benefit from the fact that they're scouted and developed in their formative years in England or Scotland versus their own leagues?
This year is the 50th anniversary of domestic soccer games being broadcast in the USA. LA and Washington looking a lot like Wolves and Aberdeen.
There's currently 22 teams in MLS with another two to be added next year. Let's say there's a cap of 20 teams. You'd have four teams already for the second tier (ATL; MIN; LAFC; MIA) plus all those teams bidding for MLS expansion slots: Austin; Raleigh; San Antonio; Detroit; Indianapolis; Cleveland; Raleigh; St Petersburg; Las Vegas; Phoenix; St. Louis; Sacramento; Nashville; Charlotte; Cincinnati; San Diego. That's another 20. Then creating three 20-team regional leagues wouldn't be all that hard considering NASL and USL teams not in these two top tiers would jump at the chance to play for pro/rel. Teams like Rochester; Tulsa; OKC; Orange County; Bethlehem, PA; Jacksonville; Harrisburg; Reno; Ottawa; Edmonton, etc. There would be more than enough bids to fill out three leagues considering all the states that don't have teams plus other Canadian cities, places like Milwaukee, Memphis, Winnipeg, Calgary, etc. I don't understand what's so hard to believe that this would be a much better system than what's currently in place. Only fantasy for those that haven't kept up with the latest soccer news. Considering FIFA is pushing for a merger, I don't think they'll have an issue. CONMEBOL officials like the Venezuelan FA president have also spoken in favor of it. Considering the Caribbean has recently talked about breaking away from CONCACAF, North and Central America may actually have no choice but to join with South America. This is a narrow view. On the assumption that the senior national team might not qualify in CONMEBOL, you'd rather sacrifice increasing the sport's popularity in the U.S. and development at lower levels. Did you see the numbers for the Copa Centenario? Why would you want to go back to a Gold Cup after that? And the junior teams have missed World Cups even playing in CONCACAF. Not a one-off. An announcement will probably be made by this summer. Do you think the players would rather have a little longer flight and travel to South America or go to Central America and the Caribbean? What do you think most fans would prefer to see? Speaking for myself, knowing that travel is part of the business, flying for a few extra hours to Chile over Guatemala is much more appealing. And even if groups were split, the quality of opposition is still better. Copa Libertadores has four team groups with home-and-away matches so what about three road games to South America is such a big deal? I'm willing to bet club owners, players, and fans would rather play in Copa Libertadores matches over CCL.
I want soccer to be popular, but in order for more American teenagers to desire to be professional soccer players MLS will have to pay more. Just having more people watch the USMNT in tournaments isn't enough. Most of the world's population is in confederations without many great national teams, so it's not like the USA is alone in that regard. AFC, CONCACAF, and OFC have under a quarter of their teams in the Top 100 of the FIFA Rankings. The Top 100 has 47.4 percent of the teams. CAF has half of their teams in the Top 100 of the FIFA Rankings. My favorite club, the Red Bulls, are in the CCL. Let's say the Red Bulls had MLS games on consecutive Saturdays with both of them at home or at another club in the northeast. Let's say they had a Copa Libertadores game on Wednesday in between. Pick three clubs in the 2017 Copa Libertadores and tell me how many hours the Red Bulls would spend away from New York round-trip including time on airplanes, hotels/motels, and practicing and playing in South America. We're not talking about robots who can be programmed to do whatever fans want. We're talking about people whose performance could be affected by the amount of travel and who have unions and CBAs.
Reminds me of when David Beckham said the hardest thing to get used to in MLS was the amount of travel involved. People who don't actually have to do it don't seem to understand what a toll that takes on a person over time. And traveling to Chile is a lot more than "a few hours" longer than traveling to Guatemala.
I agree and that's what having a combined Champions League would do. Besides bringing more visibility and recognition to MLS, it would create higher bids for TV rights and more prize money, without a doubt. As I said before, the current CONCACAF champion gets as much money as the AFC Cup runner-up. That's not because AFC teams are better than CONCACAF or CONMEBOL teams. You have to look at the overall picture. An added bonus could be a second continental cup competition which means more teams could participate. A combined Champions League would do for clubs what the Copa Centenario has done on the international side. How many Asian clubs have complained about having to travel to Australia for the AFC Champions League? How many north African clubs complained about having to travel to South Africa during the last CAF Champions League? Do you see where I'm going with this? This is some high-level prima donna stuff considering these guys are being paid to play soccer. Let me pull out the violin for having to travel a few extra hours. I definitely wouldn't expect any South American clubs to complain about having to travel to New York to play a game.
How many Asian club routinely cross an entire continent, week-in and week-out, for regular league games?
The AFC Champions League is broken in half, so a west Asian club wouldn't have to go to Australia more than once a year for one leg of the Final. You can call players prima donnas, but it doesn't change the fact that players and coaches wouldn't want travel to South America. Some clubs don't bring their best players to CCL Group Stage away games. If you think Don Garber could tell MLS clubs that they had to play in Copa Liberatores and the players wouldn't complain (and possibly refuse altogether depending on the CBA), you're being naive. Furthermore, imagine an older famous player like David Villa thinking that even if playing in Copa Libertadores is good for MLS player salaries in the long run, he'll be retired by the time MLS reaps the benefits. On that note, what if a player had a choice between being a DP in MLS or being paid a lot by a Chinese club and chose China due to how much travel MLS has? How would you like if your job made you work much farther away one day a week and wouldn't pay you any more for the increased travel time and expenses. I understand why fans would want MLS clubs to play in Copa Libertadores, but it some cases the fans should not be the most important factor in a decision.
New York to Buenos Aires, even flying direct, is in fact 3 hours longer than than the longest flights in the AFC Champions League or CAF Champions League group stage. And if MLS were in the Copa Libertadores, those long flights would be for every away game, not just single away games like in Asia and Africa.
No it's not. I don't say things that I haven't already looked up. New York to Buenos Aires is 11 hours, 3 minutes. Three Australian teams made the AFC Champions League this year: Brisbane; Western Sydney; Adelaide. These are their games: Brisbane-Muangthong United : 9:32 Brisbane-Kashima Antlers: 9:23 Brisbane-Ulsan Hyundai: 9:43 WSW-Shanghai SIPG: 10:14 WSW-FC Seoul: 10:49 WSW-Urawa Red Diamonds: 10:13 Adelaide-Jeju United: 10:03 Adelaide-Jiangsu Suning: 10:04 Adelaide-Gamba Osaka: 10:05 Which of these games is even two hours more than NY to Buenos Aires??? Additionally, New York for example wouldn't play every game in Buenos Aires. Most South American capitals are 5-8 hours away from NY. In a combined Champions League with four team groups they could have two pots with South American teams and two pots with CONCACAF teams or they could have three team groups so that there are only two away games for every team. That's why there are two conferences. Every American sports league has to deal with distance. So the NFL is already playing regular season games in London with plans to expand to China and Germany, but it's beneath MLS clubs to travel far distances? This is from the article: A game in China would easily be the farthest distance from the United States for any regular season matchup ever, but that hasn't dampened interest from teams. NFL spokesperson Brian McCarthy confirmed to Mark Maske of the Washington Post that several teams have expressed interest in playing a game in China. So apparently NFL teams and players want to go to China and Germany to play but MLS owners and players would turn down an opportunity to play South American clubs? That's why I take these comments with a grain of salt. Australia to China, Japan, and Korea is as far as U.S. to South America. Again complete assumption with no supporting facts. There's a link to an article above that the NFL will expand regular season games to China and Germany with several teams expressing interest. Same thing with the NBA. If these players don't mind going I really don't know how you're so sure that MLS players wouldn't want to play South American teams. Are you a Red Bull player or related to one? Well I could either do the job or find another job. And if it helped me get a raise, I don't see the issue with it. As I've said, it would bring in a lot more revenue in sponsorships, TV and media rights, attendance, etc., and that helps the league, which helps the clubs, which helps the players. So there would be a trickle down effect. The league is much bigger than any individual player or players.
To respond to italiancbr without quoting the whole post: 1. NFL teams play once a week. Midweek Champions League games make soccer different. Barcelona can play several La Liga games a season on 2 or 3 days rest after an away Champions League game when their opponent had not played since the previous weekend. Most NFL teams have never played in another country more than once in a year. I don't think NFL teams would like to have a game in China, a game in England, and a game in Germany in a 17 week season. If MLS clubs had to make no more than one trip to South America a year, it wouldn't be as much to ask, but that's not how a Champions League works. 2. Even if it isn't much longer than what the AFC Champions League requires, 11 hours 3 minutes is still a very long flight. Even 5 to 8 hours is longer than what most games in MLB, NFL, MLS, NBA, or NHL require. What percent of MLS players do you think took a flight of 11 hours within the last year regardless of whether it was for soccer, family, or vacation? 3. The NFL is the most popular sport in the country, but there aren't many American Football leagues in other countries, so the NFL could want to play in other countries because they feel like they have nothing left to accomplish in the USA. MLS clubs have room to grow in the USA, and they aren't bringing anything new to South America by playing away Copa Libertadores games. Will MLS get fans in South America by playing in Copa Libertadores? Many MLS fans don't much about or don't care about the CCL and U.S. Open Cup and wouldn't care about Copa Libertadores either. A repeat of the Copa America Centenario would include players on South American national teams who play on European clubs and are much more famous than the players in the Copa Libertadores. If you had to market the Copa Libertadores to Americans, what players would you advertise?
There is no Urawa. Urawa is in Saitama which is 10:13. You can use that link to look up all the flight times.
A couple of things to keep in mind about MLS in Copa Libertadores. 1) It would really only make sense for the champions, and maybe the Charity shield winners to compete. 2) it is a big assumption that they would go straight into the group stage. Odds are they would need to play in one of the qualifying rounds. 3) With that in mind MLS could tweak it's schedule to help those teams out after mid week aways. 4) Mexico is now out of it so it really makes more sense for the both MLS and Liga MX to focus on making the CCL relevant.
As long as CONCACAF exists the best MLS teams would always play in the CCL. Only the next best in the standings could play in Libertadores. That is the current condition set for Liga MX. Also, Mexico will return to the Libertadores in 2018 now that the schedules have been sorted. Count on it.
I used Tokyo. Urawa is part of the Tokyo metropolitan area. And airlines schedule Sydney-Tokyo flights for 9 1/2 hours, with flights generally arriving early.