Will MLS play decline?

No.
There are lots more good US players coming through College to play in MLS and young new Youth Nat's that will take the place of those that are leaving/skipping. Also, there are more and more international players being signed by MLS.

 

Wait, you're concerned about a few players moving to Europe this season - when last year the league went from 240 players to 336 players in one fell swoop?

If play was going to "decline" it was going to happen in the season where a minimum of 40% of the league is new players - most of whom had never played at the level of MLS before.

The player changes this season are inconsequential by comparison.

 

call me crazy but I call that progress

I don't see the Argentine or Brazilian league crying rivers because their best players jet to europe.

 

the quality of folks coming in does not match the level of folks leaving. I remember reading on these boards that most people agree that the level of play is lower now because we have not brought in expensive superstars like in the early years of the league. With the slash in payroll, mls can no longer afford "stars" like valderamma, branco, novak, matthias, etc. . .
With that said, i dont think you will find folks that will disagree that the lower level players now are higher quality than they were 10 years ago. So the top players are lower than before, but the lower players are higher.
Yet, with the exodus of players leaving over the past couple of years, players have not stepped up.

 

Perhaps I'm missing something, but whose panties are in a twist (besides yours)?

 

Tell me how to measure it (overall quality of play) and I'll tell you whether or not it's declining...

 

I'm not surprised at all with players going to Europe. But it strikes me as strange that most of them lately are average journeymen MLS players like Califf and Elliot. This seems to be mostly 2nd tier European teams looking for bargains rather than our stars going to top leagues. But does this hurt MLS? Heck no. It creates more desire for young American athletes to take their soccer seriously.

 

shhhhh...don't spoil this topic with common sense.

 

AndyMead is right.

 

I don't think so. The US players coming out in 2006 and 2007 are far better than those that were available in 96 and 97. We now have reserve teams with some pretty good players. The big foriegn leagues will only take so many non-EU players. Last I heard, Brazil and other countries were still developing kids. The US "stars" of 96 were not returning like Cobi Jones were not exactly returning from the top European leagues. Now guys like Simon Elliot, who was more of a role player than a star, are leaving to play in Europe's top division.

The big issue on quality play is expansion. Chivas and RSL were pretty weak teams. When you add a couple of more you start to get a lot of weak games. The other issue is money. The salaries are too low - especially at the bottom end. There are probably some pretty good players that could play in the league but are choosing to do something else.

 

But the difference is in the talent pyramid. The talent pyramid works as such so that the 96 extra players (and that's a massive exaggeration since the number of players playing significant minutes didn't increase by nearly that much) aren't of a substantially lower quality than a lot of the existing 240. At the bottom of the pyramid, replacing and supplementing playters with little loss in ability is fairly easy.

At the other end of the pyramid, things are far more difficult. Replacing Beasley's abilities are infinitely harder than finding an extra 40 capable bench players and part timers.

So the concern is real, though I'm not sure the outcome will mirror the concern. I think the league could easily take counter-steps to increase league quality to counter any losses in this error. The increase in foreign player allotments was one they've already done. The increase in available players per team also helps (it's easy to unearth a Rolfe or Pitchkolan when you have enough extra roster spots and a competition form them to shine in).

 

I really disagree with you here. You cant continually lose quality veteran players and replace them with young kids and not expect the quality to take a hit. You are trading experience for youth which is always going to be uneven. Losing many of these guys to second tier leagues is all the result of the rediculously low salary cap. The solid,veteran player has been getting squeezed in MLS for years. MLS lets them walk and then they just replace them with some kid and pay them peanuts.

 

You don't? These clubs and their fans are often devastated by losing their best players, they just don't have any choice in the matter.

I'm sure River is thrilled to have their dynasty crumble due to player sales.

 

Do you have some specific players in mind?

 

Not off the top of my head. Over the years I recall several players getting "a real job" for financial reasons, but can't recall who they were. I think you see older mid-tier guys who can still play squeezed out and some younger that aren’t interested. I’ve talked with some pretty good college players who used to practice with MLS teams from time to time. They not only claimed that some of the players were marginal, but that some of the players were “terrible.” They claimed a lot of players aren’t interested because the pay is so bad. Now I obviously take these comments with a healthy degree of skepticism, but I also think there is some basis to them. I hear a lot of stories about how even some of the more well known players have to live 2 or 3 to an apartment to get by.

 

The quality will be better than last year.

 

An argument can be made that it has been in decline for awhile or at least has plateaued.

A lack of creativity in on the field is really missing in the league these days.

 

Sorry, but anecdotes from frustrated college players don't really stand up when you actually look at the rosters.

I've yet to see anybody make a convincing case that there are a real number of good players leaving the league because they're not paid enough. There's the occasional Gary Sullivan, Casey Schmidt, Leo Cullen, and Justin Detter, but while it sucks that these players are leaving, they're really not making that much of an impact on the league - expanded developmental rosters alone vastly make up for the loss of a couple of marginal prospects a year.. The same kind of of cry went up last year when Ramiro Corrales left the Quakes last year, that MLS was losing all its solid veterans, but really it just lost one, and his departure made room for the emergence of Brad Davis and/or Ricardo Clark, who helped lead an Earthquakes team (that was largely barren of these long tenured, low 6 figure earning guys) to the best record in the league.

 

Surprisingly, Rommul, I don't totally agree with this point, but I think you're misreading what's happened.

In the last couple of years, the attacking midfield position in MLS has seen a dramatic demographic change, going from one of the league's oldest positions to one of the youngest (it's dropped from around 30 to 26, depending on who you put where). We've seen Preki, Cienfuegos, Etcheverry, Ekelund, et al. replaced by Dempsey, Adu, Ramon Nunez, Thiago, De Rosario (and Djorkaeff). As a result, even if the quality of player hasn't dropped so much (2003 Etcheverry wasn't that good), we've lost the experienced field generals that we used to have.

I certainly don't think that this points to a long-term decline in creativity, however; the attacking players added recently are (in my opinion) quite evidently superior to those added in the league's earlier years.

 

Part of this can be traced to the "american" way of play. Soccer in America is not going to be full of Brazilian style, happy feet, dancing, "soft" playmakers. Probably ever. American style is more athletic, physical play.

 

some thoughts:

1. Quality of play in MLS has improved almost every year since its inception.

2. There were always young talents who wanted to go straight to Europe - your Conor Caseys, John Thorringtons and, I believe, your Jovan Kirovskis. These things happen. Sometimes they come back.

3. For my money, this recent U-17 team had many more exciting players than the Adu/Szetela one we were looking at two-three years ago. If MLS lands some of those guys, there'll be some fun-looking games.

4. Honestly, I think in the long run, expansion will help the games be more exciting. It'll make it harder to get into the playoffs, make the championship of the league more meaningful, and I hope, add some more local rivalries.

5. Games will look better on soccer pitches, and in June of this season, the league will have twice as many of those as it had in June of last season.

 

Sometimes we regret the fact that they came back.

 

Seriously:



EDIT: This not having images thing really cramps (no pun intended) my style.

BTW, how are you going to quantify "quality of play?"