I have enjoyed my athletic subscription. Initially focused on RSL articles, but gravitated to league wide articles and even articles about other teams. Lately been reading about other sports on there as well. Quality is fairly high compared to other pubs.
Not RSL, but I couldn’t find a recent USMNT or World Cup thread. Sources in Panama claiming that @Concacaf WCQ will be theee groups of four, based on the FIFA rankings with a Repechage tournament to determine who plays the fourth ranked team out of finsl round for the intercontinental spot. https://t.co/yiUDQx8FOc— Duane Rollins (@24thminute) May 29, 2020
Regarding the CONCACAF WCQ there are rumors that Mexico will not play in the USA without close to full stadiums. This could impact how the 3 groups of 4 are aligned. I’m not sure how much credibility I give this, but it’s quietly out there.
If I'm Canada I put him at LM and let him explore. Similar to how the US plays Pulisic at the 10, even though he'll play winger with Chelsea/Dortmund.
MLS Commissioner @thesoccerdon says, "@MLS will take a $1 billion revenue hit due to pandemic."— Alexi Lalas (@AlexiLalas) June 3, 2020
Sounds like we might be going from 30 to 33 or 34 teams shortly. $325MM expansion fee per team makes up for that $1 billion revenue hit pretty quickly.
The pandemic sucks for everyone. Think about how crappy this is for Nashville, though, given they just started playing.
I feel bad for the people that moved to join teams, especially if they came from another country. Before you can even settle in all this hits.
Some may know this, but Nashville is like a second home for us, and we chose to purchase season tickets this year even though we only planned to get to 4-5 games. We have alot of friends in the area and we felt confident we could break even on tickets we couldn't use. The key is we wanted to be in a good position to select seats when the new stadium is completed. The fans for NSC are taking this mostly like the rest of this. Many of them are still getting used to MLS, and a surprising amount are new to the sport altogether and were just starting to learn the ins-and-outs of soccer. However, one common thought among Nashville fans is that this pause may benefit the team this season, as it can help them catch up to the rest of the league when play resumes. I actually think this is wishful thinking as I think this team needs more field time together. When the season resumes it will certainly be very compressed, and practice time will be quite limited. However, I think their thought does apply to RSL. This team had a very poor preseason, and came into the season behind the rest of the league. I think the restart will give them a chance to catch up. In addition, a couple of players were injured and hopefully will enter the restart at full health.
I have zero confidence RSL will come out ahead during this "break". If they couldn't do it in their first pre-season what makes you think they can do it in their "second" pre-season. I'm happy to be proven wrong though. I am excited to see some more Rossi though!
In the "first" preseason, RSL simply put too little effort and too few games on the schedule. The "second" preseason, aka the Orlando tournament, will be much more dictated and may put them on a level playing field with other clubs. I know, I'm probably delusional, but that's what I'm telling myself.
with how little the pandemic has hit this valley, especially compared to other areas of the country with MLS teams, RSL shouldn't just be on level terms. Under the right leadership they would come out much ahead. But, like @evilradar, I have no confident in this actually happening. Oh, and Rossi? I have him injured in game 3
My only hope is they actually play the 3 games minimum. I don’t see them advancing at all. I doubt Freddy got any better during the break so
I feel like RSL is the South Africa of the 2010 world cup. We're a seed but the other teams are honestly better