MLS Single Entity Sends Handicapped Clubs to CCL. Do We Not Know, or Not Care?

Discussion in 'CONCACAF Champions Cup' started by soccerreform.us, Mar 7, 2010.

  1. CCSUltra

    CCSUltra Member+

    Nov 18, 2008
    Cleveland
    Club:
    Hertha BSC Berlin
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Where teams are teetering on the brink of bankruptcy and the same two teams compete for the title every year? No thanks.
     
  2. soccerreform.us

    soccerreform.us New Member

    Mar 12, 2009
    Denver
    Club:
    Fulham FC
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Why not point out some of these contradictory answers and avoided questions? Because what you really mean is - why don't I just shut up and go away like every other pro/rel supporter in Big Soccer?

    Thanks. I guess I almost had you, and then you must have taken it all personally, and just couldn't come to terms with the concept. At least have the courage to have the argument, instead of resorting to this lame line of questioning...

    So, you want to send teams from the second division, too weak to afford national travel costs, into the first div? Shouldn't we set the bar a little higher? We can support two 20 team divisions, and still have a lot of major metropolitan areas left over. Plus, relegation from div one won't carry the stigma of falling into a regional league.


    So, you think teams should be relegated, in an imposed mediocrity crap shoot, to a regional second div? How is that fair?

    Revenue sharing is not a terrible idea. Parachute payments are important, and TV revenue should be used to benefit our club system.

    It's the spending limits, caps, and other MLS micromanagement that hold the league down that I oppose.
     
  3. soccerreform.us

    soccerreform.us New Member

    Mar 12, 2009
    Denver
    Club:
    Fulham FC
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Not going to happen. Our disagreement comes down to this:

    You think MLS, in it's current form, is the only thing standing between us and no club soccer. I think MLS depends on this attitude to survive.
     
  4. soccerreform.us

    soccerreform.us New Member

    Mar 12, 2009
    Denver
    Club:
    Fulham FC
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    And just for the record, I got bumped from the US forum because I was drawing too much attention. The pressure mounts on mods to bump people who are not on message with MLS, and they act when traffic is high, when I'm the one receiving personal attacks and not replying in kind to them.

    The bizarro argument that I just ignore it when people "poke holes in my argument" is the saddest argument of all. Because I don't say "oh yeah, I'm wrong" somehow makes me a troublesome subversive.

    It'd be sad if it wasn't so predictable.
     
  5. soccerreform.us

    soccerreform.us New Member

    Mar 12, 2009
    Denver
    Club:
    Fulham FC
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Can't let that "real team" comment from Chapka slide:

    MLS teams are as real as the KFC outlets they resemble. But they are not real soccer clubs.
     
  6. CCSUltra

    CCSUltra Member+

    Nov 18, 2008
    Cleveland
    Club:
    Hertha BSC Berlin
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    There are no "clubs" in American sports. It's what separates American sports from European sports. Our teams were never founded as clubs. Sports, on a professional level in the United States, has always been about business.

    If there was this huge demand for pro/rel in America, there was plenty of time for it to start. It didn't. That's a fact.

    You ignored that in the EPL there are numerous teams teetering on the edge of bankruptcy and that the same two teams win the title almost every year. It's boring and predictable. And it's why I don't bother watching the EPL.
     
  7. ceezmad

    ceezmad Member+

    Mar 4, 2010
    Chicago
    Club:
    Chicago Red Stars
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    You most not like quality football!

    yes we all know thar R.M. or Barcelona will win the liga, but tell me you do not like to see Barca play?

    How about seeing Drogba score goals?
     
  8. nicolassarkozy

    May 4, 2010
    Club:
    Paris Saint Germain FC
    I think this demonstrates a major reason people are so uniformly negative to you. I have believed since before I ever heard of BigSoccer that pro/rel can be the better way to go, yet you assume I'm an opponent of the concept & insult my original post. I even threw in one cogent argument in favor of pro/rel in my original post (about competitive balance in lower leagues). If your line of attack has had any impact, you have hurt the cause of an American League System.
    AAA Baseball leagues are somewhat regional, yet I fail to see what would be so bad about having the worst teams in the MLB fall into a league that leave them in one of the leagues that only cover the eastern or western part of the country. This is an example of you letting what you believe is the perfect solution be the enemy of a good solution.

    UEFA is on the verge of imposing spending limits in UEFA Financial Fair Play because there are too many clubs in Europe who financially cannot make it. The American people have shown a strong preference for each team in a league having an roughly equal level of inherent advantage/disadvantage. For instance, using enrollment at the High School level to determine which state championship teams compete for, # of athletic scholarships at the college level, & player salaries at the adult level. Even if on the field results are quite different, nobody believes that successful high school programs should play for a different state championship than traditionally struggling programs with near equal enrollment.
    It's not a crap shoot, it's about having every team start from similar levels of inherent advantage & seeing which teams best manage. The league system does a fine job of creating competitive balance in the lower leagues, but does poorly in the top-flights because teams who are too big for the league don't get promoted out.
     
  9. CCSUltra

    CCSUltra Member+

    Nov 18, 2008
    Cleveland
    Club:
    Hertha BSC Berlin
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    I should clarify, I'll watch it if it's on, but I don't follow the leagues that closely. I much prefer the Bundesliga. At least there, a bunch of teams have a shot at the title.
     
  10. chapka

    chapka Member+

    May 18, 2004
    Haverford, PA
    Club:
    Philadelphia Union
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    This is why people ignore you. Because you spout slogans instead of argument.

    Here is why the statement quoted above is stupid.

    First: the idea of soccer looking "like KFC" is meaningless. In MLS, as in every soccer league around the world, the individual teams have an interest in making sure the league succeeds. As in every league, the teams have franchise agreements with the leagues they play in.

    In MLS, the teams also have financial arrangements that include revenue sharing and salary caps to ensure parity. But teams still have significant autonomy.

    The only meaningful way in which MLS teams are "like KFC" is that their franchise agreements, like most fast-food franchise agreements but unlike Premier League franchise agreements, sometimes grant some territorial exclusivity rights. In that sense, yes, I would rather have MLS teams in major cities around the United States than have eight teams in New York and five in Los Angeles.

    Second, no system in anyone's wildest dreams is going to convert MLS into the Premier League overnight or even in a decade. There is not enough soccer revenue to support it. I would love to see the Philadelphia Union spend $100 million on player salaries, but I would rather have a Philadelphia Union to watch than not.

    MLS is growing; they have already more than doubled their initial salary cap, from $1.135 million in 1996 to $2.55 million this year. As the cap grows, the league and its teams will become more and more internationally competitive. But the cap will only grow as revenue grows.

    In the meantime, what you're arguing about is whether the league will keep some degree of parity or split into a few "superclubs" with all the good players and who win all the championships, plus a lot of loser clubs that will be the superclubs' Washington Generals all season. I do not see the benefit of creating noncompetitive clubs. Most other people here don't either. You seem to feel that winning the Concacaf Champions' League is so important that it justifies this. I can only put this down to deep-seated insecurity.

    Your only other arguments are frankly silly. You argue that:

    1. MLS is a conspiracy of NFL owners to prevent soccer from becoming popular by preventing a league with promotion and relegation from forming spontaneously and stealing customers from the NFL; and

    2. If a league with promotion and relegation existed, second-division soccer would benefit enough that the benefit would "trickle up" to first division soccer and create a new league with a better quality of play and a sharper growth curve than MLS, but which would not lead to a race to the top that would bankrupt its owners.

    1 is just lunacy, and there is not a shred of evidence for 2.
     
  11. nicolassarkozy

    May 4, 2010
    Club:
    Paris Saint Germain FC
    I wouldn't say ignore, perhaps despise for his general jackassery. Too many people respond to him to use the word ignore.
    1. Spot on
    2. I can think of more than shreds of evidence of #2.
    a)What league systems do is saturate the country with teams, especially professional teams. What the closed system does is leave countries somewhere short of saturation. Going in the opposite direction:
    Baseball used to have the same dominance here that soccer has in many European countries. What happened to that dominance was that because of the closed system, we were far from saturation leaving the door more open for other sports. Football & basketball established themselves at the high school & college levels and grew to the point that the NFL overtook the MLB. More to quality of play, America's best athletes now play football & basketball, hurting the quality of play in the MLB versus what it would have been if baseball had been a league system, although that damage took more than a generation, not a couple of years like soccerreform.us thinks.
    b) Having local teams can matter. High school basketball in Illinois was far better in the 1990s than before or since & eventually helping the Illini having an unusually successful (for them) period during the coaching tenures of Lon Kruger & Bill Self. What happened? Having been in Illinois in the 1990s, I believe it was something of a Michael Jordan effect, where kids focused on basketball, who otherwise could have gone elsewhere. If Jordan had been drafted by Houston or Portland, things would have been different. How can this affect the MLS? Given what I've seen, it is certainly possible that having an MLS team in Kansas City could lead to the area producing better soccer players than similar sized metros like Indianapolis. Having a league system creates saturation of pro & semi-pro teams nationally, thus improving the likelihood of talented players coming out of Indianapolis. Although many may go straight from High School to Europe, having more quality US players like would improve the quality of play in the MLS.
    c) Just because parents prefer soccer doesn't mean kids will. Many think that the growing Hispanic population is destined to lead to greater interest in soccer in the US, but without teams with even the relevancy of Shrewsbury in places like Phoenix & San Diego, interest in soccer may be less common for the kids.
    d) The point about potentially bankrupting teams is accurate. Soccerreform.us, teams need to live within their means. Even the European leagues are realizing this & making steps in this direction.


    In addition, with regard to pro/rel, why so much focus on the top? The individuals who get hurt most by a closed system are the athletes.
    I have known people who, due to basketball & football not having a league system, played as amateurs in NCAA Division I, & then even though they earned revenue for their universities; some never were paid to play sports, a couple only found semi-pro paychecks in indoor football, & at least one left the country to play basketball professionally. I think these are the people who have the most room to be pissed about the closed system. People who never got to make a living playing sports in this country due to the number of jobs playing sports in America being artifically reduced by the closed system. Like I said in a previous post, I enjoy going to college games. I don't blame the NCAA for being an amateur league, if they want to be an amateur league that's fine. However, I do understand that the NCAA's power to get many of these players is due to the professional game in this country reducing the number of jobs playing sports.
     
  12. chapka

    chapka Member+

    May 18, 2004
    Haverford, PA
    Club:
    Philadelphia Union
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    I'd disagree with this. There are more than 300 baseball teams in this country, not counting college and high school ball, and just about everyone has a local team. I'm not sure what the largest city in America not to have a major-league or minor-league ball club is, but I'm betting it's smaller than 100,000 people.

    As for the athletes being hurt by the artificial scarcity of teams...I don't think that has anything to do with promotion and relegation. If anything, the opposite. The size of the top league will always be artificially limited, but in America the minor leagues in every sport are more or less a free-for-all; even in baseball, there are plenty of independent teams and leagues. There are more quality pro and semi-pro teams for people to play for than there would be if there was a "pyramid" that limited the number of second or third division teams. That's why in baseball, "non-league" can mean anything from total amateur hour to AAA-level baseball, whereas in England "non-league" teams are always at a lower level than League 2.

    I'm not saying we don't need strong minor league soccer in this country. I'm just saying that promotion and relegation don't guarantee or necessarily promote that. As long as players can move up and down the tiers (by being signed away or traded between teams in different leagues) the lack of promotion and relegation doesn't hurt them in the slightest.
     
  13. soccerreform.us

    soccerreform.us New Member

    Mar 12, 2009
    Denver
    Club:
    Fulham FC
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Do we really need to play gotcha here? As much as I complain that MLS franchise fees are a ponzi scheme of madoff proportions, I still think it will be a fair price to pay for an initial first div slot in a reborn pyramid.

    American sports were club oriented before the National League got it's anti trust exemption. Even the anti-competitive monopolies that formed in it's wake did fine in our domestic sports, when leagues were recognized as the best of their kind in the world, and teams were shielded from real international competition.

    You're outlining the reasons that this will take a fight. MLS is never going to willingly divest. Given an apathetic fan base, content to have any soccer at all, they'll keep on keepin' on. Bankruptcy is really a more realistic outcome than divestment.

    I don't ignore EPL teams "teetering" any more than you ignore the pathetic history of closed league soccer, where leagues fail one after another, where logos are fast food committee driven crap, where the marketing is about as innovative as any monopoly, and where they even let an independent Hall of Fame die.

    I only wish you didn't ignore how MLS, and the American sports closed league imperative, sets up league fratricide. How our overprocessed first division monopoly limits every club like Yum! Brands limits KFC.

    It's not sloganeering. It's what's for dinner.
     
  14. soccerreform.us

    soccerreform.us New Member

    Mar 12, 2009
    Denver
    Club:
    Fulham FC
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    First of all, in an open system, nobody is "minor league". Secondly, the "minor league" logo you ascribe to them, and the closed pyramid these clubs inhabit, tamp down support and investment. Thirdly, if USSoccer allows a "minor league" system to develop, they will lose their sanction.

    Player development is hampered by lack of pro/rel. Without the excitement of promotion battles, and the increased investment in lower div clubs that comes with unlimiting their futures, fewer people have access to the game that conquered the world, and there is less cash to invest in player development.

    Instead, imagine the world in which the only barriers between leagues are performance based - not decided by some committee. Where league owners aren't more interested in clinging together to protect their other investments than promoting soccer.

    People ignore me in Big Soccer because I'm outspoken, and it offends their cliquey sensibilities. In here, you have to be forever ingratiated to the powers at MLS who gave us soccer. You have to believe that without them, we'd have no soccer at all.

    FSC is averaging 50,000 viewers for MLS matches. While that isn't nothing, it's barely above channel surf status, in a country in which more Americans tuned into US - England than game four of the NBA Finals, and doubled the audience for the final Stanley Cup match.

    How many years before you can ascribe responsibility where it's due, instead of just coddling the mixed agendas of the junta that be at MLS?
     
  15. soccerreform.us

    soccerreform.us New Member

    Mar 12, 2009
    Denver
    Club:
    Fulham FC
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    No doubt, you'll claim I spout slogans instead of arguments, but I'll keep trying...

    No, I make arguments, and people like you resort to personal attacks over and over in an attempt to discredit my arguments. People then ignore the discussion, because it's full of pathetic personal attacks.

    Case in point.

    No, they have about as much autonomy as your local KFC. Their payroll is strictly limited. We've seen how facility control is strong, just like KFC. We've also seen how teams are owned and housed in the same facilities, like fellow Yum! Brands Taco Bell and KFC.

    I share this fear. That's why I support of regionalized lower divisions in which promotions are mandated from each regional division. After that, I think multiple LA/NY teams will be limited only by the market. If concentration still mounts, we split into East and West first divisions in the second and first divisions as well.

    It's time to assign MLS financial problems to MLS, and stop assigning them to "soccer". MLS conversion can't happen overnight, but it can happen within a decade, with plenty of time for owners to sell out, or adjust to the new popularity of the club game. If it was just half as popular as the USMNT, that would be a massive improvement. Free of the KFC business model, it can get there.

    Owners are always upset when their monopolies are broken. But it separates the soccer supporters from the soccer speculators, and we need that separation to occur.

    How has revenue grown? As long as there is a cap, it will hold back top clubs in international competition. Here's where the argument breaks down. Here's where it's easy to see why pro/rel can't work for this group. No matter how much more popular it would make the game, it would expose the American pro sports establishment to pro/rel for the first time in their history. That's why they are so interested in controlling soccer. Thats why Bob Kraft has Sunil Gulati on his payroll. A lame, controlled, and even a money losing closed soccer league is better than opening up their other teams, in other leagues, to the specter of pro/rel.

    It's not a conspiracy, it's just good business sense.

    The threat of superclubs is overblown and frankly, a total staw man. When soccer doubles in popularity (and gets 2 catv viewers for every 25 WWE gets) more and more clubs will form for a march up the pyramid. If teams and owners are willing to cut MLS franchise fee checks that are almost 20x the salary cap, I don't think it's too nutty to ask what would happen if they could devote that cash to building a team instead. I think it's important to allow owners and supporters to develop the best clubs they can, no matter where they sit in the pyramid, and grow them as far in stature, and as high in the pyramid, as they can. I think that's why soccer, aside from it's awesomeness in other ways, grew to conquer the world, while our other, more domestic pro sports fell further and further behind. Finally, our soccer market is not oversaturated, and our market is larger than every other major soccer nation.

    Close. I argue that they know soccer is already a popular sport, but are committed to structuring it's growth so that it doesn't affect their other holdings. This is the power they were given at the leagues inception. This is the power that they'll ride until soccer succeeds their way, or until they can make sure it doesn't threaten their other enterprises and business models - unless supporters stand up to them.

    Wait. Yes! I only disagree with straw man #2: The manufactured need for owners to be protected from bankrupting themselves. What kind of owner needs that protection?

    A terrible businessperson.

    The evidence is in the success of the game all over the world. In order to disregard that evidence, you have to say that soccer grew to dominate the planet despite the horribly fair, and open business model in which it thrived.

    That defies all logic, but is a cornerstone of all the single entity arguments.
    It's worse than silly. It's an argument constructed entirely of air.

    MLS is not the only thing standing between us and no club soccer at all. It is, however, standing in the way of our full integration with the soccer world, blocking the progression of our top clubs in international play, and impeding development of our lower divisions.

    It is an example of a model that has failed this game countless times. It does create an environment in which leagues try to defeat one another. It continues to handicap top clubs.

    Once you believe that first div soccer can exist without MLS, it is easy to see it as a model that benefits a small group of soccer speculators, and not soccer supporters. It becomes clear that it's a model applied first and foremost to protect the closed American sports establishment, not the beautiful game in the USA.
     
  16. soccerreform.us

    soccerreform.us New Member

    Mar 12, 2009
    Denver
    Club:
    Fulham FC
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Hey, I know the fact that I'm pissed about the status quo makes me some kind of pariah. Nobody thinks soccer is cool enough to actually care this much that a group of speculators is manipulating it for their own ends, right?

    Whatever. Just don't confuse it with bitterness.
     
  17. WhiteStar Warriors

    Mar 25, 2007
    St.Pete/Krakow
    Club:
    FC Tampa Bay Rowdies
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    I agree with you. I think the MLS fan is scared of a open-system. I don't understand why don't they try if for a year. The problem is the casual soccer fan only wants to watch a team in the best league. Half of the crowds are band-wagon fans, I wonder how many fans Seattle would have if they were back in D2.
     
  18. soccerreform.us

    soccerreform.us New Member

    Mar 12, 2009
    Denver
    Club:
    Fulham FC
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Trying it for a year wouldn't give an accurate representation. In order to get the investments in line (people are paying 20X the annual salary cap just to get into the league, money with which they could be building their club) USSF would have to commit, over the screaming temper tantrums of some MLS owners, and their client President Gulati.

    I don't think the casual fan only wants to see the best team play. I think supporters want to help build the best team. That's what independent clubs and pro/rel give them a chance to do, and that's a chance that MLS doesn't give them.

    Instead, we get MLS outlets. Not the same kind of passion.
     
  19. CCSUltra

    CCSUltra Member+

    Nov 18, 2008
    Cleveland
    Club:
    Hertha BSC Berlin
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Your statement that you somehow care more about soccer than the rest of us is as pathetic and tiresome as your comparisons of American sports to KFC.

    Also, your conspiracy theories of NFL owners trying to keep soccer down remind me of this guy...

    [​IMG]
     
  20. WhiteStar Warriors

    Mar 25, 2007
    St.Pete/Krakow
    Club:
    FC Tampa Bay Rowdies
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    You know that if we had pro-rel you would still have a team in Cleveland.
     
  21. chapka

    chapka Member+

    May 18, 2004
    Haverford, PA
    Club:
    Philadelphia Union
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Please tell me how, say, an Ipswich Town fan can "help build the best team" for Ipswich Town.

    Are Ipswich Town fans then bad, selfish people, and is that why Ipswich Town isn't at the top of the Premier League? Or is it that the only people who actually help teams in the English leagues build the best teams are gazillionaires who can outspend the gazillionaires who own the other teams?

    So far, despite a lot of rhetoric, the only concrete benefits of promotion and relegation you've offered have been:

    1. Increased investment in lower division soccer, and
    2. Better performances in the Concacaf Champions League, fueled by the development of superclubs.

    Meanwhile, your entire argument is premised on the idea that there exists a huge untapped reservoir of capital that could be invested in top flight soccer to raise wage bills from $3 million to $300 million in a few years' time.

    How can you expect to be taken seriously?
     
  22. chapka

    chapka Member+

    May 18, 2004
    Haverford, PA
    Club:
    Philadelphia Union
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    What on earth are you talking about?
     
  23. WhiteStar Warriors

    Mar 25, 2007
    St.Pete/Krakow
    Club:
    FC Tampa Bay Rowdies
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    That's because USL terminated the franchise. USL runs the clubs not the owners.
     
  24. CCSUltra

    CCSUltra Member+

    Nov 18, 2008
    Cleveland
    Club:
    Hertha BSC Berlin
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    There was also no one interested in buying the team because it was hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt.
     
  25. chapka

    chapka Member+

    May 18, 2004
    Haverford, PA
    Club:
    Philadelphia Union
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Sorry, but that's just wrong, on so many levels it's hard to know where to start.

    First, as you and soccerreform always do, you're conflating MLS (which does have a lot of central control over teams) with other US leagues, which are set up exactly the same way most world soccer leagues (with "independent clubs") are but without promotion and relegation. Fact is, the MLS single-entity system would have prevented the City Stars from folding, as it has for other teams in the league over the years.

    The City Stars folded because they were losing money and could not pay their players. That would kill a team in any league. And the Football League and Football Conference in England also punish and expel member teams that fail their financial requirements. They're empowered to do so by the franchise agreements they have with the teams in their leagues. Does the Football League "run the clubs not the owners"?

    Ironically, what really killed the City Stars was promotion. They were the most successful team in USL-2, so they were offered the opportunity to move up to USL-1. There, they were regularly thrashed (as promoted teams often are), their new revenues didn't match their new investments, and the club foundered, as promoted and relegated clubs often do.

    In other words, I repeat: what on earth are you talking about?
     

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