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

Plus the whole premise that promotion and relegation creates passion is completely meaningless. Sports fans in the United States are pretty passionate about their teams.

Supporters are virtual stockholders? Tell that to Manchester United fans. They have a lot of sway with their owners. American sports teams are just as dedicated to the fans. Hell, look at the Sons of Ben.

A lot of your "passionate" spiel is pretty disrespectful to the supporters of American soccer teams. Go up to them and tell them their not passionate.

 

Compared to Bitish and Argentinians the rest of the world are lame! those dudes are crazy about football, we can never match them but we can do a little better, like some say "pocos pero locos" we are few but crazy.

 

Klinsmann is right soccer in the U.S. is for the rich so they can get scholarships in college, in other countries the poor kids play in inner cities and they play at lower level clubs and at least they have a chance with the pyramid system, but in the U.S. MLS/Mcdonalds system is King and we will never be in the top 10 of soccer and that's a fact.

 

Why not?

What, specifically, is it about MLS that you think means they can't generate "passion," as measured by television ratings?

Specifically, the NFL also has territorial team rights, expansion fees, and a lack of promotion and relegation, and they get excellent television ratings. What is the difference between MLS and the NFL that you feel makes one "Taco Bell" and the other one capable of generating "widespread passion"?

 

http://soccernet.espn.go.com/world-.../us/us-scatters-pondering-been?cc=5901&ver=us


U.S. needs to change the system....we are the only country where our pyramid is upside-down.

 

Change youth soccer, yes.

Promotion and relegation? I say no.

 

Pro/rel - yes in 10 years

 

That's a pretty convincing argument.

 

What is that supposed to mean?

 

It means that the pro clubs should have development academies set-up where as a player you can say you know what after high-school I am going to the academy for this club because I want to be a pro player, instead of going to college.

Also pro/rel is important because it gives the players and the bottom clubs a set goal, we will work our asses off so we can have the best players so that one day we can play in the Big league. In the U.S. it doesn't happen that way most of the players drafted to MLS are from college, so the scouts don't really look for players in lower leagues and if they do MLS picks the best, but it still leaves the bottom clubs with no hope.

Read this only Tampa and Vancouver have a residency program and that's the future of soccer in America:
http://soccer.fakesigi.com/2010/02/hello-time-bomb-vancouver-whitecaps.html

 

Right. And they do, most of them.

Plus, the NCAA is far from ideal, but the 350 or so NCAA DI schools do act as a feeder as the bottom of a pyramid should, identifying and developing players who slipped through the cracks. A system that developed Kasey Keller, Clint Dempsey and Charlie Davies can't be completely broken.

Nonsense. Are you saying that a player for, say, Torquay United thinks that if his team is promoted from League Two to the Premier League he'll go with it? Or that if he is League Two's top goalscorer and a standout star he'll stay in Torquay?

Players advance in England just like they do anywhere else: by signing with a bigger team.

Most of the players drafted are from college because if an MLS team identifies a pre-college prospect, it can skip the draft and sign him directly.

Because the top Premier League teams never poach other teams' best players, apparently.

 

Your last point does not apply to MLS! no free agency remember. your other points are good.

 

Rosters get completely revamped. I think Real Sociedad has 6 players staying this season that have never played in La Liga.

 

No, but MLS can poach players from the lower divisions, which is what WSW was talking about. Players get promoted much more easily than teams do in any system.

 

What I meant was residency programs like in Europe, only Vancouver and Tampa has such a program and thats where youth development needs to start.

 

Why?

The difference between a "residency" program and a non-residential development program is that, in one, the kids live in a dorm, and in the other, they live at home.

This is like complaining that no American child gets an education because there are no public boarding schools.

A residency program makes sense for the National Team, because it means players from all over the USA can come and train together. It makes less sense for a team trying to develop home-grown talent from its local area. The Fire is also creating a "hybrid" system where players from in Chicago live at home and players from around the country are given scholarships to local boarding schools, where they'll get just as good soccer training but also a decent education, which is unheard of in most European soccer academies.

 

Loved your post, but I hadn't heard of this with the Fire, and that's an awesome idea. The Red Bulls already have one of the best academies in the country, but I hope they latch onto this idea and run with it.

 

Don't know if it's started yet; last I heard it was in the planning stages. The Fire have opened "satellite" development programs in parts of the country that have no MLS teams (Alabama, I think?) and the plan is eventually if they develop some potential talent there to bring them in to Chicago to attend school at a local boarding school and train with the Fire academy.

 

I just realized I never responded to this. At least I don't think I did, anyway.

So, if there was this big groundswell of support for an independent, pro/rel system in the United States, why didn't it happen before MLS? Why didn't it happen before NASL? Why didn't it happen after NASL imploded? This is a great business model, and as you said before, it has a trillion dollar track record. Should businesses have been lining up to invest in it then?

The fact of the matter is, there isn't that support. MLS is just fine. It's a young, growing league. Most posters on BS are older than our soccer league. I don't think it's perfect, but I'm happy to have a team to support and I can't wait til I move to about 2 miles from Crew stadium in less than a month.

 

I've been reading this whole thread (all 18 pages of it LOL) and agree with many of the statements you guys have been making.

Pro/Rel would be a logical next step for soccer in the United States, if/when we get to the point to where the U.S. can support several divisions worth of viable clubs. The second division would have to be able to be economically stable enough to send teams to Div 1 (Premier League).

More stadiums must be built, support bases must increase, etc. before many of the lower division clubs could be moved into MLS.

While I do agree that more options for professional play at the bottom of the pyramid will increase the quality of play across the board, I also firmly believe that more options for play among MLS substitutes will have similar effect.

If we want to perform better in the CONCACAF Champions League, the first thing MLS needs to do is raise the salary cap somewhat in order to allow for increased roster sizes, and bring back the reserve league to allow our subs to log valuable minutes. This will increase the quality of play across the board for all teams.

While the open league - pro/rel debate is an important one, I believe it misses the point as to why we haven't been as successful as we'd like to be in International tournaments.

-- Sorry about the long post!

 

I agree, MLS is attempting to incorporate the "hotbeds" of support slowly but surely into the first division. Now we see Philly, next Portland and Vancouver with Montreal around the corner.

Once all of these spots are tapped and the First Division (MLS) teams are selling out stadiums and there is a huge demand for soccer here, I think we'll have a situation to where the lower division owners will begin to step it up financially to tap into their support base.

Once we have this, pro/rel will have to become a reality!