I'm sorry for another LA thread, but I promise, that's only part of my point. But first a few thoughts about a lot of the comments here on last night's debacle. I am a neutral fan. I want MLS to succeed so I can keep watching domestic soccer for years to come. So, I most certainly have my biases but first I want to take on those who says this is representative of why MLS is such an inferior or league or that it demonstrates there isn't much difference between MLS and USL: Give me a frickin break. That's total BS. When Northern Iowa beat Kansas in the NCAAs did you all conclude that there wasn't much difference in the talent level of the Missouri Valley Conference and the Big 12 in basketball? When, a couple years ago, Appalachian State beat Michigan did you all conclude that there wasn't much difference between Div 1-AA level of football and the Big Ten. Or for that matter did anyone really believe that Appalachian State's athletes were as good as Michigan's. Flukes and upsets happen. They are part of sports. They are a even more a part of soccer than other sports, particularly so long as the bunker defense lives. PR Islanders are made up of MLS rejects. We already saw many of those guys try to make it in MLS only to fail. Adderly? You don't honestly believe that guy has suddenly developed into MLS quality? If the Islanders played in MLS with that same roster and had to play against this schedule week in and week out, do you think they'd honestly have a chance to make it out of the cellar? Put another way, do you think that if Appalachian State had played in the Big Ten with those same guys and played against Big ten competition on weekly basis that they would have anything more than an upset win at Michigan to hang their hats on? ************** One of the biggest problems with the sport of soccer is that the traditionalists refuse to allow it to change in a way that would rid it of a lot of the BS you see regularly in soccer. First of all, in a sport that is as politicized as soccer there is absolutely no excuse to allow the referee to have as much discretion as he does. In this day and age, with our technology, there is no excuse to allow so much to ride on the fallibility of referees. Anyone who watched the World Cup should understand that fact. Here are things that need to change in soccer, and I'll suggest my solutions (don't worry I'll connect this all with LA-PR in just a second). Be warned: some of my ideas below are not conventional at all and may make traditionalists queasy. Feel free to skewer my ideas below as I know so many of you will. 1. I think this is the most obvious and most popular: Goal line technology. This is a must. Although not connected with the aforementioned LA game. 2. Time wasting. I remember towards the end of the Ghana-US match how the ref allowed Ghana to just milk the clock with every stalling tactic known to man. Saw it in the LA game as well, and that started early in the second half. It takes away from the game, makes games less entertaining, and is a real buzzkill. Here are my proposals to put an end to this: (a) institute an objective in stadium substitution clock of eight seconds. When the eight seconds ticks off a horn blows loudly through the stadium. Here you'd have a clear objective marker with no wiggle room for referee "discretion." If you aren't off the field in eight seconds the opposing team gets a free kick from 25 yards out from goal. Further two minutes is added to stoppage time. If the stalling is excessively beyond 8 seconds a red card must be issued to the stalling player. No discretion just do it. Any professional athlete should be able to get off the field in eight seconds. (b) when "injuries" occur the "injured" player must be sent off for 10 minutes with no substitution allowed until the ten minutes is up. If this occurs after the 85th minute a minimum of two minutes must be added to stoppage time. This will be the rule even for legit injuries. In the NFL a team is penalized a time out in the final two minutes whether the injury is legit or not. The one exception to this rule will be when the injury occurs as a result of a foul actually called on the field, and the referee determines the injury is legit (I know a bit of discretion for the ref), a substitution will be allowed, however, a minimum of two minutes stoppage time must be added any way, and the same player must wait three minutes before re-entering the field. (c) keep real time... I have seen games where goals are scored, there's a 60 second celebration, another thirty second to restart, an injury takes 5 minutes to resolve, and two minutes are added for stoppage time. That's BS and everyone knows it. There should've been at least five minutes of stoppage time in the second half of the LA - PR game last night. Not saying it would've made a difference but there should've been nonetheless. (d)goal kick time stalling --- see a lot of this. After the ball is back on the field for a goal kick the goal keeper gets 8 seconds to put the ball in play otherwise the ball is turned over for a corner kick. (e) either team may waive a time penalty against their opponent. So, if I am in the lead and you stall to get time added that won't work. Stalling isn't a legitimate game tactic. It cheats the fans and the opposition of legitimate game play. Strict measures should be implemented to eradicate stalling. 3. I hate the bunker defense. I have never seen an entertaining game when the bunker defense has been used for the majority of the game. I am as much a fan of underdogs as the next guy, but an underdog should win because he was scrappier not because he essentially refuses to play the game. The NCAA shortened the play clock in basketball to outlaw teams that milked the clock to shorten the game in order to be more likely to win against superior opponents. The NBA has an even shorter play clock. The NFL instituted a play clock, outlawed the flying wedge, even regulated how much "hurry up" offenses could use, eliminated the pick play, outlawed entire formations. The NBA and the NCAA outlawed certain defenses, and certain offenses. All of this to eliminate unfair advantages that certain tactics gave teams, particularly inferior teams. Ultimately this is a sport, and the point of any sport isn't to see who can come up with the best gimmick to disrupt the game to neutralize better talent, but it is a test of who has the better talent. Because soccer is such a low scoring game it is far more susceptible to flukey outcomes and such than any other sport. This is why you hear Landon Donovan say something like "we deserved to win" after the US beat Algeria. In fact, "we deserved to win" is a very common phrase you hear players and coaches making after soccer matches. With all things being equal, why does anyone say these things. You rarely hear "we deserved to win" coming from the mouths of players in the NFL. Usually, the final score is indicative of that fact. But in soccer you hear it all the time as though the score didn't quite convince the players so they have to convince themselves. There is nothing to underscore the fact that, quite often, inferior teams earn draws or wins in soccer on a frequent basis than the utterance of that phrase. If every other sport can outlaw gimmicks and what not that take away from the experience of the game, or that allow inferior teams to unfairly stymie superior teams (on a regular basis), then why can't soccer? I know! I know! Tradition! The bunker defense is a gimmick. It is, in many ways, a refusal to actually play the game except in brief spurts on counter attacks. I don't believe that PR actually possessed the ball in the attacking third of the field more than ten minutes total last night, or even tried. It's all too easy to clog up passing lanes by putting nine or ten men behind the ball, and stymie an offense in a game that is already inherently slanted towards the defense. It makes for ugly unattractive soccer, and it is at least as unfair in letting an offensive player get away with being in an offsides position. So my proposal: Institute an illegal defense rule that requires a defending team to have a minimum of three players within a five yard vicinity of the last three members of an attacking team. This would be a team penalty that would result in a free kick from 25 yards out for the attacking team. In other words if my team is not pushing all ten men forward then you can't put ten men behind the ball. This would effectively outlaw a bunker defense in much the same way that there are illegal formations in football, illegal defenses in basketball and so on.
What does all that have to do with MLS being HUMILIATED every year in international competition? What LA did last night was a disgrace, sets us back in respect (that we really don't deserve), it happens every year, NYRB loses to a semi pro team at home from Trinidad, same shit, we are NOT as good as we think.
bah... go find another sport to watch - don't sully the game with a whole slew of unecessary rules because la can't beat a team playing w 5 defenders.
The best team in MLS should beat a last place second division team with 11 defenders, stop the ********ing excuses.
This. /thread In all honesty, I read the OP but I felt this has a lot to do with the salary cap. Other than that, goal line technology is the only thing that needs implementation.
Should, but that's the reason we play the damn game, because if they did win all the damn time it would damn boring. The Galaxy had a terrible game, deal with it, and quit getting all bent out of shape.
Actually you are wrong. PR used, literally, 11 defenders in their defensive third for almost 75% minutes. Last night was the worst type of football I have ever seen in my life. I was literally "shocked" that PR scored and I think the Galaxy just came unprepared for the match. Think of the easiest mindset a team has ever come in for a game but now think LA doing it 10X worst by thinking "oh this team is soo easy imma grab a hotdog while my team just passes for 20 minutes". That is how the game felt for me last night.
I didn't watch the LA game and so I don't know if your points really have anything to do with that one individual game, but I agree wholeheartedly that soccer is due for some major changes. Whenever mainstream sportswriters complain about the clock or the low-scoring or the faked injuries, we tend to get defensive, usually because the sportswriter knows little to nothing about soccer. But these are real problems. Every other sport has had to deal with various changes in the sports landscape, but soccer has resisted. On the one hand I'm not surprised since FIFA is as much a political organization as a sports one, but on the other hand I am surprised since the only major changes in my lifetime - three points for a win and no backpass rule - have been a huge success. I do think the simplicity of soccer's rules and requirements needs to be protected (so an "illegal defense" penalty doesn't appeal to me), but the World Cup final showed that it's still far too easy to destroy a soccer game as an entertaining spectacle. If I was in charge: 1) goal line tech 2) offsides is only called if an attacker's entire body is behind the entire body of the last defender 3) stadium clock controlled by the ref with clear rules about stoppages 4) clean slide tackles are defined very clearly so that the majority of the crap defenders get away with is outlawed 5) a straight red = down a man, two yellows = player is out but can be substituted for if team still has a sub. My thought here is that refs are overly cautious about giving a second yellow, knowing that it will completely disrupt the game. Now it will more closely resemble basketball when a player fouls out. The offending team still takes a significant penalty from the loss of a sub but not so harsh that a ref will think twice about inflicting it. Also, a red card almost always ruins the game as a spectacle (though if a player gets a straight red that penalty is deserved). How much could MLS actually do on their own, however? As Americans we occupy a very low place on the world soccer totem pole and I'm afraid the best way to kill any innovation is to give Euros a reason to associate it with "Americanization."
Oh, shut up already. You can level the same argument against any league in the world. Also, what are the ** in the title of this thread? That makes no sense.
LA made the MLS look like a joke last night, but the all star game did way more to make it look like a joke in more people's eyes. A team of all stars can't beat Man U. The best players in the league got destroyed by a single team, without some of its best players!
LA blown out some pud USL team > a disorganized and haphazard All-Star team against one of the best sides in the world (yes, even their reserves)
I'm sick of these excuses too. During the whole All-Star game all I kept hearing was "This is a team that doesn't practice together blah blah blah". Listen, if you lose you lose and if you win you win. I'm sick of the excuses, MLS isn't as good as you or I think it is. I've dealt with it and so should everyone else. Don't get me wrong I love MLS and I'll keep supporting it but let's be REALISTIC for goodness sake.
Did you feel the same way about ManU when they lost to a ten man KC squad or do you have some sort of double standard?
But what casual fan of the MLS even knows about the Galaxy's CCL game? It is a small blurb on Yahoo's MLS page. The MLS wants to grow their fanbase. What does it tell the casual fan, or EPL fan checking out the MLS that an all star team supposedly of the league's best players, got destroyed by just a single team? The all star game is a lot bigger stage. Stuff like this doesn't help the growth of the MLS, then again being run by idiots doesn't help either.
I really don't care about these pointless exhibitions to be honest. I think Champions League is the most important thing we should be going after, even more important than MLS Cup. Edit: Yeah I said it!
Soccer, Eurosnobs, and MLS haters are going to hate no matter what. Casual fans who knew about Manchester United and the big leagues in Europe probably didn't have their opinions change as many figured Man U would win anyway. Fans like myself take it for what it is, a circus involving a preseason-form top club versus a disorganized collection of individuals. It's not an excuse, it's reality. Losing to Man U is less of an indictment than losing to Joe f'ing Public and other assorted Central American teams badly. I suppose that non-soccer haters who are casual fans of the sport but don't know a whole lot about the European leagues may be turned off and/or turned into Eurosnobs. But the presumed alternative is to have no ASG against top European sides, which results in one opportunity to market itself. Ratings for league games are still a struggle and CCL games are a joke both from a TV and in-person standpoint. So yeah, I'm not saying that losing 5-2 with pathetic defense was a good thing, just that the damage isn't all that bad.
Why should I find another sport to watch simply because I'd like to see some rules changed? I want the NCAA basketball shot clock changed from 35 to 30 seconds, should I stop watching college basketball? I want the NFL to stop over protecting quarterbacks, should I stop watching football? How come I can't suggest rule changes in soccer without people telling me things like this, but if I suggest rule changes in other sports people don't tell me to quit watching those sports?
Because what you are proposing is a wildly different sport. I think your proposal cuts against the game's beautiful simplicity and universality in favor of imposing your personal preferences for attacking football. This is not to say that you aren't free to suggest all of the rule changes you'd like, I'm merely suggesting you might find greater enjoyment elsewhere.
You know what is a wildly different sport? This bunker ball BS that every inferior team in the world brings to every game. If bunker ball was the way the sport was meant to be played then they'd be playing bunker ball at Barcelona, Man U, Real Madrid, and so on. But they don't do they? you know why? Because it isn't the sport that talented athletes play, and ultimately, professional sports should be about how the talented athletes play the game. When the NBA put in a shot clock it made it a wildly different game where athletic talent suddenly mattered. Talent should be rewarded in sports instead of rewarding gimmicks put on by inferior teams and athletes. And if requiring athletes to stop lollygagging around when being substituted or else face a harsh punishment makes soccer a wildly different game then maybe it needs to be a wildly different game. While some refs will push these guys into moving it a bit it is hardly consistent. Walking off the field during substitutions or jogging a a 2 mile and hour pace is not playing soccer, its unsportsmanlike and should be dealt with harshly. Rolling around on the grass for five minutes pretending to be injured isn't playing soccer. It should be dealt with swiftly and harshly. And, yes, I think the game should be wildly different than allowing that kind of crap to continue. If watching some guy roll around on the grass pretending to be injured is your idea of a good soccer then I suggest you to find some other sport to watch. And I also believe that fighting should be banned in hockey.