Must be a Redskins/Dan Snyder fan. There's a salary cap. Snyder just makes big name signings to make it appear like he is spending money. But it's all appearance because you can't spend more money than the salary cap. He just wastes it on a big name that will sell tickets by over paying. Or how bout trading the farm for RGIII. It's all about selling tickets to gullible fans to fill his pockets. But in terms of practice facilities, scouting department, etc, etc they haven't spent any money to bring it up to NFL standards. They basically brought in Jay Gruden because nobody else wanted to go there and Jay is friends with the DC Haslett so they could save money by not having to fire Haslett when Shanahan went out.
Yeh and this is the key. You are not going to get a lot of fans outside of MLS markets to follow the league. If you're primary way of engaging is on television than the Premier League is a much better product. But obviously there is no replacement for live football, and the club representing your city. In my group of Liverpool friends nobody has any interest in MLS. I am probably the only one who could tell you who is the current champion. But we all agree that MLS comes here, we buy season tickets for at least a season. But here is the challenge, most fans only have have time for one team. And as we speak American soccer fans are developing a connection with a premier league club. Those connections are tenuous at the start but over time they can develop into something real even 6,000 miles away. So can you get those fans to shift allegiances, that's the key.
Why not? Simply having "better soccer" on tv isn't a full stop answer to this. There are variables within soccer on TV that go into play just as the variable of live soccer vs not comes into play. There was a time when the NFL wasn't really viewed nationally and the college game blew it out of the water (yes, even after tv proliferation). Now, it saturates the sports markets in the vast majority of places, period. Now it is the king ... and while it doesn't have a competitor at its professional level it actually has a very unique issue that no other sport faces at the same level. College football is all over TV, has over 3 times as many teams at the top level, and has that same number of local ties/built in connection that multiplies at a much higher rate than anything else. But I circle back simply to soccer ... so what if the Premier League is on tv? If Joe Schmo doesn't watch soccer anyway, there's only so much of a "quality" difference he's going to notice to begin with ... and why would he wake up at 6-8am to watch the Premier League when he can see the MLS on Friday evening, Sunday afternoon/night? The local connection would garner your interest for at least a go at supporting the club ... that's great. But, in your local Liverpool clique, how many have any type of actual connection to Liverpool? I ask because I simply have an issue, on general principle, on 'soccer snobs' who watch "higher quality" soccer and poo poo the MLS .... when the very fact that they don't bother is part of what is holding the league back. I'm going to call the crap wagon on this one here .... I'm sorry, that's just ... yeah I can't. I'm on Active Duty, have a wife that's had back surgery, and have a 7 1/2 and 2 1/2 year old. I "have time" for multiple teams in multiple sports ... especially if you're just talking about watching on TV. My LBV ... put yeah sometimes it's too easy thanks to those on the other side of things. But I see you still talk complete nonsense: http://www.fabral.com/architectural/case-studies/redskins-training-center/ ^ that's a 10M$ facility guy.
I'm not so sure I agree with you here. Almost every MLS fan I know has AT LEAST one favorite Euro or Latin American team as well. And why not? My wife is from a small Balkan country with a first division league that is way below the standard of the big Euro leagues. It's pretty standard for every Bulgarian fan to have a favorite Bulgarian team AND a favorite team from one of the top leagues. I've met friends of hers who support Levski Sofia AND Juventus, CSKA Sofia AND Liverpool, etc.
The more mls tries to make itself a mini-version of the Premier League, the more fans it will drive away. The mods on BigSoccer try and control any anti-mls posts, but on Facebook and Twitter, the truth can be seen by everyone. Expansion teams should be an exciting prospect, but instead, mls has become a joke with it's insipid decision to have three teams named United. The worst part is that real grassroots team like the Atlanta Silverbacks who have been around since the 90's, will be driven out of business by these terribly generic teams playing in football/baseball stadiums.
But you, and many others shit on the league for the things NOT like the EPL/europe/the rest of the soccer world. Pick a side and stick to it. Yes, because the league names the teams ...... OH WAIT NO THEY DON'T So all of the clubs in London are EPL clubs? Oh no, they're not ... seems to me that if all of the drivel is true about the disdain, the Silverbacks would see a surge in support. But you're claiming their death. You suck at math.
You are barking up the wrong tree. Aside from the rules, I have always encouraged MLS to be different. They could at least advise the teams so that we don't see the current crap storm. This is not England! This is the USA!! You suck at geography!!!
Wanna make MLS a huge League? Remember when we recently beat Mexico, Holland, and Germany? Good. Let's do the same thing in the 2018 World Cup, and believe me, the league will grow and Americans will watch the hell out of it. In the meantime, the US National Team is already making ratings records.
Wait, so now it's just the rules .... ... but you'd like the league to "advise" new clubs on what and what not to name themselves. Again, your math is crap. You also apparently can't grasp comparative situations. You suck at concepts ...
You, and every other pro/rel holier-than-thou conspiracy theorist on BigSoccer love to trot out this moronic, and frankly insulting, line of bullshit. I don't get a ********ing dime from MLS. This is an unpaid, volunteer position--all I did was offer to help moderate some forums. There is no conspiracy, no plot, no organized effort to "control" or otherwise direct any conversation about MLS--or anything else--on BigSoccer. We're not part of some conspiracy. Grow up and get over yourself.
Look, if the fish are just going to jump in the barrel yelling "You don't have the GUTS to pull that trigger!", how is that my fault? Wait'll you see how many European teams are "FC" whatever. Talk about a lack of creativity.
What are you smoking? I never said you worked for mls. What I said was that mls fans defend these names b/c so many people dump on mls and they get defensive. The moderators just have the power to perform a mob hit on anyone that differs of opinion, which is why I was banned over a joke. You getting all defensive about it just proves my point.
You were mostly banned for being an idiot who was dragging down forums. For repeatedly posting the same tired crap long after anyone had any interest in reading it. Like you're doing now. We get it -- you don't like "Euro" names. Got it. Why don't you just put it in your signature, so you don't have to waste everyone's time repeatedly posting it in every single forum in every single thread?
Especially Italian ones, all of which are imitating the English, seeing as the Italians don't even call the game anything resembling "football"...
The problem with lying on a message board is that your posts don't go away: Unfortunately for you, the post I quoted still exists: You're not the only pro/rel fan who throws this accusation around as if it's based in fact, and it's tiresome and insulting. And wrong.
Can we bring back Hans Wvolner Fleurbach? At least his anti-mod posts were hilarious. (I refer, of course, to the immortal "Moderators Are A Stupid Face"...)
American soccer needs time to evolve. English soccer started in 1863 and it wasn't until 1872 when the FA Cup competition was introduced, and 1888 for the Football (soccer) League. The league started off with only 12 teams and gradually evolved over a few decades until there were 22 teams in the First Division of the Football (soccer) League. What I'm saying is, it didn't happen overnight for England, either. Also, England didn't have the disadvantage of having to compete against the NFL, Baseball, Hockey, et al, and their teams weren't (and still aren't) spread so far apart I look forward to when the Eastern Conference and the Western Conference both have enough clubs to fill out a full season, whereas each team from each league plays one another twice. As it is now, I can't understand how it all works. How does 'each team play 34 games' (Wikipedia) when all clubs have only 9 opponents? If they play each other twice, that's only 18 games each per season. If they play each other four times, that would be 36 games per season. Why did the Timbers (Western Conference) play Orlando (Florida) of the Eastern Conference on 12 April? The fixture is down as a MLS match according to their schedule. They also played Eastern Conference side Toronto too, in a MLS match, on 23 May. SO CONFUSING!!! The MLS hope to add another 4 clubs to their leagues by 2020. Hopefully, more clubs will follow throughout the 2020's. Rome wasn't built in a day
Every MLS team, no matter the conference, plays every other team at least once. The conferences are not separate leagues. When Portland plays Orlando or Toronto those games count in the standings just like games within the conference. With the current number of teams, teams in the West play teams in the East once per season. That is 10 games of the 34 game regular season schedule. The other 24 games are within the conference. Teams play the other 9 teams 2 or 3 times. It is not a balanced schedule. The league is trying to make the schedule as balanced as possible while still playing every team in the league but also managing the total number of games.
Thanks for that, NEWTEX, the Wikipedia article from which I did my research is a bit vague regarding fixtures and what you've wrote has cleared a few things up! I had no idea that a team from the Western Conference would travel into the East as many as 5 times per season; that's a hell of a lot of travel! One of the biggest gripes of players playing in the English national leagues is travelling to away games, which is usually a long, boring coach journey. A 700 mile round trip is a long distance for us! Since MLS clubs have to travel such vast distances - Vancouver White Caps vs Orlando City sounds incredible to me - why can't they push out the boat that little bit more and make it a one conference, 20 team league. A 38 game season, each club playing each other twice on a home and away basis? That would create a lot more interest, at least as far as Europeans are concerned, since 18 -20 club leagues are pretty much what we're used to. Would that sound vast to North Americans? How many teams per league does the NFL/MLB/NHL/NBA have? Next step would be promotion and relegation from two regionalized second tiered leagues, eventually being made up of 20 teams each. The latter of those would take a good few years to evolve, but the former could be done fairly quickly. Would promotion/relegation create much interest to North Americans? Judging from what I've read from another thread on here, promotion/relegation only holds the interest of Europeans. It certainly seems a long way off. Maybe I'm trying to Europeanise what is yours, though I think those changes - which would take a long time - would make North American soccer a very powerful force. It will be interesting to see how things are in 20 years from now, with each new generation more likely to develop an interest in soccer; Older people are stuck in their ways. I can see team USA being genuine contenders for the World Cup
Americans are used to 30-team leagues with regional conferences/divisions and unbalanced schedules. The NFL is 32 teams, and MLB, NBA, and NHL are 30 each. In fact, a league with fewer than 30 teams is often viewed by the American public as "minor" or "regional" -- the NHL's rapid expansion from 21 to 28 teams in the 1990s was driven by the perception that it wasn't a truly national league with only 21 teams! Historically, the regional conferences saved money on travel costs, as teams would play regional opponents more often than opponents farther away, and playoffs were designed to compensate for the unbalanced schedules. Now, as for those distances: a 700-mile round trip is considered a derby for us! The California derby is a 710-mile round trip, the Texas derby is a 540-mile round trip, and the Rocky Mountain derby is a 1,050-mile round trip. For obvious reasons, those tend to be the only matches that involve substantial numbers of traveling fans, and supporters' groups plan those trips months in advance because they involve chartering long-haul buses or even planes.
The distance to the nearest other clubs varies greatly from club to club. To be clear to somebody who doesn't know, the Red Bulls have many clubs that are less than a 1,050 miles round trip. D.C., Philadelphia, New England, NYCFC, Montreal, Toronto, and Columbus (1,058 miles round trip according to Google Maps) are seven of the Red Bulls nine conference opponents that all closer than the Colorado to Real Salt Lake round trip which is 1,074 miles according to Google Maps. In the 2003 Stanley Cup Finals, the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim had to make three long round trips to New Jersey in about 14 days.