News: Thursday, January 26, 2017

LOL I don't know why an All Star Game is seen as some sort of significant pitch. St. Louis has hosted plenty of one off soccer matches lately between European preseason and USMNT.

 

Carlo Ancelotti makes good points but he failed to consider how the sport or at least many clubs could virtually fold if they were relegated. That isn't uncommon in Europe either as teams literally implode and start from scratch when getting relegated.

 

He says "there are no consequences" but fails to consider that there are a great many consequences, particularly with how MLS contracts are. If a team in Germany or England gets relegated, the club gets less money and the players may take a pay cut if they have a clause in their contract. Over here if your team is bad then usually you find that the players get waived. So I think from a player's perspective it should actually be more motivating. When they say that "players are fighting for their jobs" in a relegation battle they are really only talking about a couple players at best. The best players on the team will get bought by a team in the first division and the relegated club will have to sell because they need the money. The rest of the players will still have a job because of their contract.

Let's look at Burnley and QPR from two years ago (14/15 season) when both of them were relegated. Burnley is back in the Premier League and QPR is still in the Championship. Burnley has 11 players from that squad on their squad this year and another 3 of them are on other PL teams. QPR has 8 players left from that year along with another 7 on current PL teams. They also have 2 players that are in Siere A now, another in Bundesliga, and 1 in the Turkish First Division. The consequences of relegation aren't felt by the players, they are felt by the owners. The players mostly just filter back up to the higher levels on different teams. So the teams may be different but lots of the players will stay the same.

You compare that to Chicago in '15. They have 3 players left from that team (Accam, Polster, and Fernandez) and maybe 8 that are still left in MLS. Philly has 8 left with maybe 4 left on other MLS teams. Colorado has something like 9 or 10 players from that year and NYCFC has something like 6 maybe. The consequences for a player in MLS are much higher than the consequences for a player in other league. They usually are playing for an actual paycheck for next year.

 

When I worked at Fiorentina, the team went from the first to the fourth because of financial instability. All of their players with the exception of 36 year old Angelo DiLivio were gone. The only reason DiLivio stayed on was because they promised him a job after he retired. They then reneged on that promise and he left the club after retiring as a player. Fiorentina then won the fourth with good but third tier lesser rated players, bypassed the third as the FIGC graced them , played in the second then got promoted again to the first. The only reason they came back up right away was because a new owner Diego Della Valle bought the team , assumed all the debt and invested in buying better players. That won't easily happen in MLS or many other American sports teams and leagues, for that matter. There may be some advantages from relegation and promotion but there are definite consequences that not many seem to consider. Even looking at most leagues across Europe, top teams rarely fight for relegation. The bottom teams do but they are usually the same teams that get promoted and relegated within a two - three year cycle. Very few clubs with maybe Leicester City last year would win the league. Even that team is fighting to stay afloat this year. It would be like the New York Yankees winning the World Series one year and playing in Triple A the next. It just won't happen.

 

Ancelotti exaggerates the effect of relegation. Close to half of Serie A clubs are relegation proof and they know it. Even if they were relegated they also know that they have too many resources to not bounce back up quickly. Even a criminally mismanaged club like Fiorentina can rest in comparative ease because they have a 40k stadium and the unconditional support of a major city. So pressure is for the tiny clubs. Many a midtable has taken it easy because they have enough points to avoid relegation and enough quality players to ensure that they can stay yet at the same time they know that they don't really have a chance for the title.

OTOH, in MLS pressure is for all clubs. At what point was any club really out of the playoff race? He mentions Vancouver but what about Seattle that scrambled and scrambled last year until they found the right combination to get into the playoffs?

 

There are no consequences when someone speaks out of ignorance with regards to the complete situation, and their money and team aren't involved.

Sounds like a BS poster. A lot makes sense, it should be done.....as long as we ignore the 12 thousand ton gorilla in the room.

 

What's missing from the equation in MLS is pressure from the fans and media on the owners for a failed season--or several in a row. You shouldn't need the threat of relegation for that.

Having over half the teams make the playoffs clarifies matters--your team stinks if they don't.

Miss several years in a row, especially if they aren't pushing max salary budget with 3 DPs and a well-funded academy, and you've got signs of an owner who's an albatross around the neck of a growing league.

What we don't (yet) have enough of in MLS are independent journalists willing to call owners out as happened with Kraft a few years back. That was an outlier. Too often, journos are either employed by MLS or are access-dependent.

So something as innocuous as Grant Wahl's ambition rankings becomes the outer edge of journalistic criticism of individual owners, when really this should be happening on a weekly basis the way it does on the dozen or more LigaMx analysis shows.

 

I think it is Demotivating for European leagues to not have a playoff system. If a team at mid season is insurmountably far from the top of the table, and yet reasonably safe from relegation, what is their motivation during the second half of the season? (\snark)

 

Atlanta has sold 27,000 season tickets. The team might cap at 30,000 season ticket holders. Atlanta is second behind Seattle.

 

When Della Valle bought Fiorentina from Cecchi Gori, the team was renamed Florentia Viola and relegated to the C2 or in the 4th division. The fans got behind the team and sold 33,000 seats on a weekley basis at the Artemio Franchi Stadium. The club had good lower division players but nowhere near the class of a Serie A. Playing in front of all those fans though raised their level and they easily coasted to the top of the league. The next year the FIGC graced them so they didn't have to play in the third tier but it was already understood a team playing in Florence would come up right away. Parma is on the same trek although they are going about it a little slower. I'm sure they will be back up real soon. This is a total foreign concept for American fans to grasp though. I don't foresee it happening now or in ten years.

 

Totally agree with this. There are a couple of other things I think help.

1. The league getting younger helps. There was and perhaps is a place for the aging superstars, however, young players who are still fighting to advance their careers and crack/stay in their national team are going to be more motivated throughout the season than an aging guy who has retired from international football and who is on his last contract.

2. I think the league, USSF, and CONCACAF really needs to make a concerted effort to add more value/prestige to its competitions. One way to accomplish that is more prize money for the US Open Cup, Champions League, the Supporters Shield and MLS Cup.

 

The apple didn't fall far from the tree: 7 times @MLS became a family affair. https://t.co/nNjWI3PKkJ #MLS pic.twitter.com/hKnMBVhqFE

— FourFourTwo USA ⚽️ (@FourFourTwoUSA) January 26, 2017

 

I look at this and think: MLS needs to do a better job of signing and competing for top-end Mexican talent. https://t.co/6WWpcUpZkY

— Paul Tenorio (@PaulTenorio) January 24, 2017

The European transfer window is still open. Here are 7️⃣️ #LigaMX standouts that should be on the radar: https://t.co/pzSE6PFeYX #LigaMXeng pic.twitter.com/tM9z5TC41K

— FourFourTwo USA ⚽️ (@FourFourTwoUSA) January 26, 2017

Should more of these players be on MLS radars too?

 

Prize money won't drive prestige or team priorities in Mexico or the US. It's been tried numerous times the world over also, in many sports. Doesn't really work. This region has many limitations to boot which simply can't be overcome.

The US Open Cup has actually been growing in importance recently, but that has more to do with growth of the league and time. No easy fixes here.

 

So the 780 mln Euro prize pool for the UEFA Champions League doesn't drive priorities?

 

Is Parma in the north?

 

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Crap.

 

Target is using soccer to promote its brand

Forbes.com

 

Yes, it's in Emiglia Romagna. Emiglia Romagna is generally considered the most southern region of northern Italy if you divide the country into north/middle/south. Parma itself is centrally located east to west and just about on a line that would divide continental Italy from the peninsula. By car and without traffic it's about a couple of hours south of Milan and a couple of hours north of Florence.

 

Bravo! Never got a chance to go but I bought a lot of prosciutto from there when I lived in Tuscany....

 

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Not sure I understand what happened but I guess they salvaged something.

Also in Charlotte:

Charlotte expansion bid suffers blow as city cancels vote on $44M subsidy. https://t.co/gfG1lbarVe Smiths could cover diff, theoretically.

— Brian Straus (@BrianStraus) January 26, 2017

 

City Council: We are not prepared to move forward on soccer deal for Charlotte

we got like 3 soccer bars in Charlotte.