I agree with all this and in general I worry about the role that CL money plays. But I was thinking further down the pyramid. What does Ajax--by far the wealthiest club in Holland--making the semis of the CL mean in, say, the second or third division of Dutch soccer? Does Spurs making the final affect League One at all? I don't know, nor do I know if it even matters.
You only last as one of "the rich get richer" as long as you perform. Manchester United isnot doing that for years now and they feel it in their capability to attract world class players or even keeping them. You cannot claim ManUnited lacked the resources the last 6 years to dominate the game in the epl or in Europe. They spent a helluvalot on players and wages, but are gradually slipping from the top four. That's gonna cost them financially. They were saved by the bell (=the EL win against Ajax) from a drastic cut in sponsor revenues due to a looming second year out of CL play plus the loss of the money coming in from the CL participation itself. Top star players want to compete at the highest levels. When ManUnited starts having trouble to keep it's own stars (Pogba is one to be rumoured to look for the exit) your performance level to compete for one of the top 4 spots is threatened. Two years in a row playing EL makes ManUnited not so attractive to head to for real stars. Other clubs in Europe can match what ManUnited pays and with the certainty to play in the CL.
Anyway, my point was there's a financial barrier to entry. It helps that the Premier League gives you $100M+ on entry, rather than taking it but it still takes a hell of an investment to get there and to stay there. Looking at the Championship table is like looking at a list of clubs that have gone into administration or faced severe financial difficulties. It's a similar story jumping from the National League to the Football League. You have to invest the money up front if you are to get a return. And many don't. However, in such a fluid system there are always exceptions. Norwich are a small, well run club, who have managed to recoup losses through player sales. QPR on the other hand gambled big time and lost. On the other hand in leagues like MLS, Liga MX and the Argentinian Primera División, where there's a physical safety net rather than a financial one, we see the value of long-term investments rather than snap decisions. Thus we saw the Galaxy take the consequences of bringing up academy players too quickly without the panic buying of a hoard of veterans, and how many times would league topper Jim Curtin have been fired in a pro/rel system? If you're a fan of MLS you take it as is. You want to win the MLS Cup, if not, then the Supporter's Shield, if you miss that then your Conference, next home advantage in the playoffs, then just making the playoffs. Then you have time to watch your young or home-grown players develop into internationals and maybe move to the big European leagues, where you'll catch their progress on a Saturday or Sunday morning. In that sense MLS has an advantage over some of the other US Major Leagues. Given the choice between pro/rel and a closed league, I'll go with pro/rel but the US is far from ready for it. But there's really nothing to stop the minor soccer leagues from developing in the shadow of MLS. The MLS conspiracy theories drive me nuts. First Don Garber is picking the USMNT, now they're deliberately scheduling games (via clairvoyance) to conflict with the Open Cup. This is a symptom of the entitlement generation I'm afraid, let someone else do the work then complain when you don't get the benefits. I'm rambling... @USRufnex ... I assume you've corrected Brian. The Cosmos could have scheduled their cup tie 3 days either side of the Red Bulls game. They failed to do that and even moved the game to Manhattan, a long way from their supporter base, which put them in even more direct conflict.
Donot know what you mean by that. Ajax is indeed the richest club in the league, but this sunday May the 5th Cup Final they won their first price in 5 years. The last time they were in the final they got beaten 5-0 by low flying PEC Zwolle. So all that money doesnot mean you automatically claim the titles. This season they're in a neck to neck run with PSV with the only advantage of ten more goals scored. Very curious how the sobering uppercut received yesterday evening is going to effect the last two matches they play in the league.
No but he sure as shit "liked" the tweet~!!!! Wasn't he the one going on about who repped what? I can't remember. Pretty sure he was. And you know, we're supposed to be the ones not discussing in good faith and such. I however, DID point out his error to him with a nice retweet and explanation of how he was wrong.
This is almost exactly what I heard from Blackburn's CEO. He could bet it all on red and go for it next year but if the spin comes up black, with the FFP rules they'd be looking at point deductions, transfer embargoes, etc and the team would be in a worse position the following year than they are now. He'd rather steadily build and hopefully put together a team long-term that can make that jump. But honestly to me, he didn't sound like it was something that could be banked on. This was also when he said that he didn't think Jack Walker (RIP) could do today what he did with Blackburn in the 90's.
Jack Walker couldn't with just the money he invested back then. He's reported to have made Chris Sutton the highest paid footballer in English history on just over £10,000-a-week (though I've heard John Barnes earned more). These days he'd be better off restoring Darwen's historic name to the Football League. Darwen were the first Football League expansion team, the first to be relegated, the first to be promoted via a playoff, the first yoyo team, the first northern team to make the FA Cup semi-final, the only professional team to have suffered 18 successive defeats and one of the first to be relegated based on stadium shortcomings (in 1998).
Sure, but his point was that with the FFP rules limiting how/how much Walker could invest of his own money combined with the fact that Blackburn is a small market he couldn't get it done in the same way he did in the 90's, even if he had greater resources.
To be fair, I'm sure that MLS made its schedule with reliable knowledge about the dates designated for the Open Cup, even if they hadn't been published to the public, so that it could keep its schedule free for the weeks it will be participating. But that didn't mean it needed to shut itself down for rounds that it wouldn't be participating in. I'm sure it's quite normal everywhere for 1st division leagues to play league games at the same time that lower levels are playing early rounds of the cup.
Okay, this is what I see as the strange standards that MLS teams are held to that other football clubs around the world aren't. The Rapids were champions less than a decade ago & finished 2nd in 2016. They've bounced around a lot & have had some poor seasons in recent years. I have my gripes about the Rapids & the Revs ownerships but it's not like either has been permanently rooted to the bottom of the table. Kroenke's seemingly apathetic attitude to team ownership hasn't gotten him ousted from either of his clubs under the open OR closed system. Mike Ashley still owns Newcastle Utd despite years of acrimony including a relegation. At the same time, I have to feel that if Everton were in MLS, perennially drifting around midtable, year after year, they'd be held up as not pulling their weight. Now my response would be that they're doing as well as they can reasonably expect given their resources but by the logic presented in recent discussions here, I imagine several here would say that's no excuse?
It's disingenuous to declare that Ajax made this cup run on a shoestring. They have a vast, expansive youth development structure & scouting network. They invest there. The reason their transfer spend is relatively low is that many of their players are homegrown. Their salary cost is low because their youth products are at the start of their careers & haven't come close to their earning potential.
The clear reason why MLS is scheduling so many games in midweek (which also impacts attendance, accounting for the "crisis" the naysayers are trying to peddle) is that they changed the playoff schedule to avoid having an international break in the middle of them. Something they had been roundly criticized for for years.
I watched a bit of the USL game on ESPN 2 last night and my first thought was "so this is how the Open Cup dies."
In a league where half of the teams qualify for the playoffs, since 2009 they've only been in them 4 times. Their 2010 playoffs were when they were based on single table points. Colorado and San Jose played in the eastern conference. I mean, they still won, but they finished 13 points behind LAG in the regular season. They and SJ were in the playoffs at all because the eastern conference was so unbelievably sucky that only 2 teams qualified. Colorado has more than reached the bar of underachievement. Are there teams that have achieved less in that time? Yes, but saying you've been to the playoffs more than Toronto and San Jose and the same as the Revs isn't much to hang your hat on. How do you oust the owner? Indeed. INCLUDING A RELEGATION.
But I notice that TFC's and SJ's owners don't get dragged through the mud nearly as much as Kraft and Kroenke. Again, not that Kroenke doesn't deserve to be dragged through the mud but its more for his lack of care than his lack of $$$ given to the team.
Which is just the CL money. There's also increased ticket revenue from competing in a separate competition, and the marketing and merchandising that comes from the worldwide visibility of competing in the best club competition in the world. Really, the expanded CL has caused a huge distortion in income to domestic European leagues.
How popular is pro/rel among MLS fans? Any survey data out there? Have supporters groups taken a position on it?
I would have thought the difference is that in a closed league rigged for parity, there is more of an expectation of a cycle of success. That expectation doesn't hold in the Premier League, especially given what has happened with the top six. I believe Newcastle have been relegated twice under Ashley. Their fans truly despise him but he seems unmovable from their ownership.
MLS is never going to win with these people. MLS could enact pro/rel and they'd complain about something else like the fictional "Euro calendar" or salary caps. MLS could start spending at NHL levels, become the best league in North America and regularly have teams win CONCACAF Champions League and these nitwits would complain that MLS isn't the same "quality" as UCL teams. The USMNT could make the final 8 of the World Cup with a roster made up of 50% MLS players and as soon as they were eliminated the same crowd would crow about how it's MLS's fault that they didn't advance. They don't actually give a care about American soccer or the growth of the game here. Hating MLS and SUM (and now USL) is their reason for being. Support local soccer unless it's MLS.
I've dragged SJ through the mud, too. The defense sounded similar to Kroenke's, honestly: TFC seems like they were more like Orlando's ownership.
To my knowledge, no one has actually done a scientific survey of support for p/r among MLS SGs. Any survey that's been done has been in the form of online polls and the Deloitte report that was...shall we say...dubious. At the end of the day, it doesn't really matter if SGs like it or hate it. There are so many more real hurdles in the way of actually implementing p/r that what the SGs want or don't want isn't going to make a difference. MLS attendances are pretty strong, TV ratings are going up year over year, sponsorship revenues are higher and the state of soccer in the US and Canada is thriving without it. There's no incentive to implement it and SGs clearly aren't giving up on supporting their teams because their team can't get relegated.