I don't think this opens the floodgates, but now there's an opening in the wall for a steady stream to come thru. Some of those past failures were psychological. Maybe MLS wins 2 out the next 5 or something like that. To ever push well over 50%, and actually dominate, like Liga MX used to, they'd need to actually flatten the spending under the cap to improve their depth, if they don't get rid of the limitations altogether. Seattle is one of the deepest teams in the league in recent years, and they even became tenuous after losing a couple starters. Had to get creative and withstand struggles because their stars came up big. Will be fun to see them face off against a couple marquee names worldwide in the CWC. You just hope they can be competitive w/ the best it has to offer, while beating the other underdogs. Rival what the better Mexican sides have done.
I don't think structure of spending is nearly as important as total spending. Depth doesn't have to be bought -- and actually, for the sake of soccer in the US, pushing it to be developing and not purchased is important. The bigger gap between MLS and LigaMX is two-fold: one is overall average payroll across all teams; and the second is the quality of the average American roster filler to Mexican roster filler. Seattle competes and wins because on both those points, they are ahead. The Roldans, Vargas, Morris, Frei are all players they developed to levels from passable to stardom. And they will pay. But MLS overall payrolls still lag pretty strongly from a lot of LigaMX overall, structure regardless. And a bunch of MLS teams don't do a good job of getting quality cheap labor from Americans.
Their stars came up big but so did their other players. Lodeiro makes $2.1M but is at the very end of his career. Ruidiaz makes the same, not exactly a huge DP salary. João Paulo went off after 29 minutes and was replaced by a 16 year-old. Morris and Roldan are Sounders lifers. The defense stood strong supplemented by Frei's brilliance. Having Montero and Bruin available helped them through the early rounds.
Depth has to be invested in financially, otherwise you're not retaining many of your prospects like Seattle has w/ Morris & Roldan, or replacing them fully, or supplementing them. They've been able to add the likes of Rowe, Bruin, Shipp in the past, etc. thru part reputation that they almost have alone throughout the league. Then they've plopped down some transfer fees to fill problem spots beyond even their stars. They're pretty unique throughout the league. There's no franchise I'd rather have seen trying to break down the barrier. But how often are they specifically going to win a CCL spot and get thru the gauntlet during the comp to be the MLS rep? You can't rely on that. MLS has teams who have exceptionally outstanding seasons, who, if you get them at the right time, have as good of a chance as anybody to win CCL, now that the mental stranglehold was broken. One example is LAFC a couple years ago. They almost won it. But they in part collapsed because they had to rely on liabilities like Ginella. He was a weak link who broke the chain. It could have been a 16 year old Vargas for Seattle last night. Another example was Atlanta, who had stars, but some weak spots too. And then what if they're not the rep? Liga MX have like 8-10 sides in a given year who'd have a good shot at winning if they reached the semis/finals. There was an article a while back about at this point MLS already spent more than the Eredivisie, and the top teams spend close to the same amounts. And yet, the Eredivisie is still at least a little better as a league, and their elites far superior to MLS'. Obviously restrictions how you spend are going to reduce your competitiveness to a sizable degree, in addition to how much you're allowed to. Specifically MLS v. Liga MX, this breakdown shows a higher average payroll in MLS: https://www.reddit.com/r/MLS/comments/rlext1/mls_avg_134m_and_median_127m_club_salaries_now/ There's underachievement of spending because the saying that you're only as good as your weakest link has some truth to it.
Those are their stars, or maybe you'd prefer the terminology "core" players. They overcame lackluster replacements - Vargas & Rowe out of position. Other than that the bench effectively wasn't drawn from. They have outstanding depth for MLS, but it's still weak up against Mexican reps in this comp.
The study linked indicated it was 10.1m, in comparison to 13.4m for MLS, as of last season. Top team spending: Tigres - 26.5 LAG - 20.3 ATL - 20.1 TFC - 19.3 America - 18.9 Seattle was 13.6, so they spent solidly and wisely, in addition to developing a rep. They still spent quite a bit more than Pumas - 8m. Pumas had lower spending than all MLS clubs per that chart, but would beat a good majority of them probably, due to that spending being more even.
Could not compete in a few other competitions if you're in Libertadores. Drop one or two of US Open Cup, Leagues Cup or CCL. Would depend a lot on which are at the same time.
Sure. It's just becoming a lot, and virtually all of those have positives to them. Except really Open Cup right now which has history and not a ton else.
LAFC, Seattle, and NYC have the depth and cutting edge to win CCL. At least one of the group should make the next tournament. Toronto: rebuilding Atlanta: sigh. should've been our super team. LAG: underachieving since Donovan had left. Cincy 2-0 Toronto Luciano Acosta(not a yank) was the straw that stirred the attack on that team. He was a beast for them. He's also leading the league in key passes. Bradley had bursts of elite play, but didn't have the legs to put in a true center mid's shift. Cincy were able to too easily drive through the middle of the field. 22 y/o cb, Ian Murphy, and 21 y/o gk, Celentano were impressive against TFC's occasional attacking forays.
I didn't see the game, but checked out the highlights, and metrics. - Looks like Vazquez had a nice game in hold-up. Deft touches, outlets, and key passes, included a well-weighted assist. And Brenner botched multiple chances. Got to think Vazquez continues to be their man up top. - Cincy's defenders didn't have a lot to do, because Toronto picked up an early red. But Murphy demonstrated some nice distribution, which is what I'd heard about him and seen in some highlights prior to pros. Rated strong 7.5 on match. - It was a similar case for Celentano, but he even came up w/ a huge save, and posted an even higher 7.8. Excellent start to his promising career.
@glutton4Bolts So I found the part that I think is relevant, which is while the in league averages phase out transfermarkt over the season, it's a vital and defining part of the interleague evaluations, as well as FIVE years of history. I've put emphasis below from 538, but both of those things may work against MLS team ratings right now. League strengths Most club soccer matches are played against teams from the same domestic league, but some matches — like those in the UEFA Champions and Europa leagues — can be played against teams from different countries. To assess the relative strength of domestic leagues, we use recent matches played between teams from different leagues, supplemented with league market values from Transfermarkt, to assign a strength rating to every league for which we have data. To generate these league strength ratings, we’ve set up a system where we first assume that all leagues are of equal strength and determine how far above or below expectation each league has performed over the past five years. In order, we: Run through all domestic matches in history and calculate domestic team Soccer Power Index (SPI) ratings throughout time. Look at each inter-league match from the past five years and calculate the expected score of the match based purely on each team’s domestic rating at the time. Take the difference between our expected score of the match and the actual score and run these results through Massey’s Method to find a rating for each league, expressed in how many goals better or worse than the global average that league is. Regress these calculated ratings toward market-value based ratings, weighted by how many inter-league matches we have for each league. Run through all matches in history one more time, incorporating league strengths into the predictions for any inter-league matches to improve the final team ratings. After going through that process, our league strengths can be interpreted as a bonus (in goals) given to each team in an inter-league match.
There's some, at least provided that your GM is any good. Though do we really think Seattle spends much differently without restrictions? Would they have found as many cheap diamonds if they didn't need to? Lagerway already has a balanced team with them. But the Cincinnati dude would just end up paying Andrew Gutman $1M or something. Some of this is just shitty talent evaluation and recruiting, like anywhere. Bigger picture, the average spending angle is a bit deceptive. The variance in payrolls in other teams is dragging the average down; MLS isn't playing the lowest spenders in LigaMX in CCL. If you take Ajax and PSV out of the Eredivisie, do we really think that league is that much better? Do we think Heracles rolls MLS? Flexibility in spend will help, but I still think more spend helps more. And the other thing that really differentiates the Netherlands from MLS has nothing to do with spend -- it has to do with the basic American versus Dutch player. The league minimum American still isn't as good as the league minimum Dutchman, I think. So it doesn't matter if the US pays them more, that's sort of replacement level domestic player is hurting us. As that rises over time, that should narrow the gap.
Vazquez was solid enough. Someone each and every week has been screwing up chances created by Acosta. He's a bit like Mihailovic in that regard.
I suspect that the "Azteca fear factor" bit is there (not merely at Azteca, I use it figuratively speaking), but I think the biggest thing holding MLS sides back vs MX sides has been the timing of the matches. MLS usually plays MX while they're in preseason or in the first couple weeks of the season. Playing the final in May I think is a game-changer. I've too many close matches between sides where one (the MX side) is in midseason form and the MLS side is in pre-season mode, and yet things are close over a good portion of the 2-legged tie to think that the simple timing isn't a real factor.
It has that disparity on there too, and the gap is about the same. But for this exercise anyway we're more looking at better teams, because that's who's typically occupying CCL.
All of the factors folks are bringing up matter, and all contribute. The gap has been closing year after year after year. One fact folks maybe haven't mentioned in the depth provided as MLS academy continue to produce talent. We see that with Seattle. Obed Vargas can step right in and fill a hole. I do think this particular year the clubs from Liga MX weren't that good. Just average. It used to be that an average Liga MX club would handle any MLS club more often than not. [MLS clubs used to routinely be knocked out by Caribbean and Central American competition too.] Here are the current positions of the clubs Mexico sent to the CCL in the Clausura after 17 games. Cruz Azul 8th Pumas 11th Leon 13th Santos Laguna 14th I know that's the way it goes, and is often the case for the MLS participants. But this year, Liga MX's entrants were quite average. How would this Sounders team have done against Puchaca, Tigres, or Club America right now? I don't know, but I'd put my money on the Liga MX teams if I was forced to. I'm not trying to denigrate what Seattle has done in the slightest. I just want to see MLS teams win this thing with regularity before I think we're seeing a real shift in power. [And yes, I know where Seattle is currently sitting in the MLS standings. That's not a reflection of their quality. We know why there's in the position they are. Now that the CCL is over, I expect them to zoom back up.]
The current top-5 MLS teams are LAFC, Austin, Philadelphia, NYRB, Orlando. How would LigaMx teams have done against Tata and Almiron's Atlanta? Leagues Cup will pit the current best MLS and LigaMx teams against one another.
Seattle may spend more to be even better because a Lagerway doesn't think it's prudent to drop 6m/yr on Higuain, but it would be to spend on other 1's like Yeimars, Paulos, Morris', & Roldans. This is not to mention all the other teams who'd benefit from justifying spending more or better. Like I said, Seattle was pretty unique. They seem more competent now after they've gone through the growing pains of being a new franchise, but it would be more helpful to them if they got more shots at Matarritas than a Brenner. If Celentano & Murphy pan out, they're going to want to retain them, while not taking vet talent hits at other spots. And past Cincy was the laughingstock of the league. Liga MX has their own, like Juarez. Eredivisie has perennial relegation battlers, as you acknowledge. The medians are about the same as averages. That's noted in the chart. As far as the top teams, MLS has 18 of the top 22 spenders. MLS did just play a lower spender than anyone in Pumas, who ousted New England, before falling to Seattle in the final. Like I said, in spite of spending lower than anyone in MLS, they seemingly beat the vast majority. As far as Eredivisie, Feyenoord are way better than anyone in MLS too. I'd bet on AZ to edge all MLS sides. Over-achievers like Twente would be like a Pumas. Then the rest of the league is probably just MLS. But that shouldn't be the case by spending either, and the upper-mid table sides shouldn't be better than MLS. One league is maximizing their spending, other is minimizing. If the Dutchmen still have the advantage, it's negligible at this point, between our population, sporting culture, & now have some academy + scouting system. And if anything we have the advantage over Mexico now. They're desperate for players we develop. ------ MLS are still grandfathering in a low nominal salary cap, and then making exceptions around it, as opposed to just raising it to a flat #, based on what teams like Toronto & Atlanta have already been spending, so like $25m/yr. Also, I think they still value the name players for marketing purposes, when the TV ratings suck regardless, and what's selling tickets is heavily novelty & winning from utilizing all talent streams. What would get them to take a next step from a revenue standpoint would be winning over LigaMX fans in the States, when they crush MLS in the ratings here. Many would jump ship to MLS if what happened this week became the norm.
Well... from an MLS perspective it is a bit tough because the league has rules in place that promote parity. In Europe and Liga MX their are usually the same top teams competing for titles w/ some outliers mixed in. EDIT... but in this case I think Seattle has been the most consistent team for a while now. Them doing poorly in the league right now might have more to do with the congested schedule up front and some crucial injuries early in the domestic season.
Not likely. The wear and tear often drags down the league standings, especially for MLS. The Toronto-Tigres final that went to pens was probably two of the most talented teams, but I know Toronto had an in league CCL hangover.
I think if MLS can establish a clear financial and competitive advantage over LigaMX, than that'll lead to MLS poaching alot of the top talent from LigaMX which will only widen any gap that might exist. And at that point you might be able to start winning over LigaMX fans in the US.