I recall Thierry Henry deliberately wanted to receive yellow a or red card suspensions in order to not play on turf in an upcoming match. Dave Kaval also stated that Beckham refused to play at Buck Shaw Stadium even though it was at the time, probably the best field in the league. I’m also sure if Messi won’t want to, he will not have to play on turf either. Anyway, on the strength of Messi’s signing, all Inter Miami’s games home and away are sold out! Prety cool! All Inter Miami tickets, both home and away for the rest of the MLS season, sold out after Messi signing
Sorry, I had to laugh at that. American values of equal treatment? That's the dream for most of us, but that's not the reality. Putting other areas aside, money always gets better treatment, and that's what this is about. The league is built to make owners money through profit sharing and non-competition for players. Competition comes into play only where it affects the bottom line. MLS has always bent and changed rules for what they thought was best for the league regardless of what was fair. And as I'm sure has been pointed out many times, this is very fitting that Miami, a team which was born from bending the rules, gets Messi through the same dealings.
Also there will be a lot of pressure for a “Messi Tour” - to get him in front of as many MLS fanbases as possible, as with Becks. So we’ll see…
Or from that movie’s Argentinian version, “80 para Messi”. GO SAN JOSE EARTHQUAKES!!! -G P.S. = Take a guess which city The Golden Girls took place in.
Thanks for making my point for me. MLS is bush league. You just apparently happen to like it that way.
There's a spectrum, though, from corrupt to 100% by-the-book fair, and just because it's not all the way 100% by-the-book doesn't mean we should just throw the rule book out for some kind of nihilistic "let it fly!" ethos. In comparison to soccer leagues around the world, MLS is still relatively low in corruption, and we should want to keep it that way or even make it less corrupt. We have a DP rule that allows a team to spend unlimited amount on a player with minimal impact to the cap. That was available to Miami and of course there would be no problem whatsoever with them spending as much as they want on Messi in terms of salary. But the league cutting him in on Apple TV and Adidas $ makes me queasy. "All teams and players are equal, but some are more equal than others".
I wouldn't say 'bush league' by any definition I use, but the single entity allows for this type of stuff. The league structure isn't changing. It is working how it was designed. It's a big negative for me, but at the same time I don't believe that USL could have grown like MLS did with their more traditional structure. The money just wouldn't have been there. (Also didn't realize that bush league was your overall point. My point was laughing at you saying special treatment was against the American way.)
It's bush league for sure but it's better to have that and a salary cap than europe where a few mega clubs outspend their competitors 10:1 or 20:1 and always win every year like PSG, Madrid/Barca, and Bayern.
Yeah, I don't want to be a fan of a league like that - the perennial haves and have nots, like EPL. Seems that all of our big sports leagues have some kind of cap, and we don't have perennial champion teams in any of them I don't think. There are teams that do generally well over long periods but generally the fortunes of teams go up and down. To me it's a good balance. There's enough freedom under the caps that teams can elevate themselves above the norm, so it's not a purely random thing but at the same time the fortunes of teams go up and down and there are no perennial championship teams, only the occasonial multi-year strong runs.
When is this going to be official... Also with Adidas and Apple getting involved, we need an "Air" style movie about this deal
Hyka was not a bad player and seemed like a good guy, but another player that we broke, along with Danny Hoesen and many others. A few years in Israel, year in China, back home to Albania, and just a handful of goals in those 4 years or so. He was kind of like Fierro - pretty skilled but light and easy to push off the ball. Hyka had more 1v1 skills than Fierro, though Fierro was a better crosser.
Hyka left as soon as Almeyda took over. I don’t think he will have fit with his man to man system but he was a decent player.
We broke him? Before joining the Quakes he scored a goal every 9.91 games, during his stay with the Quakes it was a goal every 8.16 games, after he left the Quakes he backslid to a goal every 10.33 games. So, the zenith of his career was when he was playing in San Jose, he was a better player here than anywhere else. (Using this data point.)
No, ”We broke him”, the way I was thinking about it, is not about what he did here but what happened to his career when he left. Looks like Hyka didn’t get a whole of games and team hopped and then … (womp womp) done. Hoesen scored a few goals with Austin over a few years, then went back to Europe, played a few games and then…(womp womp) done. (May also be injury related in Europe).