Yes, I made the terrible mistake of making a joke in the past. Please accept my humble apologies. Is La Manga Cup the biggest deal in the whole world? No. But teams played a tournament and someone won so good for them. I'm certainly not going to sit and create a detailed list of criteria to determine whethere I think something is important. If you want to, go ahead, but it just seems petty and arrogant. I find it hysterical that in one breath MLS fans scream for more competition, then they find every single chance to shout new ideas when they come up. Who gives a ******** if teams are picked for exhibition tournaments? Why is the USOC not good enough because their are real financial concerns for travel? Why is a team criticized for having the most points in the regular season because the league is still experiencing growing pains regarding its scheduling? Watch the games and unbunch your shorts. Sports are supposed to be fun.
Oh, my God! They actually want people who like soccer to watch the games? SHOCKING! Yes, it has its shortcomings. But it's soccer and the players looked like they cared so why should I turn up my nose. Unless the whole point is to prove that I'm a better fan than everyone else by dismissing as many games as possible.
Monster, if you don't think I'm having fun by ridiculing the "Supporters Shield is the true championship of MLS" crowd, or the fact that the ballyhooed Interamerican Cup was actually a near-total fraud, you haven't got to know me very well, sunshine. If "number of cups won" is going to be used as a standard for relative MLS success, this subject is fair game. If one bullshit cup counts, they all should count. I stand by my list of desiderata for legitimate competitions.
No, but at the end of the day ever fan must ask themselves, "what does this competition mean?". Obviously those that carry greater signifigance (in the eyes of those that pay to watch) are the ones that are deemd important. Thats why SuperLiga is viewed predominatly as a friendly tournment. Mexican fans did nothing but laugh at it last year, sure quite a few watched it, but even those that did never treated it as if it were a great honor to win or be a part of it. Hell, Cruz Azul fans were exstatic their club pulled out of it. Even Pachuca fans didn't celebrate it with any real vigor. Chivas and America sent their second teams to it. Some US fans just want to elivate it to a level it doesn't deserve. Doesn't mean you can't enjoy it. But lets all be honest with ourselves as to what it means in the here and now.
Absolutely. The "problem" with friendlies in general is that the players involved don't take them seriously and don't necessarily play as though the results matter. Not that there is anything wrong with friendlies, which can be fun to watch, but what clearly differentiates them from "legit" league games and such is the effort of the teams. It's generally not as much fun to watch games where the players are not trying their hardest to win. The SuperLiga games OTOH looked nothing at all like friendlies. If anything, those games were more intense than typical league matches. The players wanted to win and were doing what they could do to make it happen. That made the games dun, interesting and compelling, no matter whether the tournament had some higher meaning. If people want to bag on the tournament for whatever reason, that's their perogative. But I find it hard to believe that any MLS soccer fan wouldn't want to see SuperLiga continue simply given the quality of play in the competition. If you don't like to see good games, what kind of a soccer fan are you?
After the first round, it'll be like 9 out of 16. After the second round, maybe 5-6 out of 8. It's the real championship determines the regional champion. It destroys SuperLiga. SuperLiga need something to survive.
Not this silliness again. SuperLiga is a completely different tournament for a completely different purpose -- to make money for MLS and the Mexican teams. The CCL ain't going to do that, no matter how many small Central American or Caribbean teams they add. I've said plenty on this issue before, so I won't bother to repeat it.
What Superliga does (at least it did for me last season), is break up the little bit of monotony that can be MLS during the dog days of summer. The teams are playing in hot, humid conditions against the MLS guys they know like the back of their hand by that point, and the intensity is somewhat lower to save energy for a playoff run in early fall. With Superliga, MLS clubs that particpated suddenly sprang to life playing their FMF counterparts (see LAG). It was refreshing at that stage of the season, regardless if their was anything riding on the final result. Obviously, CCL is going to play a part in all of that if the participants are the same in both competitions.
"to make money for MLS and the Mexican teams" so, I think the common sense to me is that the Maxican teams give up 0.5 ticket of the 3 Copa Lib to make it a real deal to make real money at least for the short term. 1 ticket to Copa Lib. will immediately make SuperLiga one of the highest level tournament and get respect from both side.
I don't think you or I or anyone else can speak with any authority on what large groups of people think about it. All too often people view things through a Big Soccer lens. The TV ratings did very well. The stadiums got pretty decent crowds, IIRC, although I could be wrong. Trying to attach some moral standard of competition is really silly.
The players involved already respected the games and didn't seem to need any extra motivation. I don't see how adding any additional prize is going to make the games more intense. Seems to me that your suggestion is only for you and some fans with hang-ups to give the tournament some "higher meaning" that it doesn't even need.
MLS teams took it very serious, mostly because of the inferiority complex they have with mexican sides. The mexican sides did not take it seriously at all. Sure they wanted to win, but it wasn't anything they coveted. In fact there has been a lot of press and talk in mexico that the Superliga is the event most FMF team doesn't want to play and they are being forced by their federation to participate. There were threads about it in the Mexico forums last summer. Also, i never said it wasn't an interesting competition. I just think its more of a marketing event playing on the US-Mexico sentiments than it is a valid boarder championship tournment (as it stands now). No one says you shouldn't enjoy the games, just that the games in the greater scheme of things are fairly irrelevant. If, SUM insists on propogating this tournement further in light of the announced COCACAF Champions League then they should repsect the teams that have qualified for that event by not forcing them to participate in SuperLiga. I know if NY qualifed for the CCL i would not be happy to see us having to play SuperLiga as well. That is serious fixture congestion over 2 and 1/2 months through the dog days of the calendar. To each their own i guess.
additional prize? it's the prize. it's the real prize. It's not only for me. it's common sense. What's wrong with real meaning. Do you know what Mexican fans think most highly of from their clubs? Winning Copa Lib. you betcha a ticket to copa lib. chagnes the whole thing.
Well, i did read a lot of BS talk in the Mexico forums and they supplied a lot of links to spanish media reports that seem to back up their claims. Even a few reports that indicated Pachuca's manager trashed they competition as being "unprofesional". Many pundits were calling it a money grab as well. TV ratings did ok, but were well below the ratings for most of the FMF league games. I think Beckham had more of an impact on ticket sales than the event itself. Also, they had 2 of this contienents biggest clubs involved so that helped at the gate too.
Club friendlies can have decent rating and attendance. When those European clubs visit US for exhibitions/friendllies, they get pretty good attendance
Well, the Pachuca fans and players that I saw in Robertson stadium last summer seemed to me to celebrate their semi-final win over Houston with what I'd call real vigor. Of course, that sort of characterization is in a matter of opinion, but the Pachuca fans with whom I got into a bit of a discussion over whether it was ok for me to stand and block their views of the PKs seemed fairly vigorous. Also, here's the America line up from their game in Houston, which happens to include the South American player of the year for 2007 -- that wasn't their second team: I'd also just add that the Copa Sudamericana, which some people have mentioned as a tourney that should count as legit, includes two teams that participate by invitation, Boca and River. That's because the CSF believes that Boca and River ensure that the tourney will be commercially successful in Argentina and will help attract sponsors.
I don't think anyone disputes that fans want to see their teams win, especially after paying money to watch. But i would challenge you to visit a Pachuca site and ask their honest opinions of the event itself from a competitive standpoint. Thats all fine, but why didn't you post the line ups from Chivas and America's other matches. Not what i would call first choice squads by any stretch.
I agree. It's not like the CCC is all that meaningful to MFL teams either, especially in the early rounds, and now we have more of those early rounds with the CCL. I bet they are waiting with baited breath. All of this to qualify for the Club World Cup, something only UEFA and CONMEBOL teams have won, and even it doesn't mean a whole lot to the Europeans. As for the "legtimacy" of qualification, some of the very same people who think it is critical for MLS teams to qualify for SuperLiga based upon how a team did in the post-season will turn around and argue that to too many teams qualify for the playoffs now, thus depriving the MLS Cup winner of the legitimacy of the SS winner. To say nothing of the fact that by the time the MLS Cup winner gets to SuperLiga, the roster usually looks quite different from the team that won the "dubious" honor to earn them qualification in the first place. MLS can't win for trying here. To me, it still boils down to the games, and based on the intensity of the games last year, I would much rather watch the Dynamo play an MFL club in SuperLiga than some CONCACAF minnow in front of 3,000 people in an early CCL game.
Your description would also fit many friendly games. Doesn't make friendlies meaningful. A competition is meaningful if the winning team can claim to be the best of a meaningful group. "The best of MLS and FMF" is a meaningful group. "The best of MLS and four arbitrarily invited FMF teams" is not meaningful. I'm not saying I won't watch. It should be good soccer, so I'll watch. But watching and giving a flying f--k about who wins are two different things. ------RM
You couldn't be more wrong. I saw with my own eyes last year how badly Mexican sides wanted to win. The tournament was fantastic! The final was maybe the best soccer match I've been to in person.