Wonder what happens when it comes out in a few years that LAFC didn't convince Bale to take a $30 million per year pay cut to sign as a non-DP? Oh who am I kidding, Don and Co. will just retroactively change the salary cap rules if that ever gets leaked.
Maybe narrative is the wrong word. I had a rough night. The general idea that a MLS manager has to have played or been part of an MLS coaching staff to have success in MLS. The bozos who loudly declared that since Cherundolo coached a U-15 and Las Vegas team, neither of which they likely ever watched, he wasn't yet ready for MLS. Get that shit out of here.
This definitely makes sense. When it came to attracting non-American fans, MLS shot themselves in the foot with the Americanized rules, but they did what they had to do at that time. Would it have worked if they had regular rules from the start? We'll never know. The Crew's original plan was to get the youth teams and families and a lot of them might have been confused/dissatisfied if the clock started at 0:00 and then went to 90...but the game continued until the away team scored the tying goal at 90+2. How many times would Johnny's youth team/league have come if "the rules are weird." Some NYRB fans swapped and that sort of makes sense due to proximity. I read somewhere that the founder of BigSoccer switched and I think that was due to the corporate takeover.
You see a lot of those concerns with fans in Europe as well--and it extends to the team level. There was a team this season who got drawn against RB Leipzig from the Hamburg area whose stadium was not up to standards (artificial turf). St. Pauli and Hamburg SV refused their stadium to be used for the match for those reasons, so it ended up in Dessau (in the former East Germany) and then in Leipzig's stadium when the grass at the Dessau venue was affected by what may have been (and likely was) sabotage. RB is not well liked among German fans as a "plastic" club. https://newsingermany.com/game-rescheduled-by-rb-leipzig-in-the-dfb-cup/
The problem wasn't the rules. The problem was that hard core life long fans of this or that foreign club stuck their noses up at the very suggestion that they attach themselves to some crappy American soccer team. I was a (fill in the blank fan) in the cradle, my father and grandfather too, and you want me to go root for something called the Wizards? It is to laugh. What MLS failed to grasp was that people were not "soccer fans", they were Chelsea or Bayern Munich or AC Milan fans and it didn't transfer. MLS figured foreign fans would automatically flock to their games and instead focused on families, which required Dad to be the prime mover and Dad didn't like soccer. The only difference for Johnny was that the clock was not displayed at the field. It existed only on the referees wrist. Time was added to almost every game, they just didn't know how much. What corporate takeover?
Maybe it wasn't the corporate takeover, but a bunch of stuff, but the way this was worded makes me think: "The MetroStars/Red Bulls alienated me into the arms of NYCFC." I have vague memories of slightly different words being used elsewhere. Or not. It's been seven years. (Of the current admins being invisible, but that's another story.)
I disagree with a lot of this.Fans came out when the league first launched but MLS was focused on being family friendly. The same fans the league has bent over for in the last decade were the exact type of fan the league didn't want their first dozen years of existence. You also wrote something hilarious. There was no such thing as an American Chelsea fan in 1996.
Ah, the whole Austrian energy drink deal. As for the current administration, there is one guy whose name you know well who is still involved. And since the new owner is a shithead and the thing is basically run by some woman in Oregon, well, they're all best ignored
Part of the original plan was to go for the youth teams, in hopes the kids would grow up and then take their own kids. Of course this involved things like censoring the supporters, putting families in sections right beside them, etc. Bill was kind of right though. The hardcore Euro fans weren't gonna start paying $35 a ticket to see MLS in 1996. You probably couldn't even have paid them $350 plus beer and parking. (Beer not applicable in Columbus, IIRC, although there may have been portable tubs.) And as far as American Chelsea supporters? There was at least one in Cleveland.
How many people around here remember the days when Big Internet Group had a ton of different sites and even more URLs registered? I remember BigHoops, BigCycling and BigPundit. BigFooty is still around. There was that rival site that I can't remember that a lot of us flocked to when BigSoccer was down for a week. There was even a whole spinoff of BigSoccer's idea called _____fan.com. I think I know who started it, but I'm not entirely sure. MetroFan now redirects to Jesse's own site. I believe MetroFanatic was the original MetroFan and there was some sort of drama which resulted in the Fanatic spinoff. At the rate retro is going, give forums a few more years and they'll come back in popularity.
Part of the original plan was the shootout. Both were horrible ideas. I don't know how many hardcore Euro fans there were in 1996 but there didn't seem to be too many. I wouldn't pay $35 back then, I had great seats for less than half that price. Sure, the same way I saw a kid wearing a Crystal Palace jersey in Canton, Ohio yesterday. The hardcore Chelsea fans didn't show up until Roman was dumping money into the team. I can't tell you the number of Chelsea fans I've met who have never heard of Dennis Wise.
When were tickets $35? I grew up in Nelsonville and we were dirt poor, yet we had season tickets and they were pretty darn good seats. I can assure you that if tickets were anywhere close to that price, I probably would have never went to a game.
Lest we forget the shootout winner got one point, whereas the loser got nothing. Have you meet Brook? The guy was a hardcore fan when I first met him and that was about 2004 or so.
In 1996, GA tickets (north end of Ohio Stadium) were maybe $5. I think the price was increased to $7 for the 1997 season. By 1999 and into 2001, the $17 ticket was definitely a thing for lower sideline and we had some of the lowest prices in the league. (Archive.org for that info.) I'm guessing that club seats may have been $20-25 around that time. Go forward a few years and look at LA or NY prices for whatever passed as premium seating options and a $35 ticket might not have been out of the question. My "$35 ticket" comment wasn't necessarily referring to Columbus.
The kids are getting pricey: FC Cincinnati have signed midfielder Stiven Jimenez to a Homegrown Player contract, the club announced today. Jimenez, 15, becomes the youngest player in club history to sign for FC Cincinnati. He signs a deal through the 2025 season with club options for 2026 and 2027. Additionally, FC Cincinnati acquires Jimenez’s Homegrown Territory rights from D.C. United in exchange for $50,000 in 2022 General Allocation Money (GAM) as well as $200,000 in conditional GAM if Jimenez signs a second MLS contract with FC Cincinnati and an additional $300,000 GAM if certain performance-based incentives are met. D.C. United would also retain a percentage of GAM should Jimenez be traded within MLS.
I had "club seats" at the shoe for the first 2 seasons and the avg price for the ticket was just over $10 per game if I recall correctly. The club seats were those wooden folding chairs that were behind the benches.
Austin "co-owner" Matthew McShirtless is rumored to be part of the group trying to buy the Washington Commanders from the disgraceful Dan Snyder. Apparently, they're old pals, as Matt and his lovely Brazilian supermodel wife spent Super Bowl weekend on Snyder's yacht.
It was absolutely a mistake to use them at the end of regular season games, but the MLS-style 30 yard shootout is still far superior to PKs and should be used in knockout games the world over. I will die on this hill.
Maybe... maybe...allow one defender starting on the PK spot plus the goalkeeper starting on the line and two attackers starting 35 yards out. That might be interesting. But yeah...in games where a winner must be decided, a 35 yard dash adds excitement that spot kicks can't.
One of my favorite parts of practice when I was a kid was MLS Shootout. I agree that it is better than kicks from the spot for a game that must have a winner. The best would be a complete replay, but that ain't happening in MLS.
My hot take - I think we should decide knockout rounds with extra time where you take off a player every 5 minutes until someone scores.
Want some company on that hill? Because I've always agreed with that. Shootouts involve more aspects of soccer. Dribbling, cutting, closing down angles, decision-making -- plus it wasn't overwhelmingly in favor of the shooter the way PKs are. Using them to settle regular season matches (not to mention only giving the winner one point) was stupid. But in the event that playoff games saw them, they were exciting as all hell.