1. No overtime. 2. I like the home and home playoffs, but I feel like Chicago and SJ go jipped for winning their conferences. Fix it some how. Maybe 6 team playoffs as stated above. 3. Follow international calender (sort of). Summer season is okay, but don't play on weekends when it is a designated FIFA play date. What if the Burn were in the playoffs and Vaca had to go to a SA qualifier? 4. Golden Boot!!!! 5. Keep our young guys home - at least at first. Gooch, Yi, Gibbs, Casey?
Ridiculous comment. This is like saying the BCS works just because Miami played Ohio State last year. No, it worked out IN SPITE of the system, not because the system is good. I agree completely with this. MLS is unique in that it doesn't stop for tournaments like Europe does. To account for that, each roster could expand by two players and benefit without too much of a drop in quality of play. Even more ridiculous than your comment about playoffs. As someone who works in the sports industry, I can tell you to not hold your breath. How can you say that they can afford these things when the league is losing millions of dollars and only something like 2 teams turn a profit? More realistic goal would be be to secure better stadium situations for NY, DC, COL (in that order.) Slowly, carefully expand into ONLY profitable situations. Once each team is actually operating it's yearly budget in the black, then, maybe, begin to raise expectations, salaries, etc. Pumping more cash into a product that is losing money is not the answer. Don't put the cart before the horse people. Take care of the immediate concerns first.
I agree to somewhat followe FIFA calendar, but they HAVE to play on weekends. Weekend's have the highest attendance across the board among ALL sports.
Saturday night is proven to be the best time for soccer in MLS. I personally like Sundays at 4:00pm, but I'm not in Latin America where I come from. I think that the league should continue to expand the season in order to avoid as much mid-week games as possible.
1. No OT, it is a joke, and many fans automatically leave. 2. REFS. Can't say it enough. 3. If Hudson is fired, immediately send him to head the broadcasting crew, him and Wynalda together. Get Stone and Keough out of there, they both know nothing about the game, and make the most moronic comments.
1. Add San Diego, Rochester 2. Improve ESPN 2 Soccer Saturday! Increase attendance with new balsy play-by-play announcer, but keep Ty Keough, weekly wrap on ESPN2 w/ highlights, post game interviews and analyses. 3. Eliminate artificial turf and yardage markers. 4. AEG Build San Jose a SSS. 5. Move KC to Miami 6. Or expand to Houston, Miami, and San Antonio 7. New Galaxy Uniforms, Addidas 8. MLS Cup final in October. 9. Keep East and West conferences (which is smarter for this country) and playoffs, only change format to Top 2 from each conference play in Home and Away aggreagate series. 10.Solidify US hosting of FIFA World CLub championship in Summer of 2005 and participation of MLS deserving MLS teams. 11. Sign more sponsors. 12. Make FSW a cable channel 13. Increase attendance
My opinions: -Get Expansion plans FINALIZED. Rochester and San Diego next year, Cleveland and either OKC or Seattle (preferably Seattle) two years later. -Trump Adu as the next big thing for the league to secure better TV time and more sponsorships. -Get even more aggressive concerning SSS's (they ARE THE FUTURE of our league): *Make sure Chicago is continuing to make progress towards getting their new facility in Bridgeview *Oversee that Frisco is being built on schedule *Make sure that Chivas de San Diego will be playing in Qualcomm stadium for as LEAST AS HUMANLY POSSIBLE and working with Senor Vergaras to get an SSS secured in San Diego *Intervene in NJ to see to it that we can wrap this damn thing up with Harrison and the MetroStars *Press KSE to get our SSS up by 2005, mid-2005 at the latest! -Start doing some preliminary shopping around for a new TV contract -DUMP OVERTIME PERIODS (with the exception of AG playoffs) -Change playoff format to four total teams instead of 8. -Attract new investors with deep pockets who are willing to lose money to help out our league and make it even stronger.
1. Rochester and san diego next year 2. houston and philly in '06 3. seattle and cleveland in '08 4. SSS 5. DUMP OVERTIME PERIODS (except for playoffs) 6. Change playoff format to four total teams instead of 8. 7. Miami and San antonio in'10 8. Atlanta and Minneapolis in '12 9 avoid mid week games. 10 dump the conferences, have european-style leagues.
Everything pingundo2 put down, and get more coaches that understand player development. That means, dump Hudson and Sigi, and get more like Yallop and Sarachin.
BCS Quote: "Ridiculous comment. This is like saying the BCS works just because Miami played Ohio State last year. No, it worked out IN SPITE of the system, not because the system is good." Next person to compare the BCS to MLS playoff gets a tackhammer to the forehead. And yeah: 1. single table. 2. Supporters sheild gets money and goes to an international tourney, whatever the big one for our region is. 3. Playoffs become home and home aggregate until the single game final and include the A-Leage teams. MLS enters second/third round a-la worthington cup/fa cup. This is the least we can do as there is no relegation here ever.
playoff btw, #3 is supposed to suggest a seperate tournament with an open draw...no seeding. I know this is as american as sushi, but it is so exciting for the rochester's of this country. That means that there is no post season. SS wins the table and this new tourney supplants the mls cup.
Re: BCS What about the Open Cup? That's what you just described and we alread have that. I'd love to go to single table and ditch MLS Cup for the USOC, but it won't happen. So, I'm happy with things just as they are (especially the playoff format)...except for OT. Anyway, they've already done the No. 1 biggest thing they could do for next year...
true Good points. What i am suggesting with the tournaments would differ from the open cup in two ways. 1 It would be just mls and a league. No usl or amature teams. 2. The mls teams would proboblay have to enter in the second round instead of later. A league has about 20 team i think so the numbers would be right. Frankly i would like to see them be in the first round but the mls is kinda snobby with this one. it would be the same in that the winner would still have the opportunity to play in an international tournament.
Re: Re: 5 things MLS needs to DO next season. I could have sworn I watched the Fire/Revs last Friday night. Then again, that could still be considered autumn!
Re: Re: Re: 5 things MLS needs to DO next season. Not could. It IS still autumn. Winter doesn't start until the end of December. And the weather wasn't that bad--we still tailgated Hell, it hasn't even snowed here yet.
1) Find TV announcers that can actually tell people what is going on during a game. 2) League commericials: This may just be me, but it seems there is too much focus on the physical (especially fouling) side of the game. Let's see some of the beauty. And some of the commericials come across as whinny. (We HAVE great players, we HAVE great championships. Translation: See. We're a real sport too, wah, wah, wah.) Of course, it could just be that after seeing the same one for.......oh about......a million times.... 3) Actually, I think putting the city's name on the jersey is a good idea. How many times have we heard someone say, "I didn't know (insert city here) had a team." Couldn't hurt. 4) Along the same lines, let the home team wear white and the visiting team wear their dominate color. I know, it's a small thing. Still, I'd think it would be better than watching your team play somebody in white every week. 5) More SSSs.
Stop the Balkanization of soccer in the US. Soccer is for everybody. Don't emphasize the ethnic groups.
1. Add League review of suspect diving (Stoichkov) incidents and add suspensions & fines if clear evidence of flopping exists. Add extra games if flop results in penalty kick goals, etc. 2. Require 1 minute of time off the pitch for every 30 seconds that a player remains down and delays play. 3. If we continue with overtimes, each team plays with 10 a side during overtime. Why? If you've ever seen both sides lose 1 or 2 players, the pace of play really picks up end-to-end, and it becomes much more difficult to stop teams at midfield. 4. Add Chivas and let them trade other teams for their foreign player allocations if they determine that will benefit Chivas's development plan. But no increase in total foreign player allocations, and they're still subject to the Cap. 5. Balance out the Chivas expansion with a one team promotion of an A-League team. In future years, establish a promotion-relegation playoff each year. Bottom MLS team plays top A League team for the next year's MLS spot. Finally, ENOUGH about the refs, unless you're going to propose giving the assistants whistles or some change like that, a change that really might improve officiating. Otherwise, quit bellyaching or go get your own badge and work towards improving the pool of available refs.
The 20 largest media markets need to be included. Hopefully in 10/15 years we'll have 20/24 teams. With the inclusion of San Diego/Rochester we'll have 12 teams. In addition to this we'll need: Philly, Detroit, Houston, Miami, Atlanta, Seattle, Phoenix, Minneapolis, Cleveland, Tampa, Portland and San Antonio. Cities that are not in the top 20 media markets (Kansas city, Columbus, Rochester, San Antonio) will still have a team because they support the game. Once this is accomplished, we'll truly have a national league!
Now the order in which I would bring this teams are: Philly, Houston in '06 Cleveland, Seattle in '08 Minneapolis, Atlanta in '10 Miami, Tampa in '12 Detroit, Phoenix in '14 Portland, San Antonio in '16 And if we could get 20k avg attendance/game that would be great! Only a few leagues in the world get that kind of avg attendance namely, the english, german, italian and spanish leagues.
I was going to say your name, but I'm a Christian man and your name in Spanish is a disgrace. Anyway, you should work for MLS, how do u know that this cities are the best pick for the league's expansion?. Tampa?? San Antonio? two teams in Texas?.. Well, explain yourself.
What does pingudo mean in Spanish? Anyways, San Antonio is here because its metro area has almost a million hispanics. I'm sure we could get 20k people to attend games every weekend. And Tampa had an avg. attendance of 12k when it was in MLS. That's better than the overall KC record or Dallas or San Jose this year.
1) leave single entity bs... switch to single team model.. 2) promotion/relegation to promote competitiveness and to give the minor leagues and other cities something to really root for and get their butts to the staidum... just a thought...
how many people wouldn't agree with this expansion scheme? show hands. San diego, Rochester in '04 Philly, Houston in '06 Cleveland, Seattle in '08 Minneapolis, Atlanta in '10 Miami, Tampa in '12 Detroit, Phoenix in '14 Portland, San Antonio in '16