no way I think you are all out of your freaking minds! There is no way the league expands that much. 4 teams in ten years TOPS. Two of those four will be existing A league franchises.
That's way too fast. Let's not become the NASL again. Yes, we need to expand, but that will be taken care of next year with two more teams probably in '06. After that, we need to chill with the expansion for a while. Maybe in '10 we can start again and keep expanding every 4 years. Also, FIFA rules say that the max amount of teams for any domestic league is 20, so you'll have to cut out 4 of your teams there. Phoenix, Atlanta, Tampa, and San Antonio come to mind.
I'm surprised that there is no mention of the Charleston Battery in there. If we're talking A-league teams being "promoted", I would put them ahead of Minneapolis and Atlanta. It would be nice to break new ground - Major League sports-wise.
Charleston's Blackbaud Stadium is awesome (I've been there), but it only seats 5,000 and can only be expanded to 7,000. Blackbaud Stadium, however, should be shamelessly replicated in every A-League town, just change the colors of the seats. That is exactly how a mid-sized stadium should be built in America. It's light years ahead of playing in a baseball park. As to my suggestions: 1. Yes, no more FSW games from the studios. GET RID OF MAX BRETOS. 2. No franchise in a city that has to share with a football stadium for two years or more. Football lines kill the effect. 3. Intelligent decisions per town on turf. I'm sorry, but the half sand/half grass look at THDC looks horrible, just as bad as Reliant Stadium looks for the NFL. Grass is NOT always better. Just look at Ericsson Stadium last year and this year, and they only have 10 football games a year and it looks like garbage. The big problem with the new rubber-filled turf, however, is that it does get warmer. 4. Shorten the season until we get more teams. 5. Shorten the playoffs.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: 5 things MLS needs to DO next season. Maybe you didn't notice but the Master Race eagle was replaced, sadly, by the Trans Am one. Now, a badge that has a taxicab on it....that's what we need.
This is an easy one. They feel that they BELONG to MLS and bring an A-League team to town could present that they are give up in bringing back a MLS team.
#1 - Mad Max is great #2 - Impossible at the moment #3 - Grass is King; Turf = evil #4 - Wrong #5 - Shorten even more? You're kidding.
I would love to seee the Battery competeing in MLS but it won't happen anytime soon. The club has been "getting it right" since its inception more than 10 years ago. The Owners put up private funds to build a great little stadium and we have always had a strong competative team. (even against MLS and foreign teams) The organization is a model for both MLS and the A-league on how to do it right but the main problem is the size of the our market. Charleston is a city of aroudn 90,000 the Metro area is close to 500,000 but this include towns I would never had thought would be included until I saw a demographic study recently. Some of the towns were more than 50 miles away! I would say a more realistic population for the metro area is around 250,000. Our attendance is around 4,000 per match, which is very good when you compare it to other markets. I just don't think we could support the numbers need for MLS. IF soccer takes off in the US over the next few years, And Charleston can get some good numbers I think Charelston would be a great addition. As for the stadium I think the upgrade to 7,500 from its current size is a "quick upgrade" number(bleachers behind the goals). A second level could easily be added to the east and west stands as well as seating behind both goals giving it the size of Crew stadium without much redesign. Mikey
I can't believe the chose cleveland instead of Rochester!! Rochester will have a SSS next year, cleveland will have one (with any luck) in 2 years! And I can't believe they're not gonna expand next year but in '05!!! I'm very disappointed, I for once will not watch any games next season... maybe the final, just like I did in 2002! I'll watch again when it becomes a national league with at least 16 or 20 teams! Or even 24 like in Brazil since the USA is bigger then Brazil. Argentina has only 37 million people and they have 20 teams. Here in the US we have 50 million hispanics alone, plus another 10/20 million of europeans/second generation europeans/asians/africans that like the sport. There is no reason why in this day and age we can't have at least 16 teams!
Dude...this league is EIGHT YEARS OLD! Can you PLEASE stop whining about how few teams we have when this league isn't even a decade old yet! Castles are built stone by stone, not in the damn sky. If that's how you feel a league should be built, then maybe you should go watch some old NASL tapes. The rest of us will smile and shead a tear at how beautifully our league is progressing and the potential that we see in fron of our eyes day by day.
Whether anyone likes it or not, when we play soccer games on football lined fields, it makes us look like red-head stepchildren. This is not junior high, this is supposedly top-level pro. The season should be played from March until the NFL starts up, until we have everyone in soccer specific stadiums. If that means the championship is in August or September for a few years, too bad. It's not like we're anywhere near the FIFA schedule, anyway.
Re: Re: Re: 5 things MLS needs to DO next season. 1) Definately more international games, (to whip the die-hards into a frenzy +they need the experience) 3) Put city names on Jerseys instead of team names. Let's say I am a person from Chicago, and I know jack about soccer. If I'm flipping through the channels, and I see a team with "CHICAGO" on their jerseys, I'm going to be a lot more interested than if I see "FIRE" on their jerseys. ----------------------------------------------- Calexico77 The Fire have Chicago on their (white) road jerseys. The New Soldiers Field was built so more soccer games could be played there from Fire games to Exhibition International and World Cup Qualifiers, ect...
In the days of the NASL the hispanic population was only 3%. A lot of the people attending those games were not really hard core soccer fans so it was a matter of time before the NASL would dissapear. To a lot of them it was a novelty, they wouldn't stick for a long time, they were NOT hard soccer fans. Today we have almost 50 million hispanics in the country. We should tap into this market. Hard core soccer fans at the disposal of MLS. My friends and I attended a very few games in '96/'97 in Miami/Tampa (I was living in Orlando at the time) and to our sad surprise the quality was not there, and the players were unknown except for the old stars (the likes of valderrama, stoichkov) players in their 30s, 40s who are about to retire. For the next six years I never attended any more games or watched them on tv until 2002 thanks to the excellent campaing by the USA in the world cup. Now, how does MLS convince me and my friends to attend games, buy merchendise etc, I think if u bring a few quality players and expand the league to more cities where the hispanic population is at least 500,000 that would help a lot. It's really boring to watch chicago play DC four times a year! I think twice a year would be enough. If I'm gonna convince my friends to attend games etc, I need a good argument, I could only think of bringing better known players to MLS and expanding the league to more cities, and a few others things that people have already mention here. This year while I was on vacation for almost 3 wks, I attended games in chicago, kansas, columbus, boston, DC and NJ and when I talked to my friends about the excitement in the league they couldn't care less. It's just so hard if the league doesn't change.
Keeping it going... As for the officiating, I think the USSF model is all wrong. Just because you've reffed a million games and can pass a test, that doesn't make you a good ref (I used to be a ref, and I can tell you that some of the supposedly "good" refs weren't despite the fact they had the credentials). There needs to be a distinction between amateur and pro soccer refs, just as there is in baseball, basketball, football, etc. If a ref wants to do pro games, he or she should be able to go to a ref academy, or some other special training. Along those lines, they should also be put on a special track that would push them ahead of refs who are either not qualified, or have no desire to do pro games. USL and MLS should contract with these officials (just like NFHS and NISOA) but make them full time, just like baseball umpires, and there should be reffing crews who do games together, so they'll all be on the same page. They'd still be USSF refs, but would wear a USL or MLS badge as well. Additional refs could come in as the older ones retire/resign/get sacked. That's the best way to get consistency. Despite what some people think, you can glean good ideas from other sports. As for the other changes, expansion should come slow. I'd expand every four years, as not to oversaturate. The stadiums will come, but you can't force feed a stadium on a city. As for putting Charleston over Atlanta, Atlanta has at least twice the population (maybe three times, metro-wise speaking), and is a way bigger TV market than Charleston. Having said that, Charleston is a better A-League city because they're not competing with four major league sports, and they don't have a AAA level team with a Rookie League budget. They also have a decent sized stadium (in proximity to most of Charleston's soccer fanbase), something that will be corrected in Atlanta in a year or two. But hey, if C-town could support it, have at it! Atlanta has neither a stadium nor an I/O waiting in the wings, and probably won't for a very long time, so any talk about Atlanta is moot at this point. We'll see just how good a sports town Atlanta is, when the Braves come out next year with Adam LaRoche at first, Mike Hessman in right, Johnny Estrada behind the plate, Mark DeRosa at third, and Ryan Langerhans in left (if they pull a trade for Chipper), and a bunch of kids in the pitching rotation. The Thrashers are already improving their attendance, since they're winning, and I don't count the Hawks (probably couldn't beat Marathon Oil), or the Falcons (couldn't beat Chapel Hill Middle School--they'll do better when Vick comes back) . Personally, I'd rather have another A-League team on the West side of town, playing at what was Life University's stadium (they either have, or are going to, sell it, and most of the campus, to next-door neighbor Southern Poly (or Southern Tech for you oldsters (like myself) out there). They might get a better deal than what ol' Dr. Sid tried to do 'em (Backs & Beat) for.
Thank God DC United... has best team name and logo. Adu coming next year. now just need solid sss with about 35K capacty.
Re: Keeping it going... This is more or less how referees have made the MLS list. A referee will get noticed at a tournament in his state (usually youth state cup), he will be invited to the youth regional championships and the best will be invited to nationals. All along the way, the USSF referee department identifies referees with promise. The younger referees that advance have not only worked thousands of games, but they have also passed numerous field assessments at increasing levels of difficulty on top of meeting written and fitness test requirements. The best referees at the state level get top youth assignments, then top amateur assignments, and will start to see lower level pro assignments as they work toward national referee. The USSF invites promising referees to academies associated with various tournaments and ODP camps. At these academies they have even more contact with bigwigs at the USSF referee department. The biggest problem I see is that we have 200 plus referees at the national level, but only 5 MLS games a week. When the top refs are only seeing 15 or so MLS games a year, it is not as easy to develop because newer officials need to be thrown into the mix as well. The USSF has to be involved with the development of referees according to Fifa. As it stands now, very few referees even upgrade from grade 8 (entry level) to grade 7. The numbers thin out more as you move up the ladder. At this point, the referees that want to advance, seek that opporunity. Of that group, a select few make it to national and even fewer make it to MLS. If you look at the referee administrative handbook, you'll see a clear distinction between amateur and pro referees. The only thing that can't happen is making the guys full time. There isn't enough money in it or enough games. Other than that, referees aren't developed much different than you suggested. The process varies a little from state to state, but you'll notice the top referees coming from states where soccer is very strong at the youth, amateur, and lower pro-levels. Cal North and South (who have produced a great deal of our Fifa list referees) has a very good development track for example. I know one referee that has a very good chance to reach the MLS level soon. I know others that are there now and two others that are starting the journey. To get to that point combined with a fulltime job or school commitments is not easy in any way. These guys work just as hard as the officials that get to the other sports leagues and our system in the US is not very different from that used in England, Germany, Italy, Spain, etc. I can say with certainty that there is not a secret stash of excellent referees hidden away somewhere. The USSF has also dramitcally improved its instruction at all levels. To me, the problem lies with MLS not with the federation. The league is a business and they require the game to be officiated in a way they feel maximizes the entertainment value of the product. That's why you see some interesting decisions. On the flip side, when the referees actually do their jobs as it is supposed to be done, there are just as many complaints here. My point is that it will always be hard for the officials to please everyone.
Re: Re: Keeping it going... Well, that's good then. I got into the game too late (I was 30) to make the pros, and I got tired of all the people who didn't know as much about soccer as I've forgot. I'm not bragging, I've just been in the game that long, and I'm sure there are tons of folks who could make me look like a soccer Forrest Gump.