Pro/rel will not work in the US because soccer is not the #1 sport nor is it close. You need support all the way down to the minor leagues for it to work. Except for rochester and maybe one other team you don't have the stadiums or the support so lets stop this pie-in - the- sky talk.We are not england nor other countries where soccer is #1.
I said most Eurosnobs want MLS to be like the EPL I never said that you mentionned Eurosnobs want MLS to be like EPL... OK so you're not a Eurosnob but a South American snob... LOL, I never said that... Lack of understanding probably... I only said that MLS should market their league as a young and american league, Hip hop/rock culture influence blatantly the two biggest popular sport leagues amongst american teens... The NBA and the NFL... David Stern (which is probably the best commissioner in USA) has transformed the NBA from a niche league to a Major league in less than 10 years... With innovative ideas to market his league, he really helped the NBA to become more popular... If MLS could bring more american culture, or give to this league a strong american identity, it would be better... I have many african american friends who trully believed that soccer was a "white" sport , it just proves how bad soccer is promoted... Some people think it's a (white sport), some people think it's it's a Latino sport... Soccer image in USA is just so bad, for many people it's a foreign sport, or a boring sport, or a low scoring sport, a white middle class sport etc... And it seems MLS does nothing to change that... When I see MLS trying to appeal only the Eurosnobs and the South american snobs, they do nothing but alienate the mass public... They are only consolidating that Soccer is trully a foreign game... And also they are creating a niche league... that probably has no chances to become a MAjor league...
Do you live in America? Are you american? How many MLS games do watch? Do they show MLS in France? Do you speak for all African Americans or just that one guy you met on myspace?
LOL... First of all, I watched the entire MLS season this year thanks to MLS.net... So I know very well this league now... 2) Absolutely nobody knows (or cares about) MLS in France... 3)I've spoken with MANY african americans on different boards about soccer... From BET.com to Blackvoices etc... A lot of different african american boards... I've also spoken with many NFL fans and NBA fans about soccer on different boards... And I still keep talkin about soccer with them... It's strangely way more interesting than talkin with Eurosnobs... I've learned a lot... I've created a lot of different poll or thread about soccer, just to know what they think... what they like and don't like... I'll always remember the first time I created a topic of soccer animated gifs, a lot of people were VERY impressed, most of them had never seen guys like Ronaldinho or Weah before... I convinced a lot of people that soccer could be as entertaining as their favorite sports... It was funny... I just wait the next year to talk about the world cup with them, just to know how they see this event from their point of view, it will be great... I also read many different articles about soccer in America on diffrent sites... And all that for more than 3 years... So , I know a little bit about soccer in USA...
To understand soccer in America you have got to understand how big and diverse our country is , you mock people that like the EPL and other European soccer leagues (what about Mexicans and South Americans who by an large ignore the league) but what you don't seem to take into consideration the product is better then MLS. When I go to my local pub in Seattle during EPL, and La Liga games it's standing room only. The room is filled with people from all over the world but with a slight majority of Americans. These people sometimes get up at six in the morning to watch games all afternoon. I contend that instead of trying top change the rules to attract non soccer fans. Play the same rules as the rest of the world and attract the fans of these leagues. In Seattle 2003 65,000 thousand people watched an exhibtion between Man U vs. Celtic and 40,000 came out the next year to watch Chelsea. 20,000 came out to watch Sunderland for God's sake play the Sounders(look them up). Why should we ignore alll those fans and change the game to market to people who don't like the game to begin with. http://www.frappr.com/nufcsupporters
Cuz you confusing an event with maintaining a league whole season. We had about 16,000 people show up in La Joya, Texas for a game between Monterrey vs. America for a friendly. A total meaningless game, but....it was an event. But. That's very different from people willing to watch a soccer event to actually ponying up season to season to mantain a Div.1 team. MLS has to survive on what the current market can hold, not based on what transpires on one soccer event. Put it another way. Just because one or two NFL games draw large numbers in Mexico City or that there is a large viewership for NFL games in that country, it doesn't necessarily mean that american football will have to be organized along the same ways as the US or that it will even draw the same amount of fans. That's why there is a difference between NFL and ONEFA.
What do you think's going to be more successful, appealing to NFL fans who hate soccer, or appealing to Americans who like soccer?
I beg to differ the NFL is considering putting a franchise in Mexico. http://www.nfl.com/insider/2001/mexico082501.html Fans exisits in larger numbers then you might suspect. They just don't turn out for MLS because of variety reasons some of which I've tried to address in this thread.
You are 100% right. And I think we should take it a step further. I see kids skateboarding every day and the X Games and Vans Warped Tour have become big moneymakers. So why don't we design MLS uniforms to appeal to skater kids and rename teams stuff like the "Burn", "Wiz," "Fusion" and "Clash." Heck, The Clash were a big punk band at one time so the skater kids will flock through the turnstyles just because of that! We could have multi-colored uniforms that would be really eyecatching and all the kids would wear them as they skateboarded after games. The skater kids will even pick up soccer lingo as their new street slang: "Yo, homes, let's cross this ******** and last touch it to goal, mofo." "Mark yo' man, bitch. I'm jiggy wit' da Columbus Crew." You have such great ideas for MLS to expand on!
Why would we want to emulate the EPL? The EPL season was over 2 weeks after it started. The EPL would be a lot better if it adopted playoffs, not the other way around. MLS is actually superior to the rest of the world in this respect. If the FA knew how much money the NFL makes from the Super Bowl and MLB makes from the World Series the EPL would be rushing to adopt playoffs. The American sporting tradition in crowning a champion is superior both from a competitive and financial bottom line.
So the EPL should give teams less incentive to win in the regular season and generally make matches less interesting, all because Americans do it this way? Some sports in England (like rugby) have playoffs, they know how they work if they ever wanted to implement them.
Will see. Will see. It all means that may put one team and that's still up in the air. Same thing with Canada. It may sustain one team in MLS, but it doesn't mean it can sustain league. We shall see.
I think per head of population, the premiership's TV deal is the richest in the world, so clearly they are doing something right. Premiership $1.7 billion over 3 years or $567 million per year, from 48 million people. NFL $8 billion over 6 years or $1.333 billion per year, from 295 million people. Crude extrapolation would give the premiership nearly $3.5 billion a year with the USA's population. Or do you think the NFL deal would be just as high if the US had a population of 48 million, rather than about 295 million? It's superior at producing a winner takes all showdown, but is far worse at determining the best team over a season.
I don't have a problem with playoffs for the record if it creates an incentive win. However you have to agree a playoff that rewards average to poor season long results is not acceptable.(Remember 8 of 12 teams make the playoffs) I would like to see a system that rewards and punishes for play during the season. Only to create a sense of urgency during the games. The Chivas vs. Metros game last day of the season was a prime example of a regular season game played with intensity. The Metros had to win to get into the playoofs and Chivas wanted to knock them out. What if we could have that sort of energy throughout. Imagine teams playing for the chance to win the league , an mls cup place and to avoid relegation.
And the EPL model is far worse at determining the best team in a do or die situation. The idea that a season has some moral validity to determine which team is the actual, mystical 'best' is pretty absurd. Since no two teams play a schedule of equal difficulty and so on and so forth. People who spout off about the league being such a great way to determine a champion really don't seem to think long and hard about what they are saying. For instance, if Team A's best player gets a red card at 88 minutes into their 1-0 win over Team B, then it is an advantage to Team C who play Team A the next week and a disadvantage to Team B who has to play both teams at full strength. Or conversely, we know that teams get better as the season moves along. Anyway, its just such an annoying thing to here on BS over and over. If only South America had been an economic dynamo and the Europeans had gone to Brazil.
so? That isn't its objective. Its objective is to determine the best team over the season, not the best team in a one-off TV showpiece. We have the FA Cup for that. Which competition of those two would you regard as being the best to determine a champion? well, playing each other team, once at home and once away, is about as equal as you'll ever get. Over a season things like that even out. Just as they do with injuries. Get a couple of key players injured during the play-offs and you can be screwed. One bad referee call, or one bit of cheating, or even a bit of bad luck, could cost you. There's a very good reason why statistical sampling provides more accurate results with a greater sample size - because it allow deviations to even out. well no, we don't know that, we just know that form fluctuates and invariably some teams will be on form at the end of the season, and others won't. It doesn't automatically mean that those teams have somehow been better all along. Take Reading's example, for example. Currently we are way out ahead in the CCC, seventeen points clear of third place Leeds. It could well be that in the remainder of the season they'll take 10 points more than us, but we'd still finish 7 points ahead of them. Would you conclude that their better finish would make them the better team? Do you really think that Liverpool were better than Chelsea last season? Do you think Chelsea's 37 point league advantage over Liverpool was a fluke, perhaps caused by them playing more teams who had players out through picking up yellow cards, and that Liverpool's CL win by a disputed goal was a truer reflection of the abitly of the two teams? If so, I think somewhere in an asylum there's a straight-jacket missing its occupant. ..err., why do you think they speak Spanish & Portuguese in South America? A policy a intensive foreign language courses at night school perhaps?
Yes, they are different in the fact that they came before them, which completely obliterates your feeble attempt at a point. FCD is not unique with their youth development program. Other teams are doing it already.
No, it isn't. The whole point in a league table is that everyone plays everyone else, so at the end of the season the best team is at the top. The best team in England ALWAYS win the league. On the other hand, knockout tournaments are more of a lottery. Two seasons ago no-one would say that Porto were the best team in Europe, but they put a decent cup run together. A Premiership season is 38 games, and it should be decided in those 38 games, not in a couple at the end. If a team wins the league by 10 points, but lose the last playoff game to the second team, effectively they should still be 7 points clear. Playoffs in a single table are a farce. Anyway the NFL is a bad example, it's run ENTIRELY for TV ratings, the sport isn't even a consideration except as a way to get people watching adverts. Should the EPL have TV timeouts?
Not to mention, a finish to the league can be very exciting, especially when you're relying on results in other games. Think entire stadiums erupting seemingly for no reason as they hear a goal on the radio. The more teams play one another, and the more games there are, the more likely the cream is to rise to the top. That's the fairest way to decide it. No point turning the championship into a lottery just for TV ratings, that would truly be the end of football as a sport, and the beginning of it as mere entertainment. Even the Champions League and World Cup should be a league format if it wasn't so logistically impossible.
Is there anything else worthwhile? Professional Sports is a business, and you run a business to make money. If you want to see pure competition go play sports in the park. Teams that finish with the NFL's best record and don't win the Super Bowl have had a failed season. The object is to be the best when it matters most. I couldn't care less if Chelsea's results against Sunderland are better than Liverpool's results against West Brom. Goal differential is for losers. American pro sports are like a million times better than European pro sports. Because the season in the U.S. always comes down to the two best teams mano e mano at the end with the entire season on the line. Europeans also have this freakish concept that if your team was somehow not good in like 1920 that you don't deserve to compete at the highest level today. They have a whole setup where fans and players are somehow supposed to remember their proper place in the league structure and never strive to finish above it. Its why you never have premier players remain at clubs like Bolton or Southhampton. Because they aren't the "it" clubs. The whole European sports structure is so detestable to American sports fans that I wouldn't want MLS to copy it in any form.
I was wrong about DCU not having a YDP. You were wrong about FCD not having a YDP. Now get over it. The discussion has moved on.