It's almost like watching a mini MLS on a 6 or 7 year delay. New Marquee Players have added to the excitement and the crowds sound very similar to when Beckham, Angel and Ljungberg were playing. Most of the people are there to see the big names and not quite soccer chant savvy with the hardcore supporters, who are slowly growing yearly. Much more of an open style of play than MLS which is another way of saying that MLS is more defensive minded. Now if they just started having a rash of new stadiums to help their young and exciting league
Mao football closely follows the league from Portland. https://twitter.com/maofootball http://maofootball.wordpress.com/ I got nothing.
I do... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-league They share many similarities with MLS, including playoffs, recognition of premiers (regular season winners), salary cap, marquee (designated) players, youth (reserve) league, rivalries, etc...
You forgot the biggest comparison with MLS: 2 teams folded! The new stadiums thing is never going to happen. New stadiums are a rare occurrence in Australia. Stadiums regularly host up to 3-4 different sports, and there is no single sports club in Australia that owns a stadium. They are all owned by trusts or cities. Australia is a tiny country by comparison. They have no real chance of ever emulating what MLS is currently doing, or what MLS will be doing in the future. Its a country of 22 million people, who are spread across 5 major cities. You can justify about 14 teams in that league before you run out of viable options; and that would include a handful of teams playing in markets in the 150-300k population range. On the flipside, its smaller population means the spread of the game is more concentrated. A-League does not have the problem of media coverage that MLS does. MLS does ok in media coverage in local markets, but A-League does well nationally. You will regularly see it on 6 oclock news, newspaper backpages, etc. They also have the Eurosnob problem though. In fact you will regularly see EPL/CL results in news sports sections. It has the opportunity to become nationally relevant quicker than MLS because of this, but it also means that as a soccer league, it has nowhere near the potential of MLS. Its just too small to be a major player, especially considering the potential of leagues in the AFC. MLS could be one of the top 3 soccer leagues in the world; A-League could be the Dutch Eredivisie of Asia. Could that have something to do with how Australian sports work? A-League takes its cues from other domestic Australian leagues, where they have regular season winners, playoffs (known as finals), salary caps, reserve leagues and so on. The only thing A-League can be accused of borrowing from MLS is the DP rule. Also, I'm not sure I understand the rivalries thing. Don't most leagues have rivalries? They put two teams in Sydney and Melbourne because they have no other options. There are only 5 cities in Australia with populations above 1m, and only two of those cities would constitute "major league" cities in the US.
Three, actually. The New Zealand Knights folded after the second season, North Queensland Fury folded two seasons ago, and Gold Coast United folded last season.
i do, too. i'm a Melbourne Victory supporter and have written a few articles about the A-League including this one comparing it to MLS and this one addressing Tim Cahill's decision to play in MLS rather than the A-League.
Having watched some A-league last year I will say that saying that "they play a more open style" is really stretching it... defense in the A-league is almost non-existent, as it was in MLS's early days as well. The games were often track meets. Also these annual clips always make me smile. Still, glad to see it growing, I'd love to catch a game down there some time.
I'm a little surprised the third clip with the guying swinging and missing the ball then going to the ground is included in the video. It is probably the most controversial play in A-League history. The guy, Berisha, is known as a diver and that play happened in the 90+7 minute of the Grand Final (eqv. MLS Cup). The referee awarded a PK, Berisha scored the goal, and the Roar won the championship.
Great stuff, Peter. You definitely understand the mind of a professional footballer. I thought you'd have a bit more to say about improving MLS, though. Do you think it's just a matter of continuing to carefully manage the growth of the league, or is there anything that simply needs "fixing" as we move forward?
Not much A League. But I follow the J League relatively closely. Good enough for me, but I'm a pretty bad judge of quality of play.
~Adelaide and Heart~ They may not attract quite the same DP (Visa) talent as MLS, but the style of play is more attractive and the general quality of their domestics is at least as strong as MLS.
The A-League is also far from being the first choice in Asia for Australian national team players. At the last qualifier Australia had eight players from an Asian league on the roster. Only two were from the A-League. The rest play in Japan, South Korea, Qatar, the UAE and sometimes Uzbekistan. I would say above all it's a money decision.
Thx. Great question...it's not like there are any obvious things that should be doing that they're not doing. Growth is mainly dependent on increased revenue, which will simply take time. Here's a wish list: * New stadia for New England and DCU * 5 more teams: Queens, Atlanta (not sold on this. Large market and Coca-Cola....but it's not a very good sports market unfortunately), Orlando, St. Louis, Mpls (plenty of others that anyone could make a good argument for as well) * Large increase in broadcast revenues when current contracts expire in 2014 (this is critical and will drive most of the other items on this list) * Increase in player compensation associated with increase in revenues * Expansion of MLS youth development programs to younger ages and wider net to include academies in more non-MLS markets. * Sign and develop more elite players at younger ages
I enjoy it. I also enjoy watching the highlight packages on the J-League's YT site. It's about the same quality as MLS'. Also there are some SAfrica football fans that post highlight packages from the PSL.
I am a Melbourne Victory supporter, and my club is not doing particularly well to start the year. The boys just got their first win of the season, though, and it couldn't come soon enough.
I enjoy occasional A League games, when I'm up all night and bored at 4am or something. more of curiosity thing due to similarities of A League to MLS
Related Thread: https://www.bigsoccer.com/community/threads/peter-wilts-take-on-the-cahill-move.1966660/
Maybe he works night shift (e.g. security guard, factory operations, etc...)? Else, it's more than a Soccer Problem...