Which doesn't necessarily mean they'll lack professional success. Donovan and Beasley were highly unusual, by world standards, in being stars both at U-17 level and at senior level. There's also the issue of coaching and chemistry at these youth tournaments. I suspect we overachieved at youth level in the past because we had a smaller player pool where players became much more familiar with each other. Today our U-20s tend to have only a few camps a year, with players rotating in and out depending on their club schedules.
OK, I'll give them credit that the team did include Cameron Carter-Vickers, Matt Miazga, Kellyn Acosta, Tommy Thompson and Gedion Zelalem (though he is German) but who else did it produce?
I always hate this idea. If a New York team gets a famous player, I want to see the Rapids play him. I get we can't play every team home and away every year, but I want to see every team at least every other year in Colorado if possible. Also, if KC (our second nearest rival) ends up in the east, I want to still play them. I would like to see Baseball and the NFL do away with their conferences and just do divisions. It'd be great to see Red Sox - Yankees World Series or a Broncos - Raiders Super Bowl. I get the need for divisions, but not conferences as much.
Baseball has the AL and NL with different rules (DH vs. pitcher batting) and the All-Star Game determining which league gets home field advantage in the World Series, which couldn't happen if the World Series wasn't guaranteed to be AL vs. NL. It might have been nice to see Tom Brady face Peyton Manning in the Super Bowl, but I liked seeing my favorite team, the Giants, beat New England in two Super Bowls. I agree that I want every MLS club to play every other club. With 24 clubs there could be two conferences of 12 with 2 games aginst every conference opponent and 1 game against every team in the other conference. I wouldn't want two independent leagues of 18 clubs.
There will be no 'perfect' system. We have unique circumstances here that are going to require some good but not perfect solutions. 1. US/Canada now has almost 350M people and at current rates we can have up to 440M by 2060. 2. Vancouver to Miami is over 2800 miles. Its a similar distance from Dublin to Baghdad. Its FAR. 3. We have the largest youth soccer pool in any country in the world. We are going to have a big league. A much bigger one than everyone else. And we are going to have regional conferences. Our two countries are just so huge, its why all our pro leagues and college leagues have regional conferences. I know it might bum you out that some hypothetical future NY superstar won't be showing up in Denver but its just something that we'll have to deal with if you want billions invested in stadiums, academies, and new teams.
I am not the one looking for a perfect solution, I just don't want there to be no games between teams from different confereneces. Vancouver never playing Toronto or Montreal? New York never playing LA? Ridiculous. The baseball Rockies, who suck, are making a big marketing push to sell tickets to their Yankees series, going back to baseball's dark ages when American League teams never played National league teams would be a bad idea, for fans and business wise. Why should we start that when we don't even have the history of it hanging over us. Of course I can watch Drogba, or whoever on TV, I did when he played for Chelsea. But why did I go to the Rapids last home game of a dead end season last year? To see him play against my Rapids live. I'll give you the distances; I'm not against playing teams near us more than we play teams on the other side of the continent. But divisions in our sports are not just about logistics, they are about culture (and business). Remember the NFL and MLB confereneces/leagues are not even geographically based.
Well, I know this is off point a bit, but Vancouver and Toronto and Montreal will always play at least in the Canadian cup. Also, you can get around the never playing interconference but still having separate and meaningful conferences with interleague. At 28 teams, the garber goal, that's 26 in conference and 8 out of conference, so you'd play every team at least every two years. I only really would get tricky at 36, but even then you could get around it by having four divisions that rotate to form two divisions.
With 32 clubs, it would be possible for every club to play every other club every season, but I'm guessing MLS wouldn't do it that way. With 8 divisions 4, you could play every club in your division twice and every other club once to make 34 games. However, with divisions of 4, you could have to separate rivals. For example: New England, New York, NYCFC, and Philadelphia Toronto, Montreal, Columbus, and an expansion team in Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Cincinnati, or Detroit Atlanta, Miami (a possible expansion site), Orlando City, and an expansion team somewhere in the Carolinas With those divisions, D.C. might have to be grouped with Chicago, Minnesota, and Sporting Kansas City. Obviously with 32 clubs there would be enough new ones that it would be hard to guess them all.
Another possibility with 32 clubs: 2 conferences, each divided into 2 divisions of 8. 2 games against same division = 14 games 1 game against other division in conference = 8 games 1 game against 12 teams in other conference (rotating omissions) = 12 games Total: 34 games
MLS will continue to expand until they hit 32 teams. At which point they will divide up into divisions just like the NFL. Remember a lot of these guys were former NFL guys, and the NFL is a great model to strive for.
30-32 isn't a magic number our pro leagues came up with. They all started much smaller. They grew as the country grew. MLS and every other league in the US will almost certainly grow over time. We might not be around to see it, but MLS will one day be a very large league. That is why I agree that simply growing our conferences into basically independent leagues (ending with having virtually two leagues operating in D1) is the most logical. It solves the most problems. Now if soccer continues to grow in popularity, the idea of caping D1 at 20 becomes absurd. If you combine US/Canada population then mid century you would have a single D1 team for every 22 million people. It would just be incredibly short sided.
By the way: even if we go past 32 teams, I don't see the problem with having two or more virtually independent leagues that only meet in the playoffs. Baseball was run that way for a century. Also, it won't be that different from Europe as a whole, where the biggest stars don't necessarily play each other every season because they play in different national leagues and only meet in UEFA competitions. Consider Leo Messi and Thomas Muller. Both are world stars, and both are one-club men so far in their pro careers, so it's easy to find out how many times they could possibly have faced each other in club competitions. In the 8 seasons since Muller made his first-team debut, Barcelona and Bayern Munich have only played each other 6 times. Muller missed two of those games, so it means two of the biggest stars in European club football have only been on the same field four times in 8 years.
In the end, it all depends upon how many teams the general public can hold in their mind in the television era. I think that the limit, right now, is about 32 teams max. College football and basketball go a bit beyond this max, but most teams in NCAA Division A are just filler teams who have no chance to ever compete for a national championship. And who knows, by mid-century the smoking sports on the national scene could be rollerderby, team frisbee or quidditch. My brother tells me that competitors are gathering every weekend to play quidditch in Central Park without flying brooms. Real flying brooms may not be all that further out, tho!
The issue of getting to see a certain star does diminish a bit when the leagues' TV presence is more established, and there are more stars in the league. When Becks arrived, everyone wanted to see LAG at their house because, well, he's a bad example because he's a thing of his own. But when the league reaches a point that not seeing a Becks is balanced out by seeing a Messi (as is the case in the NFL and MLB, though with different names) it will be easier to deal with not seeing every player every year. Look at the population stats above, add in the ~30 million Canadians, and we're looking at a population that is pretty close to that of the EU (350m to 420m, so subtract Poland and a couple other newbies and leave the other 24). Between them, they have more than 200 top league clubs. They have about 100 in the big five leagues, meaning seriously talented top level clubs. Shoe-horning a nation the size of the US into a mold made for them doesn't make sense.
If you look at the number of large population centers rather than total population, the US actually comes out almost exactly equivalent to the EU: as of 2012 there were 33 metropolitan areas in the US with 2 million or more people, and as of 2014 there were 33 metropolitan areas in the EU with 2 million or more people. Turns out I could have found an even better example if I'd just looked at people wanting to see two clubs play each other -- it turns out there are Wikipedia pages listing every match that several Spanish clubs have played in UEFA competition, which turned up some long gaps between encounters. The 2014-15 Champions League final between Barcelona and Juventus, two of the most storied clubs in European football, was the first time they had faced each other in any competition since the 2002-03 season. (And since it was on a neutral field, that means Juventus fans have literally never had a chance to see Messi play against their club in Turin.) Also, Real Madrid and Manchester United went almost ten years without meeting in any competition, from the 2002-03 Champions League quarterfinals to the 2012-13 Champions League round of 16, despite both clubs being in the Champions League in each of the intervening seasons. We could call the four or five strongest European leagues "conferences" of a pan-European league, and call the Champions League the "playoffs", and it would be functionally equivalent to a US top flight without inter-conference play. That puts complaints about not facing a particular team every season in a rather different light.
The point that I try to explain to people who talk about 'capping' MLS or 'stopping' expansion, is that the market will decide. Yes, if soccer drops in popularity or economically the US struggles then the number of pro soccer teams in the US will be effected. But if the game continues to grow AND our population continues to grow then the league will almost certainly grow. But ignoring population growth and comparing the US to countries a fraction of our size is wrong but also comparing the US in 2016 to the US in 2060 is also wrong. Many cities will grow into 'major league' size. Cities like Austin/Raleigh are fringe major league cities today, but they won't be in a few decades if trends continue.
Actually, I think the final size of the league will depend on the greed of the owners. Eventually broadcasting rights are going to massively supercede gameday arena profits and the more teams you add, the more diluted the payments from the league to the owners will be. MLS is currently expanding to the same size as the other NA Major Leagues, which will be more of a fair comparison in terms of household viewership reach when lined up against the NFL, NHL, NBA, and MLB.
Why will broadcasting rights "massively supersede" gameday "profits" (I think you meant revenues)? Almost nobody watches MLS on tv. The current deal is for approximately $90,000,000 ($75m for ESPN/ABC and $15 for Univision). I think this "massive" new tv deal in seven or eight years is a myth. I think that for two reasons. 1) Ratings for MLS are minuscule. In 2015, the average was about 245,000 people tuning in to ESPN (197,000 for FoxSports). The historic high was 311,000 in 2011. 2) The sports watching landscape is changing. It is not changing as much as dramatic tv watching, but it is changing. Even if the owners to make good on the ambition to make MLS competitive with EPL, La Liga, etc. (which is doubtful, but possible), they will never have the nation glued to the television to watch MLS. More and more people are dumping cable and satellite for streaming and there just are not the revenues for streaming services. While many people keep cable and satellite in order to watch live sports, many people are also turning to high speed internet and simply streaming live sports. If MLS owners are waiting for that billion dollar television deal, sorry, it is not going to happen. http://worldsoccertalk.com/2015/10/...in-mls-tv-viewership-compared-to-last-season/
If MLB, NBA, NHL, and NFL remain with 30 or 32 teams, Austin and Raleigh increasing in population won't be enough for them to get teams. They would need to gain on other markets in population and convince owners to build stadiums/arenas/whatever the sport calls it and move teams. I could see owners of MLB, NBA, NHL, and NFL teams not wanting expansion for multiple reasons. One reason is that putting teams in smaller markets with fewer possible fans will decrease the average amount of fans per team, which could decrease how much money each team gets from national TV. Another reason is that having more teams makes it harder for any one team to be champions.
That's progress, but it's still not good enough. We need pros developing kids at the U10 level. By the time they're 12 or 13, players should already have acquired most of the technical skills they need to develop into pros.
That's really a side issue. The point I was trying to make is that we're not going to see the same kind of talent dilution in the future that we may have seen in recent years, because every MLS team will expand the pool of professional-quality American players.
Here is a list of what broadcasters are paying the various NA Major Leagues as of 2015 ( http://www.cbc.ca/sports/basketball...act-stacks-up-against-other-leagues-1.2790143 ): League - Broadcaster - Length - Contract NBA - ABC, ESPN, TNT - To 2024-25 - $24 billion NHL - Rogers (Canada) - To 2025 - $5.2 billion - NBC, Versus (U.S.) - To 2023 - $2 billion NFL - Fox, CBS, NBC, ESPN - To 2022 - $27 billion MLB - Fox, TBS, ESPN - To 2012 - $12.4 billion MLS - TSN (Canada) - To 2016 - Not published - ESPN, Fox Sports (U.S.) - To 2022 - $600 million CFL - TSN, RDS - To 2018 - $150-180 million I don't expect a billion dollars a year, but I wouldn't be surprised if the next domestic TV deal will be for $200-300 million annually. You can probably increase that by another 20-50% for international broadcast rights. The footprint of the league will be about the same size as the NHL with probably about the same viewership, therefore being able to command about the same fees. Also, though streaming is increasingly common, those streams have to come from someone, somewhere broadcasting those games. Sports events are one of the few things that consumers are willing to spend money to watch on TV in realtime, which gives advertisers a guaranteed captive audience that they would be willing to pay for. Look at the ridiculous price of Superbowl commercials. And yes, the Barclay's Premier League is better quality right now, Americans have always supported their leagues if the quality is high enough and they're showcasing great players - both International and American (especially American) . The current quality of the league is giant strides better than 10 years ago, imagine how much better it will be in another 10 years. After the next TV deal, you're going to see the salary cap start increasing by 7-10% per year and the TAM going up to $3-5 million per year. That will put MLS within the top 5 leagues in the world by 2030, and by 2050 it will match the BPL in skills and revenue (though I can't see MLS surpassing BPL due to the time-zone difference). There is simply more liquid capital in the USA than any other single country on earth and that will be the magnet to draw really good international players from around the world. Giovinco is just the tip of the iceberg.
I appreciate your optimism, but I just don't seeing any of the things you describe coming to fruition. I mentioned the issue of sports being one of the things that people may pay to watch in real time. However, that "real time" is changing. Soccer lends itself to streaming way better than any other sports, with limited commercials, limited commentary, letting the game tell the story. The "next tv" deal will be largely a streaming deal. People who think the the next MLS tv deal will be $300,000,000 a year are delusional. The Superbowl is a one off, annual event and is a complete outlier. The EPL is not just "better quality," it is lightyears ahead of MLS. Americans have not "always" supported "their" leagues. You need to take a look at the history of sports. Very few sports have maintained high average attendances over the long haul. Also, MLS is not "their" league. We all agree that the quality is better in MLS than 10 years ago (except for the Chicago Fire-the 1998, 2001 or 2006 Fire teams could, even now, beat the 2016 abortion of a team). A 7-10% annual increase will not be nearly enough. Chelsea's salary alone for 2015-2015 was £ 215,000,000 ($316,211,250).* The total for the league is: £ 1,867,500,000 ($2,745,890,250). MLS can NEVER catch that. The size of the United States is really not particularly relevant, if there is not the national appetite for league. And there are few signs of that happening. The only way MLS becomes a major player in the North American sports landscape would be if an ESPN/ABC or NBC executive is recruited from MLS and essentially forces MLS down the throats of Americans. I hope that none of what I have written works out the way that I have written, but, sadly, it probably will. *http://www.totalsportek.com/money/english-premier-league-wage-bills-club-by-club/