divvy up central and carribean etc for MLS developmental zones

seattle has been probably the best mls franchise over the last decade but only 1 mls cup in the last 5 years...not exactly bayern munich. and theyve done zilch in rgional competition. far from a juggernaut.

14 different teams have won mls cup and 17 have appeared thats unique in the soccer landscape...by design.

in the last 4 mls cups, theres been 7 different teams out of a possible 8. mls spreads it around.

yeah there are a few teams that seem to be consistently good.....but compared to other soccer leagues where you know who is gonna win at the start of the season MLS is much much different.

mls still hasnt won the concacaf champs league...so that shows that the quality of play is not improving much i.e. the wider world of soccer. and that teams have a ceiling on how good they can be due to mls rules and regs. they want a tightly bunched group of teams so that they can all take turns being the winner and keep fan engagement as high as possible year over year.

 

disagree. dc united beat vasco de gama in the 90s and won a cup between north and south america. its frankly embarassing how mls hasnt broken through in champions league yet. liga mx isnt even that good globally as a league and DOMINATES MLS.

re: the world soccer scene, MLS teams cannot do much to improve themselves no matter how willing some owners may be. thats perhaps why academies outside of the domestic arena dont make much sense. quality of play simply doesnt factor too highly into the priorities of how MLS is organized and runs itself as a business.

staying in MLS is still pretty limiting i.e. international soccer for USMNT players.

its time to take the training wheels off...but theres a pretty sizable segment of teams in MLS that simply will not spend and creating starkly different tiers of MLS teams in terms of quality is unpalatble to the business model and main goal of maximum fan engagement. better to keep everyone mediocre and roughly equal (r so the owners have decided) ....the budget salary and roster rules place too low a ceiling on MLS teams imo. I get why they had them to start bc it was tenuously postioned to survive. but after 25 years...its time to open the capped level of play. I doubt it will happen though, due to strategic marketing and business concerns that do not value quality of play....fans dont care...so the league doesnt either.

 

"getting better" ....so if you improve your grade from a 73 to a 77 is that really significant?

yes the results have moderately improven. ever so slightly. and?

the rules and regs have stayed in place basically....and thats why it doesnt make a lot of sense for mls teams to try and become excellent teams.

have mls teams improved in terms of a club world cup comp (if they could even make it to one)? nope. they can't.

this is as good as mls can be given the current restraints. even if they improve academies...they will just lose those good players before they are fully mature anyway. they should still do the academies...but they need to take the training wheels off. of the entire system.

if not now....then when? is that a taboo topic for some reason?

what threshhold needs to be reached to do away with all of the DP, TAM, GAM WAM BAM mumbo jumbo and let teams chase true excellence? is it just never ever going to happen?

 

theyve gotten to the tourney and won games there. something MLS cant say.

I am responding to the idea of why MLS doesnt delve into central america and carribean and I think it is because of the things I have recently mentioned...that the quality of play isnt a driving factor in MLS development. the business model only tangentially considers it.