Eric Wynalda's "Howard Beale moment": FSC employees rant against MLS at the NSCAA Convention

To tell you the truth, I don't think that MLS can EVER capture these fans, once they've jumped on the bandwagon of some EPL team. Remember, the vast majority of them are fans of the bigger clubs, the Mans, Liverpool, Chelsea, Arsenal primarily. In order to duplicate the TV experience (which is what we're talking about), MLS teams would have to have the same sort of talent that those EPL clubs have. That would require an investment that MLS simply can't afford.

Also, the EPL teams have a major advantage in the cachet of history and tradition which MLS can approach only with lots and lots of time. The EPL has a lot to offer the eyeball fan with which MLS simply can't compete.

Finally, most of those fans have developed a team loyalty that would be difficult to break, even if everything else were equal.

No, I believe that the only way to capitalize on EPL eyeball fans is to make them into MLS fanny fans. The only things that MLS can offer American fans that the EPL cannot is a live soccer experience, and a local team to root for. If that isn't enough, I'm not sure that MLS can do anything about it.

 

I doubt there are really many hardcore EPL fans in the United States for that to be even worthwhile. We are still talking about a tiny niche. Now the FMF is a different story. MLS has to compete with them.

Most MLS fans also root for foreign clubs. Mostly EPL clubs. I don't think there are that many American soccer fans who can ignore MLS. Even the American Eurosnob, getting up at odds hours to watch the EPL, still seems to know enough about MLS to bash it on forums and twitter. Those American fans still follow MLS, even if they don't claim to, because there is still a part of them that wants American soccer to be accepted and covered. And they know soccer will only truly have made it here when we have a top flight league. The EPL ain't ours. So they can be easily converted to MLS fans as the league grows.

 

When the guy with a great weed connection moves, his customers have to buy their weed from SOMEwhere, even if it's crappy weed.

That's MLS from mid-May to mid-August.

And let's face it, if Abramovich decides he can't compete with Man City in terms of subsidizing his team, if Arsenal continues to insist on being so damn frugal, Chelsea and Arsenal glory hunters might be attracted to a league with parity.

I don't know the overlap between the people who watch the Prem on ESPN and the people who watch MLS on ESPN. But given MLS' numbers, just picking up 25,000 pairs of eyeballs helps. The idea isn't to convert ALL of them, just some of them.

 

Now I know the Canadian teams are bad but calling it a parody is going a bit far, no?

 

There was an episode of All in the Family* where Archie Bunker was meeting Sammy Davis Jr. and he kept telling everyone not to talk about Davis' glass eye. Of course, he was the one who made a reference to it.

I was thinking, superdave, people bleep this up all the time, make sure you write parity not parody, parity not parody, parity not parody.

Then I got it wrong. Yikes.

*Yes, I'm old. Now you whippersnappers get off my Internet.

 

At least, once we're talking about the fans that consider television to be a decent substitute for the live product, this puts MLS at a severe disadvantage to those leagues that put on a better TV show. MLS has built a fanbase on the proposition that TV is not a substitute for the live experience, and reducing the live experience for the sake of TV now strikes as a very bad plan.

 

You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to superdave again.

 

I just want to thank this thread for getting me through my work monday.

 

His Twitter feed is like a wayback machine to this site circa 2002 or 2003.

 

Eric got turned down for coaching jobs, that's what's wrong with it.

 

Phewww! Wynalda11 is back on twitter. My quest for wisdom and knowledge is back on track Oh Great #11!

 

Personally, I feel there are two reasons to move from summer games to a similar schedule as that found in western europe in the big leagues (and I agree with the poster who talked about that there is no such thing as an international schedule or whatever the term is):

i) it's just too hot and this has negative ramifications for the level of play. I'm sorry, but I've been to some new york games where I was sweating my ass off. I can only imagine what it would be like playing 90 minutes in that type of climate, and running several miles. It almost always results in poor soccer. Others will retort that the same is true in the cold. If there is four feet of snow, yes. But, I think running in colder months is much easier on the body, than trying to do the same on a sunny afternoon in Frisco.

ii) If I'm a player I want to move to the same schedule as western europe, to allow me a better opportunity to join bigger teams. I think this makes sense both from a players, but also a team's perspective. How many times do we see players drop in over the summer, completely disrupting the squad, and teams making adjustments on the fly. I just consider this one reason why MLS is still amateur at times.

Having said that, there are entrenched interests in keeping the schedule as is. I get that. In my view though, the historical intransigence to adjusting the schedule in relation to the FIFA international dates was comical. playing during the world cup? Comical. At a minimum, we should not be playing on those dates. Even if just one player is called up, it is unfair to that team as it alters the competitive balance. To me it undermines the importance of the individual games.

As for Wynalda, I'm not really following what he wants. The problem seems to me that his sarcastic and militant tone really don't allow for others to partake in a serious discussion. Yet, it's probably good that there is somebody like him willing to mouth off. MLS works in ponderous ways at times (look at the convoluted allocation process, and how inane its transformatoin has been over the years). Sometimes you need somebody to rock the boat, even if Wynalda is a bit of a ponce. I will say this though: the WC '94 alumni are to the man, a joke. The only one who really hasn't embarrassed himself that much is Tab Ramos. The rest are blowhards, and complete losers (particularly this one ginger).

 

So to move to a winter schedule MLS would also have to shut down during the African Cup of Nations? Because, as you said:

Kind of harsh on Dooley, Stewart, Friedel, and Reyna there.

 

Damn, Aris, what did Cle Kooiman ever do to you?

 

But "owners best interests" is not a static thing. It depends largely on the behavior of fans, players and the media.

If fans treat what the owners do as a fait accompli and live with it, they are effectively doing exactly what I said: equating the owners' interests with their own. Abandoning pro/rel would be just as good for the 20 ownership groups currently in the prem _in isolation._ But when factoring in the revolt they'd face from the football community if they tried, it's an obvious non-starter.

You may call "bullshit" but if you're suggestion means fans should simply just roll over for ownership just because "they're gonna do what they're gonna do," you're argument becomes little more than semantics. The end result is precisely the same.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Africa_Cup_of_Nations
Dates January 21 – February 12

If those dates are typical, then even that wackily scheduled international competition would/could be avoided by a long winter (mid-season) break in the hypothetical MLS of the future in which the league had a summer off-season.

 

Well then, you go right ahead and try to spin pissing into the wind as a virtue. I just think it's stupid, but you get as wet as you like.

 

So to avoid the African Cup of Nations and the Asian Cup MLS would have to take off all of January and half of February (approx). They would have to take June and July off to avoid the Euros, OFC Nations Cup, the Gold Cup, and the Copa, not to mention the World Cup. That's about 3.5 months off.

Right now MLS takes December, January, February, and the first 10 days of March off. Less than 3.5 months.

So this idea, at best, would keep the season the same length and it has a very good chance of actually shortening the season. And that assumes the teams play all the way up to New Year's, which isn't the smartest idea in a majority of MLS markets.

 

I thought I heard him mumbling "gotta see Judge Wapner, gotta see Wapner" in the corner but that implies he's actually as smart as Rain Man

 

Wait, wait. So you're saying that the Germans DIDN'T bomb Pearl Harbor?