Let me start out by saying that I have been following MLS since 96, spending my cold hard cash because I believed in the dream. That dream though has become a nightmare, complete with a Man City Franchise, baseball stadiums, artificial turf, unoriginal team names lifted from successful European teams and over sensitive fans who cannot take criticism. Unless you are new to the soccer social wars, you'll know that there is a HUGE divide when it comes to fans here in the US. The majority of fans here either follow European teams b/c they are of the best quality or Latin American teams b/c that is where their family came from. People that follow MLS are only a small percentage of this already niche group so already, your only pulling in a small sliver of your target audience. These people are NEVER going to follow MLS because in their minds, they have already determined it to be an inferior product and no amount of retiring euro-stars will change their mind. How can this process be reversed? Now, mind you that although we can all see the problems clearly, we will disagree as how to best resolve them. The biggest drawback is money. We don't spend what other leagues do. You could argue that the salary cap was the reason that a historic team like the Cosmos went to the NASL instead of MLS and you'd be right, but for the sake of this thread I'm going to focus on other issues that might ameliorate the situation aside from the obvious financial ones. First, I would stop with this crap attitude MLS officials have taken up in the last few years and actually listen to want fans want, instead of telling them they should want. People wanted the Cosmos. What we got instead was a Man City franchise. Like Chivas USA before them, these teams serve to remind fans that the real action is elsewhere. Now that Chivas is gone, a new team with the name LAFC has replaced them. The team has not even played a game yet and already people are calling them LOS ANGELES FORMER CHIVAS. Also, aside from apologists here on BigSoccer, nobody I have spoken to in real life thinks that having franchises from other leagues or copying names of more successful European teams are good ideas. Yes, it might seem trivial to some, but weak franchises are often brought up as a reason to why people don't like MLS. The next issue that divides a lot of people is promotion/relegation. I wouldn't have promotion per say, however I would create a system where small semi-pro teams could still have a chance to play with the big boys. Splitting the continental USA in 4 like MLS does, I would create 4 single table leagues where the top teams from each league only meet in the playoffs. The big difference is, that a yearly pre-season tournament would decide which smaller, semi-pro teams would join the 'senators' of the leagues as guest teams. This way, you get to see more undiscovered players and not have the same boring teams every year. The teams that don't make the Majors will still play a league to determine placement for the following year's golden ticket tourney. Another issue I have, is with artificial grass. Beckham never wanted to play on it and was sometimes conveniently hurt when we had away games at turf fields. That is no bueno. You can't have top stars not wanting to play games b/c of turf. Now, I realize that some teams are tenants and as such, they don't have the power to determine what they are going to play on. This brings me to my next point. Sharing stadiums with other sports teams. I'd rather watch teams play at a public park with school bleachers around it than have to see football lines on another MLS field. People will cry and say,"but that looks so minor league." NEWS FLASH! Soccer is still a minor league sport here and MLS is the epitome of that attitude. If you follow MLS, quality is probably not as paramount to you anyhow as supporting your local team. I would rather my team play in a vacant dirt parking lot that they can call their own than play as a tenant anywhere else. The last major issue I can think of this early without my morning coffee is that there needs to be no foreign player restrictions on teams. People question how this will help US player development but every league around the world worries bout that. What is also true is that the Big Names that people pay good money to see are not from here. With the USA being such a mixing pot of different races and cultures and professional league here should follow suit. Out of all these, I think the most pertinent is that official listen to fans. Soccer fans here put up with a lot of crap from a lot of different people... but the most disheartening thing is when you are trying to promote your local league, and league officials cut out your knees from behind. After loyally following since the beginning, we deserve better than to be told what what we should want. The fans deserve a voice... but nobody is listening. That needs to change before MLS does irreversible damage to the image of the sport. Best Regards: Cyclonis, former LA Galaxy fan
Wait, so you're back to having been following since '96 ? Interesting. Those people are douchebags, plain and simple. If they aren't going to give the MLS a chance on its own merit that's on them, not the league. Their minds are already made up ... there's no reason to give a damn about them at all. The trend though, is reversing ... I've seen it first hand here in San Antonio. No shit Sherlock. We don't have the money that other leagues do. Kind of hard to spend what you don't have to spend. If you think the salary cap is why the Cosmos aren't in the MLS ... then your "following" of the league is pretty suspect. What people? I mean other than a small handful of nostalgic, delusional people. What people? When one of the richest soccer ownerships in the world partners up with the biggest sports ownership in your country, you take it. That's just smart business, period. Clearly people hate it .... that's why more people turned up for the NYC/NYRB match at Yankee Stadium than the entire Spring season for the Cosmos. And yes, there will be JOKES about the new LA franchise. So what? I can point to people in real life that don't give a damn, like the sport specific naming, and pay attention to facts of the matter like Sporting Kansas City actually being a sporting club. It's called the USOC ... it already exists. .... this makes no sense, at all. But Europe has turf fields !!!!! so does France !!!!! ENGLAND HAS GROUND SHARES !!!!!!! If we aren't like them we aren't doing it right .... duh There are minor soccer leagues here, yes .... but soccer is not minor league. I don't give a shit how many times you or anyone else on BigSoccer want to cry and pretend it is so, but it isn't. Minor League's don't have people paying 100m just to be awarded a club nor do they have groups plopping down 250m+ for an existing franchise and building a stadium for them. Minor league doesn't get you international tv deals etc etc etc But every league has foreign player restrictions .... We do. I mean people pay good money to see Dempsey and Bradley and Altidore .... but they also pay good money to see Keane, Valeri, Martins, and guys like Kaka. I see a nice batch of representative ingredients there. You mean like Portland changing their crest immediately due to fan backlash? Like aborting the countdown clock? Like hearing the Sons of Ben in Philly? Like creating the mechanism to get Beckham/etc here? There's a hell of a lot more listening going on than you think ... No, generally businesses don't listen to people that can't get their story straight about their history of following the league or to people that have already made up their minds. Best Regards, HailtotheKing Crocketteer Travis 250 Member - SA Scorpion Supporter FCD Supporter DCU Fan MLS Supporter
There are a lot of fundamentalist churches in my area. It's nice to be able to experiencw a full-on, fire-and-brimstone jeremiad on a Sunday morning without having to leave the house or even turn the TV on.
The thing is, the snobs won't give MLS a chance until all its clubs are on the same level as Barcelona. Which is not only prohibitively expensive, but absolutely impossible seeing as there aren't enough great players in the world to fill more than two or three teams at that level.
Won't happen on the U.S. But you need promotion/relegation. That is a critical component of the excitement of the game. Without it nothing is at stake except for 4-6 elite teams. Each game matters even for a mediocre team when you have relegation. American fans are conditioned to tune out the regular season because as long as your team makes the playoffs it really matters little.
I'm sorry, that myth has been destroyed ten ways from Sunday ... more than once. And if you think we "tune out" the regular season ... well, you might as well just not bother coming back into this discussion. When you tack that onto your "each game matters" stinker ... yeeeeeaaaahhhh.
Sweet, find 64 (16 teams * 4 regions) multi-billionaires, and get it started. Let me know how that works for you.
I keep seeing this that "Euro Snobs" won't give MLS a chance. Not sure what you define as a "chance" but I have attended probably 10 MLS games in my life including a two classico's, a match in Portland, and an MLS cup. Yet the league has never grabbed my attention. I follow with about the same interest as the English Championship. (honestly probably watched more Championship matches on TV last season than MLS) At a certain point it might be good to stop blaming fans, this isn't a case of actively hating the league. It's simply a case of never being given a reason to follow it.
That's fair enough. I enjoy MLS, period, but I also suspect that for most fans, it's the personal connection to the club--going to games regularly, making friends with other fans, tailgating, etc.
Both sides need to concede more ground on this point ... ... as there are plenty that outwardly speak on the MLS and how it is "wrong" YET have never been honest in giving it a chance and will never do so thanks to preconceived notions or an inability to see it for what it is. ... just as there are plenty of people thinking that those are the only people outwardly speaking on the MLS and how wrong it is.
Promotion/relegation has nothing to do with why people in the USA watch Euro soccer. The overwhelming majority of people here watch Barcelona, Real Madrid, Bayern Munich, Man U, Chelsea, Liverpool and Arsenal - with a few who watch Juventus/Milan/Inter. When was the last time any of those teams was in any danger of getting relegated by their on-the-field performance? (i.e. not counting regular bouts of corruption in Italy) Here's a test: Go to any soccer bar in the USA and ask anyone sitting at any seat to name four starters from Hull City, Burley or Queens Park Rangers. They can't. They don't follow those teams at all. Not at all. Focusing on promotion/relegation is completely misunderstanding the Euro-watching American soccer fan.
I used to be a fan of AC Milan until I noticed that some of the stadiums in Italy have running tracks. Talk about minor league. They should start over and have team names like the Napoli Pizza Pies.
The thing about pro/rel is, just try to imagine it in any other North American 'Big 4' league. Could you see fans really showing up to support, say, the Detroit Lions trying to avoid getting bumped from the NFL? It's already bad enough they went 0-16 one year, to think that they'd be showing up to watch their team potentially drop out completely is a non-starter. Their stadium would be empty for that game. The thing with pro/rel where it's 'exciting' is the fact that only a few teams in any season have a shot at the championship in any European league. You can pretty much name the 2 or 3 big names in any league and they'll probably be in contention at the end. So you HAVE to have something else to follow as well. In the U.S., we wouldn't support a league where the Galaxy and Seattle won 9 of 10 titles in a decade. It would actually turn us off to the league. When I cheer for Columbus, even this year, they have a shot at winning it all. You can't say that about any team in England slotted 5th or lower in the standings at the halfway point of the season. It just won't happen. Pro/Rel is only needed if you don't have parity and have to sell a competition where there really shouldn't be one. The competition should be for the title, not for 'who will be relegated'.
Whoa! Twitter and Facebook are destroying each other in a contest on who can bash the new unveiled AtlantaUnited FC's name worse!! I have seen threads about Ferguson Missouri which were not as vicious. Why are we made to defend things that already have a negative image before they even play a game? http://www.mlssoccer.com/news/artic...referral&utm_content=News&utm_campaign=Unpaid
It's the curse of American soccer fans. We have such am inferiority complex we eat our own. It's stupid.
Seriously! I kept hearing about how great this club "FC Barcelona" was so I tuned into a match. They were playing in front of 40,000 empty seats so I knew they weren't worth watching.
I think people would be overjoyed to see the Washington Redskins in the relegation zone every year. It would basically force Dan Snyder to put a competent product on the field or begone from the NFL. You have a bunch of owners in each league who really don't care about winning but just care about making money without even trying because nothing is at risk when losing.
What on earth makes you think Snyder doesn't want to win? Mike Shanahan was the 2nd highest paid coach in the NFL and Jay Gruden is paid above the average despite being a first-time head coach. They routinely spend huge amounts in free agency, and were one of two teams (the other being Dallas) to be punished for spending too much on players during the recent "uncapped" season. You are making the same mistake as many pro/rel advocates; you assume that teams which lose do so because they don't care about winning. In the Redskins case, they lose because they spend their money stupidly, not because they don't spend money or don't care.
Did I do it right? .. and then you add the third for the hat trick !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Fantastic guy. You're on fire!