Are we discussing this elsewhere? Anyone interested? A few years ago it was easier to make the parity case in MLS. One or two ringers, (whether or not they are "fairly"secured ) should pay off in the long run, but could also blow up in your face. Three starts to change things. But I look at LA's roster now and see something like 20 starters already. Then they have LA2. Keeping Bruce Arena for a long run and empowering his vision for player development is obviously a very creditable part of their success. But that success also has a lot to do with: *Two great keepers *Keeping core veterans like De La Garza *Being two deep even at left back: Dunivant and Robbie Rogers! *Genuine DP's like Omar Gonzalez *Having guys who would be DP's on the Quakes, like Juninho or Gyassi Zardes or certainly Sebastian Lletget *Alan Gordon and Edson Buddle off the bench (we have Mark Sherrod starting) *High quality utility players like Baggio Husidic *Untracked internationals flowing in and out, like Stefan Ishizaki, Mika Vayrynan... * Etc. Again, Arena gets a lot of credit for bringing out the quality in some of these guys. But wouldn't we be maxed already? Now add: *Robbie Keane, Steven Gerrard, and Gio Dos Santos. How do some teams, like LA and NYC and Toronto, do this? I remember hearing we could not afford to keep Justin Morrow or Steven Beitashur. (And that was ok because we were getting away from a style of play that required quality service into the box. ) I'm sure some will say "We don't give a ******** about LA".... And yes we beat them at Stanford, which is awesome... But I don't like being set up to lose to our rivals for years to come. I don't enjoy seeing them representing the Western Conference in MLS Cup every other year. Or lifting MLS Cup three out of the past four seasons.
I am starting to think that for teams like us, there is a salary cap whereas for LA there is a salary ten-gallon hat!
It's pretty clear that Garber wants to run MLS like other pro leagues. Giving the big cities the stars and unlimited cap, because in the overall scene of things, he thinks it's best for the league. Sucks for the fans outside of LA and NY, but the best thing to do is buy into the blue collar mentality, or else you'll find yourself going crazy. SJ is not a sexy city in the eyes of the commissioner, therefor we will have to struggle. It sucks, but that's the reality.
San Jose isn't sexy but San Francisco is, and high end players should want to live in the bay area at least as much as they should want to live in LA. But it's a different attitude on the part of the owners. Remember that we are laregely owned by an owner of the A's, and LA's ownership is acting more like the owners of the Yankees. It's a different attitude - c.f. Moneyball. Thing is, our GM is no Billy Beane. But yeah, it sucks. We need more quality players.
Yeah, I don't think we can blame the commissioner necessarily. These are business decisions that the ownership group makes. They are actually trying to keep up a bit. Who would have thought that they would use up all DP slots, when they were reluctant to use even one in the past. But it is an arms race. LA, Seattle, Toronto, NY want to use all of their DP slots and more, and not on $600k DP's, but on international superstars at 10x the amount. I am probably an outlier but I actually like being a fan of an underdog team. But I want my underdog team to attempt to combat the spendthrift teams with smarts and innovation, a la Beane and company. Don't think we have that at the moment. We have just enough MLS experience and smarts (though Dom mainly) to be competitive, but I don't really see innovation or a long-term strategy. Heck, I don't even care if the strategy didn't work. It would be interesting at least to see them try something different, and if it doesn't work, try something else. What I see now is kind of, yeah, we're going to do what everyone else is doing, only kind of less of it than the spendthrift teams, and use our MLS experience to get by and see if we can steal one!
Short answer: Quality of ownership and GM. Long answer: Their quality of DPs make a huge difference. Look at LAs record without Keane (either injury or international duty) and you will find an average team. While Juninho or Gyassi Zardes or certainly Sebastian Lletget are all good players, none of them are DPs. I will say Juninho is one the most underrated players in the league. Coaching is another factor. LA plays a following game with a lot of movement. The players are allowed to get into attack, but work hard to get back into defense.
"We're a small club." Seriously though, the reason LA and NY (and a lesser extent Toronto and Seattle) have all kinds of money and players and large organizations is because they are the largest markets and can afford to outspend the rest of the league and set the pace for everyone else. It's not because the league favors them (though they do enjoy their success and the headlining names that go there because it brings more attention to the league), it's a simple matter of economics and geography. If the league really wanted to favor LA and NY they would do away with spending caps and parity restrictions all together. It's a line they're trying to balance to grow the league with star power but not leave the majority of teams behind. One of the main reasons why if you want the Quakes to be competitive in this league, you should hope promotion/relegation never comes to MLS.
L.A.'s owner is also partly Houston's owner, and used to own the Quakes, Chicago, and DC, as well as MetroStars. He also lives in Colorado and could have taken an ownership stake in that franchise. L.A.'s owner chose from the get-go to favor the Galaxy over his other MLS interests. You can look to ownership of virtually every current MLS club, including the Quakes, and the question of what they can afford is secondary to where such ownership chooses to devote their resources.
Well as far as that goes, I don't think the Quakes ownership cares that much about winning. Honestly. I think they bought the cheapest house in an up and coming neighborhood. And they like being the caboose, investing about the least they can while riding the increased valuation of the league. I think they wanted to do the stadium deal. I think they like how relatively thrifty MLS ownership can be. I think they like selling Beckham/Gerrard/Club America tickets. They like cornering the soccer market for the whole Bay Area. They want to be competitive enough that Avaya isn't a ghost town, but the heroics of 2012 for example are just a nice bonus that can happen to underdog teams in a low-scoring sport in a league that seeks parity. Obviously Wolff and co see the trend we're discussing and they love it. They don't see the Galaxy as rivals, they see them as ticket sales drivers.
I heard that some pro athletes somehow are more attracted to endless numbers of beautiful women than to engineers, programers and developers. That can't be right, can it?
Then maybe we should have stayed at Buck Shaw, Bajoro. "Full disclosure, Gio. We must show you our humble college stadium. And we'll have to stroll you through the campus to get there. Yes it is a very sunny, hot day. Yes, the students are festive."
I would add "youth" to smarts and innovation. Considering the topic of this thread, you really have to tip your hat to the team built by Johnny Moore and Frank Yallop in 2001 and beyond, without an exceptional amount of money. They were lucky in a sense to get Donovan, but what an ensemble.
Hey, I used to hang out at Spartan because of the beautiful women. But seriously, @Honore de Ballsac you made a good point about Arena. Like him or not, he is a visionary (or at least has a very strong point of view). Add that to the money situation (Gals being AEG's favorite child) and it'll be interesting to see what other teams will try to compete in the arms race.
If by "youth" you mean "youth development" then that's part of what I had in mind by "smarts and innovation". Not that it's all that innovative, but you could just decide to go all in on your academy program. That may be one way to compete. I think the closest thing to that in MLS today is Dallas, but they have an additional wrinkle in that it seems that they have a lot of Latin American youth(?).
Of course the ownership / management wants to win. But when it comes down to spending $10 million on a DP, well, maybe they don't want to win that badly, and maybe they'll just run into one (a championship) now and then.
I simply do not understand why the Earthquakes Academy have been so impotent when it comes to developing local talent to feed into the first team. I mean, we are probably in the middle of one of the top three areas in the country for youth soccer talent, but so far we have bupkus (with the possible exception of TT). Is it because our youth coaches aren't good at recognizing talent? Really -- what is going on (or not going on) here?
Our academy is still in it's infancy. If in 5-10 years you can make this statement we have a problem.
You're misconstruing my argument. It's not just about owners willing to spend money. It's the market. LA and NYC are huge and they can make a lot more back in terms of sales and advertising sponsorship, etc. Sure, some billionaire could pour hundreds of millions into making Colorado a super club. But they won't make as much of that back as if they did the same in LA or NY. That's the point- it's the market size that largely drives spending, not simply what the owners want. In our case, our ownership hasn't had large enough sights. They have the entire Bay Area, heck, all of Northern California as their market, that amounts to a huge area and pool of fans, advertising, etc., amounting to one of the largest markets in the country. But their eyes have rarely left Silicon Valley. Think like a small club, and that's all you'll be.
I didn't expect that much wasn't going too happen until Avaya was built. Once the soccer complex at Coleman Highline is completed we will probably see the Academy ramped up.
No. It's a matter of MLS allowing these clubs to abuse the salary cap like a cheap hooker. Their owners are richer, for the most part, than the other owners. But they couldn't overspend the salary cap if MLS didn't let them. I'm not talking about DP's here. Look at the frigging water-stealers roster. No way those guys are being paid as little as the union tells us. When you have a successful playoff run, all of your players get raises. At some point, you have to sell off or trade a bunch of guys to get back under the cap. This has happened to every team in MLS that wins the cup and makes it to the final, except the smog-breathing, water-stealing galactopustules. You can complain that "our owners are cheap," but in an arms race, we're never going to beat the other clubs whose owners are willing to spend $40M or $50M on their rosters. Hell, even at $20M I don't think we're in the game. That's true for a lot of teams. But it's worse, because we can't spend that sort of money even if want to. Go Quakes!! - Mark
it will be difficult for us to sign a gerrard or dos santos. But we need to take that kind of money and invest it an a USL team. We may not compete on the int'l superstar front but we can compete on the developmental / homegrown front. But LA is blowing us out of the water there as well. That is unacceptable. We also can make smarter moves like not giving up dan gargan for free. Not getting rid of beita/morrow in their prime. etc.