Over here teams have a opportunity to play for a league title. Im sorry but relegation doesnt offer that.
Why do people care about which way the clock runs? If it counts up, that means a certain amount of time has elapsed. If it counts down, there is a certain amount of time left. What is so important about this? I don't get it. The clock counting up is not a difficult concept to understand!
What a crock of shit! I know you're joking though, atomicbloke. Un-American is code for "we suck at this activity. Therefore, we are going to do everything we can to discredit whatever it is we suck at because we're secretly jealous."
That's true in theory, but not in practice. There are a handful of teams that have a chance of getting promoted into the EPL from D2. But none of those teams have any real chance of being anything but cellar-dwellers in EPL, unless they get lucky enough to be bought by some billionaire. For all intents and purposes, the EPL is a 6 or so team league, with the rest of the teams existing to be cannon-fodder for 6-0 Man U wins. Unless you're a fan of one of the top teams, I don't really see the appeal of a league like that. Which goes back to the question of where these unknown teams are going to come from. Division 2 in the US is pretty anemic, and there's no evidence that people in places like Charleston or Rochester would provide any more support for their D2 teams if promotion to MLS became a possibility. There's certainly no evidence that top-tier owner groups have any interest in investing in teams that could be relegated after a bad season.
For a typical D2 team, just playing in the championship would have them in almost permanent orgasmic rapture. Such a scenario doesn't exist in the USA though.
Isn't the Championship division 2 in England? I thought it went EPL, Championship, League One, League Two.
I was taking D2 as League Two. The comment then makes sense. Given that there are loads of clubs outside the premier who could draw 30,000+ it'd be a bit odd to say nobody there could ever hope to be anything other than relegation candidates.
We need to make it easier for our coaches to tell their stories. We (Americans) support football and basketball because their stories are told. We can't avoid knowing the names and faces and stories of the people in those sports. Do the same for soccer (locally and nationally) and things will change. We need to make it easy for fans to be fans. Build our own media channels and tell good stories through them. Social media, Youtube, blogs, SMS.... they all afford us the opportunity to share our stories with our communities.
So the general public is turned off a sport that isn't mainstream because it doesn't have a league structure alien to US sports, that the majority have no desire to see implemented anyway? An interesting conclusion, it has to be said.
How do the clubs that come up from the Championship perform, typically? I'm by no means an expert on the history of promoted clubs, but it seems like they're typically at the bottom of the table and are usually in the running for relegation. For promoted clubs, being mid-table would be a major accomplishment. None of them will ever have a shot at the EPL championship, unless they get bought by some billionaire who is willing to sink hundreds of millions into them to make them competitive. Given the economics involved, there are only a handful of soccer teams in England that are relevant when it comes to the Premier League. Even long-established and well-supported teams like Everton and Fulham have to resign themselves to being mid-table, as the economic setup of the EPL makes it really difficult for them to compete with the Man U's of the world.
I doubt that has much to do with it. I don't watch it because I find other leagues more entertaining and I don't have unlimited time.
I know I find the relegation battle intriguing. Seems to be a very big deal for most teams just to stay in the Premiership. Secondarily there is the competition for the European spots. I think it probably does add to the atmosphere of the games that there are very few even at the end of the season that don't mean something.
Pro/Reg works in Europe and Latin America because soccer is their most popular sport. It's the 5th most popular sport here (lower if you count Nascar and golf) and I think the MLS is doing quite well all things considered.
There's an inherent flaw in the reasoning of a few posters, that argue that fans of teams that are promoted are put off by the prospect of being at the bottom of the promoted to league. That's not the case. Fans are fans of a certain club, because they have an emotional tie with it, regardless of the league the team plays in. That emotional tie can get a thrill factor when the team is in for a promotion spot, but that's it. A true fan doesnot need success to be a fan. Men love their wifes, despite the fact that the majority see women that are far more beautiful than theirs. That's in a nutshell fan support explained. The problem with the American way is that it is set up as a business. That has its pro, but also its no. Primarily a club is an investment vehicle that is supposed to make money for its owner. The pro is that it prevents things like Abramovich and his deep pocket fellow competitors pumping in cash to gain "respect", thus discrediting the game by pumping up the salaries of the top players. So the start isnot from the fans heart, like clubs founded by a group of people with a certain common ground. Think for instance about a club founded by the Catholic people from a city. That has then a communal root.
If you don't think Americans are emotionally invested in their sports teams, you haven't spent much time here.
The thing is, in Europe and Latin America, soccer is pretty much the only game in town for most people. Sure, there are some exceptions, like rugby. If your team gets relegated, you don't have many options, other than remaining a fan or just staying home for the season. In the US, the average soccer fan has a number of other sports options. I am, in no particular order, a fan of soccer, college football, hockey and baseball. If my MLS team gets relegated, I have several top-tier options in other sports when it comes to what teams to follow. Given the choice of going to NHL hockey games or division 2 soccer, I would choose the top-tier sport every time. That's the sports world that soccer exists in here in the US. Sports fans in most cities have a number of options and they don't have to go watch a minor-league team in one sport when there are so many other sports options available.
I think it was the guys who wrote Soccernomics who made the argument that it's foolish to think of football clubs as business investments because they're not good ones. Basically they are a community charity or sometimes playthings for the rich. The franchise system in U.S. sport is set up so owners don't lose their ass. Not so much in Europe.
Most soccer teams in Europe are run sort of like high school and college sports teams in the US. It's not a perfect analogy, for a number of reasons, but a high school football team in a Texas town exists for similar reasons as a lower-division soccer team in a town in the Midlands. American professional sports teams exist for one reason: to make money for their owners, which they're very good at. Some European soccer teams are starting to follow this model.
Even most college football programs are a net loss. The boosters want nice facilities, and most importantly, BRAGGING RIGHTS!