MLS and Chinese Super League cooperation

Discussion in 'MLS: Commissioner - You be The Don' started by Mmmcounts, Jul 4, 2016.

  1. Mmmcounts

    Mmmcounts Member

    Dec 28, 2013
    Club:
    Chicago Fire
    There are a handful of things that MLS needs to work around in terms of CCL competitiveness, length of the season, and fitness for USMNT players (according to JK). And there may be a way to address multiple issues by working together with the ascendant Chinese Super League. China and the US are natural rivals and our leagues bear a lot of comparison (and some notable contrasts of course), but we're on roughly the same schedule and I just think something is bound to happen at some point. Here's the idea.

    Rather than a tournament, what I have in mind is a Challenge. Starting in mid-to-late January and ending in February (in time for MLS teams to compete in the CCL QFs and for the CSL teams to begin group play in theirs), half of the MLS teams travel to China, and half of their teams (some from the second tier, presumably) travel here. Have two host sites in each country, where it's fairly warm of course. Make a point of keeping teams home if they are near the host site or if they happen to be competing at a continental level at the end of February, otherwise travel shouldn't be much of a burden on anyone.

    If we assume 20 teams are involved at 4 different sites, you have 5 teams from each league at each site. If we assume this happens in a few years when there could be 24 teams involved, perhaps we have 6 teams at each site. Either way, here's the idea. Every MLS team at each site plays one game against each of the Chinese teams at that site, and the same goes for them. Everybody plays everybody from the opposing league once (at each of the sites). Much like the Big 10/ACC Challenge in college basketball, you tally up points for wins and ties for each league. 100 games would be played if 20 from each side are involved thusly, and it would be 144 if there were 24 teams in play. Either way, you tally the points and see which league performs better from top to bottom (sort of, in a way). Then everyone goes home with the advantage of some recent competition under their belts, JK applauds it (I would assume), and it might help MLS teams close the gap in CCL play. If I'm not mistaken, Liga MX teams are coming into the late-February action with close to 5 or 6 recent games under their belts, so this would be the creative way for MLS teams to approximate that.

    Scheduling would have to dodge around the NFL playoffs a bit (except on that dead weekend before the Super Bowl where nothing else is happening), but I'd like to point out there's an incredible appetite for soccer in the Chinese TV viewing audience, and the icing on this cake would be that MLS could monetize some of that interest. Also, under the specifics of this particular plan, I'll point out that the best teams from each country will have a tendency to stay home; that coupled with the normal home-field advantage and the travel disadvantage, both countries should be able to enjoy a large number of wins on their home turf. On top of that, it allows MLS to better advertise that the CCL quarterfinals are approaching, and these are the teams that you should be watching.

    What does everyone think? Is it marketable, is it doable, does it look viable in the long term?
     
  2. The Devil's Architect

    Feb 10, 2000
    The American Steppe
    Club:
    Chicago Fire
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
  3. Mmmcounts

    Mmmcounts Member

    Dec 28, 2013
    Club:
    Chicago Fire
    And why is that?
     
  4. Elninho

    Elninho Member+

    Sacramento Republic FC
    United States
    Oct 30, 2000
    Sacramento, CA
    Club:
    Los Angeles Galaxy
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    This looks prohibitively expensive.

    Also, we've had preseason tournaments before involving Japanese and Korean clubs. J-League and K-League clubs are closer in overall roster strength. Every year there's always a few clubs from those leagues doing their preseasons in California or Arizona.

    The Chinese clubs are going to do the exact same thing as the other Asian clubs we've had here and treat it as preseason, because that's exactly what it is.
     
  5. Elninho

    Elninho Member+

    Sacramento Republic FC
    United States
    Oct 30, 2000
    Sacramento, CA
    Club:
    Los Angeles Galaxy
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    I'm just going to ask: what sane coach would commit an entire month's worth of preseason to playing solely opponents that don't even remotely resemble the teams they're preparing to play against? And why, exactly, would two leagues commit all their teams to doing that every year?
     
  6. JasonMa

    JasonMa Member+

    Mar 20, 2000
    Arvada, CO
    Club:
    Colorado Rapids
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    On top of the problems already pointed out, you'd have to get the players union to sign off and I'm thinking they're going to say no.
     
    HailtotheKing repped this.
  7. xtomx

    xtomx Member+

    Chicago Fire
    Sep 6, 2001
    Northern Wisconsin, but not far from civilization
    Club:
    Chicago Fire
    On top of all of the very rational reasons against it, it just seems a bit stupid.

    Sending half the teams to China (and having the Chinese league send half their teams here) seems like a logistical nightmare.

    Having them play "somewhere warm" really would not help.

    You are going to have the Chinese teams spend hundreds of thousands of the dollars to send their entire team to play an MLS team in Alabama or some other place, to play in front of dozens of spectators?
     
    EvanJ and JasonMa repped this.
  8. EvanJ

    EvanJ Member+

    Manchester United
    United States
    Mar 30, 2004
    Club:
    Manchester United FC
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    On top of other reasons given, how much money would it cost for an MLS club to be at a Chinese hotel long enough to play 5 games there? If MLS clubs spent February in China, that's under two months after the previous MLS Cup. Going to China in February could conflict with the USMNT friendlies in late January and early February when players on European clubs have to stay with their clubs.
     
    xtomx repped this.
  9. An Unpaved Road

    An Unpaved Road Member+

    Mar 22, 2006
    Club:
    --other--
    Sounds like another Superliga except without the built-in fanbase we have for Mexican clubs in this country. MLS probably wouldn't be much of a draw in China either.
     
  10. ceezmad

    ceezmad Member+

    Mar 4, 2010
    Chicago
    Club:
    Chicago Red Stars
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Fvck that just bring back the Pacific/Hawaii tournament, replace the A-League with the CSL, and expand to 2 teams per.

    2 Kleague
    2 Jleague
    2 CSL
    2 MLS
     
    HailtotheKing and mschofield repped this.
  11. superdave

    superdave Member+

    Jul 14, 1999
    VB, VA
    Club:
    DC United
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    If Chinese TV was interested then this notion deserves consideration. Otherwise, hell no.
     
  12. LouisianaViking07/09

    Aug 15, 2009
    how many years until the Chinese league has gone bust?

    curious now how much of a profit or benefit that the leagues in the Gulf States have
     
  13. Elninho

    Elninho Member+

    Sacramento Republic FC
    United States
    Oct 30, 2000
    Sacramento, CA
    Club:
    Los Angeles Galaxy
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    None of the owners in those leagues have any intention of making money. Most of them own clubs purely for prestige and are perfectly willing to lose tens of millions of dollars a year in perpetuity. In China, owners are also spending money on foreign players in the hope of currying favor with the current government. That's a non-quantifiable benefit they're looking for.

    China has also had more club moves than any other country in the last 15 years, because the club owners and potential owners all have more money than patience. They COULD buy a local club and get it promoted to the CSL, but they've preferred to buy clubs already in the top two divisions and move the clubs to their hometowns. The current owner of Guangzhou R&F was so impatient that he moved the club to Guangzhou immediately upon buying it midseason, without even waiting for the season to finish. He was completely unconcerned about the massive loss of revenue associated with relocating midseason, and having to refund people who had already bought tickets.
     
  14. Paul Berry

    Paul Berry Member+

    Notts County and NYCFC
    United States
    Apr 18, 2015
    Nr Kingston NY
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Chinese Super League seems to be like a pro-celebrity league, just like the old NASL, and the national team is doing just as well as the USA was, with the old NASL.
     
    LouisianaViking07/09 repped this.
  15. LouisianaViking07/09

    Aug 15, 2009
    how are Chinese fans reacting to the changes in the league over the past year or 2?
     
  16. Elninho

    Elninho Member+

    Sacramento Republic FC
    United States
    Oct 30, 2000
    Sacramento, CA
    Club:
    Los Angeles Galaxy
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    #16 Elninho, Jul 19, 2016
    Last edited: Jul 19, 2016
    I think that might be a little unfair, because the CSL does have stricter foreign player limits than the old NASL did. Currently the league allows 4+1 foreign players on a team's roster (4 unrestricted + 1 AFC player), with only 3+1 allowed to be on the field at the same time. Players from Hong Kong, Macau, and Chinese Taipei do not count as foreign. Also, all goalkeepers must be not only Chinese citizens but also eligible to play for China. So the league at least tries to be legitimately Chinese.

    The reason the CSL looks the way it does is a new class of billionaire owners who are willing to spend almost unlimited amounts of money for prestige. That's not only the reason for the expensive foreigners but also one major reason for all the club moves in the CSL era.

    Now, if you want a celebrity-driven league, that would be the Indian Super League, where clubs are required to have at minimum of 9 foreign players on their roster and can have up to 11. Then again, that league makes no pretense as to being India's top division; the majority of its players (including around half of the foreigners) are on loan from I-League clubs and the seasons do not overlap.

    Keep in mind that, in most of China, soccer's popularity as a spectator sport is at best similar to where it is in the US. The second reason for the club moves is that soccer is transitioning from a regional sport to a national sport. Historically, soccer was popular only in the northeastern part of China, plus the relatively cosmopolitan city of Shanghai, and typically more than half of the clubs in the first division were located in the northeast or in Shanghai. Soccer only started to become popular nationally in the 1990s and 2000s when satellite TV became common and people started watching the European leagues; most major cities in China only had lower-division teams, and this is why owners decided it was faster to move a team that was already at the top than to get a hometown team promoted.

    So the state of fan support in China right now is: in the northeast and in Shanghai, most soccer fans support their local clubs as they have for decades, but in the rest of the country it's mostly Eurosnobs. Also, because individual sports such as tennis, table tennis, track & field, swimming, and martial arts have always been far more popular than team sports in most of China, viewership is heavily driven by individual stars. The expensive stars are driving attendance in areas that haven't traditionally supported soccer. In soccer's traditional territory, attendance increases are driven more by the recent crackdown on match-fixing; in those areas it's more of a recovery after match-fixing scandals drove away most of the CSL's fans.

    Going back to Paul's post: the national team is still a product of the sport's regional popularity. As a participation sport, soccer is still only very popular in those traditional hotbeds. The Chinese national team's most recent roster is a 32-man training camp in advance of the next round of World Cup qualifying. 17 of the players were born in the three northeastern provinces, and another 8 were born in Shanghai. In other words, 78% of the roster was drawn from areas with about 12% of China's population. That would be about the equivalent of the US drawing four out of five players from California.
     
    JG, Nico Limmat and LouisianaViking07/09 repped this.
  17. ceezmad

    ceezmad Member+

    Mar 4, 2010
    Chicago
    Club:
    Chicago Red Stars
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    The league won't go bust, some teams may. Even if all 16 teams in D1 went bust, the D2 teams would just move up and take their place.
     
  18. ceezmad

    ceezmad Member+

    Mar 4, 2010
    Chicago
    Club:
    Chicago Red Stars
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    attendance is at an all time high if I remember correctly.
     
  19. Nico Limmat

    Nico Limmat Member+

    Oct 24, 1999
    Dubai, UAE
    Club:
    Grasshopper Club Zürich
    Nat'l Team:
    Switzerland
    #19 Nico Limmat, Jul 19, 2016
    Last edited: Jul 19, 2016
    The NASL didn't have teams spending USD 180M on soccer academies to develop the domestic player.
    The ISL will replace the I-League as the top flight next year. Have a look here.
     
  20. Elninho

    Elninho Member+

    Sacramento Republic FC
    United States
    Oct 30, 2000
    Sacramento, CA
    Club:
    Los Angeles Galaxy
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    That's an interesting development. The ISL will have to drop a lot of its foreign players when playing in AFC competitions. Even the old NASL didn't mandate a minimum number of foreign players the way the ISL does. If the ISL keeps its current roster rules, teams will be severely handicapped in international competition.
     
  21. Achowat

    Achowat Member+

    Mar 21, 2011
    Revere, MA
    Club:
    New England Revolution
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    CCL Competitiveness - No one cares about the CCL. There's no money or value to being competitive in the CCL.
    Length of Season - Yeah, no. Do you know how MLS makes money? By putting on soccer games. So, they should keep putting on as many soccer games as is legally possible.
    Fitness for USMNT - The job of MLS isn't go look out for the USMNT. The job of MLS is to look out for MLS. If Jurgen doesn't think MLS players are fit enough to play for the national team, he can stop capping MLS players. Since he hasn't done that, it's clearly not a big concern for him.

    Other people will destroy your ludicrous proposal to solve these problems, but it really should be pointed out how much these things are not problems to begin with.
     
    xtomx repped this.
  22. EvanJ

    EvanJ Member+

    Manchester United
    United States
    Mar 30, 2004
    Club:
    Manchester United FC
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    1. I'm not saying an MLS club will win the CCL anytime soon, but if an MLS club did win it and played in the Club World Cup, it could attract more fans.
    2. Klinsmann can cap MLS players because they are many of the best available Americans while still wishing MLS made significant changes. I agree with the first two sentences of the second paragraph, but I disagree with the conclusion in the last two sentences.
     
  23. Mmmcounts

    Mmmcounts Member

    Dec 28, 2013
    Club:
    Chicago Fire
    Some very important people do care about the CCL. People who rank the MLS against other soccer leagues in the world care. Any league outside of Europe and South America that has some teams which can sometimes win their champions league have a leg up on MLS. As a matter of fact, players that the MLS wants in MLS cares about this. Think about it- step one in becoming a destination league, a league of choice, is right in the western hemisphere. MLS wants the best players from Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, and Chile to see the MLS as their league of choice (with caveats of course, league of choice in our hemisphere as long as they aren't being pursued by European clubs). We don't have that right now. The league of choice is Liga MX, and it's not all about the language or the culture or the money. It's mostly about how those teams beat MLS teams consistently in actual tournaments when the games matter. If Liga MX was to assemble an all-star team based solely on who its very best players are, most of its team would be from South America. These are the exact guys that MLS wants playing for them, and they're not, nor will they continue to do so as a general trend until MLS teams can do something more meaningful in CCL competition. That is important, it is an actual metric that people take into consideration.

    I do know one big part of how MLS makes money. US Soccer gives it to them. Seriously. MLS, overall, is a loss leader. It's not making money all on its own right now. The national teams for both men and women make a whole lot more money than what their actual expenses are, the MLS and the NWSL actually, literally package their TV rights along with the national team games. They are not doing this alone. In every sense of every big-money deal that leads to the MLS getting money, US Soccer, the US national teams, they are attached to MLS at the hip. And guess who is pulling the bulk of the weight. On top of that, as previously alluded to, US Soccer literally just spends money on MLS. Pretty much all of that money is brought in by the national teams, but it is spent on MLS and MLS related interests on a fairly consistent basis, although it's not always in precisely disclosed amounts because Garber wants to be able to keep that vague come CBA time and say that MLS isn't really making that much money. Which it isn't, but they are also spending a substantial amount of money (that they do really need) from US Soccer in some form or fashion.

    So what I'm suggesting is that it makes sense for MLS to feel like it owes the USMNT a debt of gratitude and some occasional consideration. It does owe them at least that.
     
  24. Achowat

    Achowat Member+

    Mar 21, 2011
    Revere, MA
    Club:
    New England Revolution
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    In what way are those people 'important'?

    A leg up that they would have, regardless of whether they competed in Continental competitions or if MLS won the CCL.

    [citation needed]

    And how would winning the CCL change that?

    Workers want to make as much money as possible. You're arguing that professional soccer players are irrational economic actors. That's a bad argument.

    The CCL is, in no way, a 'tournament that matters.'

    [citation needed]

    SUM is not a body that 'gives money' to MLS. That's not it's job.

    All of this is useless fluff if you can't demonstrate that the USMNT 'gives money' to MLS. Care to demonstrate that?

    Even if the USSF were handing paper bags full of money to MLS (which you've done nothing to demonstrate) EVEN IF...it is still not MLS' job to help the USMNT. 'Debts of gratitude' are irredeemable for cash.

    MLS' job is explicitly and exclusively to make money for MLS.
     
    Elninho, The Franchise, JasonMa and 2 others repped this.
  25. JasonMa

    JasonMa Member+

    Mar 20, 2000
    Arvada, CO
    Club:
    Colorado Rapids
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Thank you @Achowat, there came a point in reading that post that I went "There's too much wrong here for me to make the effort to respond to it".
     
    Achowat and Elninho repped this.

Share This Page