What level of play is MLS compared to the leagues in Norway and Belgium? Is the latter superior or not very much? I was thinking about Gooch and Russell and where they would be if they were in MLS.
i am of the opinion that besides the elite leagues, if you put the Colorado Rapids in a Hammarby shirt and Hammarby in a Colorado rapids shirt no one would know the difference. (hammarby is a club from stockholm in the swedish 1st division)
um, I know who Gooch is, but who is Russell? And based on national teams I'd hope that MLS is better than Norway, and I'd like to guess that it's just as good as Belgium.
Yes, my friend, but not all the Swedish teams are like that... there have been some good ones who've made a splash in Europe from time to time. I definitely wouldn't say that for Djurgarden or Malmö... One thing the leagues like Denmark/Sweden/Norway will do is produce 1 or 2 or 3 teams that can are quite good. I would site as my example some of the stars that have come out of the Swedish league vs. MLS. Henrik Larsson (Hammerby or Helsingborg... I don't remember) Freddie Ljungberg (Halmstad) Olof Mellberg (AIK Solna & Dagerfors) Johan Mjälby Zlatan Ibrahamovic Marcus Allback ... just to name a few current players. Not to mention the Patrick Anderson, Kenneth Anderson, Thomas Brolin, Dahlin. Heck, go back in time and you have Gunner Gren (who held the scoring record in Seria A for a long time) and a few others... You have a lot of Swedes (and I haven't begun with the Danes) who made, and ARE MAKING, an impact at big name clubs like... Barcelona, Arsenal, Juventus, etc... as starters. There are at least 40-50 Swedes playing in the top 4 leagues in the world, maybe more... and 95% come from the Swedish league (development/discovery through the Youth system counts too). My home town is 150,000 people and it has youth development through the pro-leagues. They find the talented kids - they are very good at it. MLS hasn't produced one yet - so I don't know if I can buy the swap a Colorado Rapids player for someone in the Swedish league. One big difference is the emphasis on team play in Sweden (a perennial overachiever internationally - not bad for 8 million people). The same can be said for Denmark with their 5 million people.MLS has many exceptional athletes that are likely as good (or maybe better) athletes than the Swedes/Danes... but that doesn't make them interchangeable.
No offense to anyone, but Concacaf is a cake walk compared to Europe qualifying (or South America for that matter). MLS is wonderful, the US is improving, but let's not get ahead of ourselves.
well, I just thought that Norway was a mediocre team in UEFA and didnt really have a shot at qualifying.
i picked hammarby because they are not a big club (but the club I followed when I was there). Basically what I mean is that MLS clubs could hold their own in just about any league in the world aside from the elite english, french, italian, spanish, and german, leagues. The swedish league in particular is in a state of flux right now with the power again shifting south and out of the clubs of stockholm. I imagine that if an MLS club was to join the allsvenskan for a season they would finish near the top. this year after all there have not been a lot of good swedish clubs.
1. He was talking about club football, not international football. 2. European qualifying is harder if you get into one of the tough groups, it's easier if you get an easy group. Remember, Poland dominated their group. And if you want to play the "but they beat us" card, I could get into an argument about how they were better on the day, but they're not better really. But instead I'll just point out we beat Portugal, who topped a group including Ireland and Holland. And Holland was the poster child for the "oooh, European qualifying is soooo hard" people. And top that off by pointing out that Mexico was the last team to qualify from here, but they topped Italy. The worst teams to qualify from Europe are not, over the last ~4 World Cups, better than the worst teams to qualify from CONCACAF. So by definition, it's not harder to qualify from Europe.
Yes but it is relative, I still think a current MLS team would not be have an easy time - it would just be as likely for them to wind up at the bottom of the table... and the two current leaders have only lost 4 times each in 24 games (the top 4 have 4, 4, 6, 5 losses respectively). These are good teams who play in Europe and get good results from time to time against some of the bigger leagues. It was just two years ago that Bastia (Belgian I think) beat Arsenal in the Champs League... The first team... some of these smaller European teams can be giant-killers - albeit not very often. Djurgarden has won back to back championships 2002 & 2003, they currently sit 5th but are 1 point out of 3rd. The top 3 finishers in the last 2 years have been: Djurgarden, Hammarby, Malmö. They are playing consistently well - more so than MLS teams have been the last 2-3 years where you see Chicago go from first to last in one year. The point is, that the leagues in Europe are very deep, even the smaller ones. They produce a lot of top quality players and they play against the best in the world in the most pressure environments and that prepares/conditions a certain type of competitiveness. You could fill a stadium in the US to watch a Djurgarden/FC Copenhagen/Brondby/Rosenberg (who recently drew Arsenal) play Columbus, but I'd think a game like that would be more interesting than watching a 2nd string super club play the MLS all-stars. It would be fun to see where parity is with those leagues (or the Belgians/Dutch/Scotts)...
That's not true, Norway is very good. Vastly underrated. On par with the USA. The leagues in Norway's problem and Sweden's problem is that they move a much larger portion of thier National Team players to bigger leagues, where MLS still holds on to the majority of its top players. As with most of the 2ns tier European leagues, the best teams are better than all of the teams in MLS, the worst teams are worse than all of the teams in MLS. So even if we had any direct way to compare (National Team results are about the only way), it's hard to compare the leagues. I would assume that the Norwegian and Swedish leagues are probably a bit better if for no other reason than things are actually at stake when it comes to winning and losing, and the clubs generate depth and youth talent via academies and reserve teams. MLS teams seem to suffer a bit when the David Stokes, Marshall Leonard, Scott Buete and Chris Brown level of players are forced to play. It's got to be tough for some of these guys to sit bench half the year and suddenly be forced to play full speed in a competitive game.
I would pick Colorado to beat Hammarby any day of the week. I don't know if they were playing MIF or Göteborg though...
Malmö is good right now, but IFK Göteborg has been struggling recently. Sure, they have been the best over the last few decades but right now they aren't. Hammarby was a second in the league last year, and sit 4 or 5 this year.
True, but UEFA also have a lot more slots. The World Cup winners are a small groups of nations, CONMEBOL have more WC titles than Europe... does that means that Bolivia is better than Netherlands? How many semifinals does Spain have? Portugal? But again, UEFA have a lot more slots. But again, UEFA have a lot more slots. All that we are saying is that the final hex can be more dificult than an easy UEFA grups (there isn't a WC winner on all UEFA gruops, you know).
I have never seen any norwegian league football but have seen belgian league. The top half of the league is higher (Standard, Brugge, Anderlect) where as the rest are in the same class as MLS. I don't mean to say MLS is at the same level I mean below a certain level of play many teams from different leagues can be pretty much grouped together. The problem with comparing leagues is that MLS spreads talent around while other leagues allow teams to accumulate talent which will always put MLS at a disadvantage. Another issue that needs to be addressed is that teams like Anderlect and Rosenborg are clearly inferior with regards to talent compared to teams like Newcastle and Middlesbrough. But watch Anderlect play and you see they play a far more entertaining and cerebral game of football that would make you think they are of a higher quality but that is clearly not the case. What I am trying to say is the talent level on some MLS teams may actually be higher than some teams in Belgium but the more refined footballing minds of the players would lead one to think otherwise. Actual talent is but one ingredient of the 'quality' we hope to see in MLS one day. That is why I enjoyed watching teams like Quakes and Fire of last year and the Metrostars on early this year. They provided that entertainment and they looked like quality teams as well even thought their talent level lagged behind som far more recognizable teams.
What does this really matter? Steve Shak found work in Sweden? Wouldn't we just agree the top few teams are probably better, most of the rest a little worse, with maybe the next group down from the top of the table about the same? Given MLS's unique parity system these comparisons get tiresome.
I shortened your comments to two points... because that's all you made - I hope you don't mind. UEFA has spread their finishes between 13 teams - that shows you that a given European team can place highly and perform at the top level. The get more slots because there are more nations with higher ability - FIFA simply recognizes it. CONMEBOL is basically Brazil - better than 2:1 ratio to Argentina's finishes and 9 of 13 "Top 3" finishes. Brazil is definitely the best soccer nation in the world, but Europe is definitely the best soccer continent in the world. BUT, the thread was about MLS being better than Norway/Belgium... I don't think anyone should ever confuse CONMEBOL with CONCACAF - I don't. Many people in the US don't understand just how developed the 2nd and 3rd tiers are in Europe. You can't take anyone for granted... National teams reflect the development of the nations - that's why an 8 million person country (smaller than Orange County CA) has more, higher ranked finishes than either powerhouses of Concacaf Mexico or the US... and Sweden is definitely not a powerhouse of Europe with in some cases a Semi-Pro league (yeah, a lot of the players have part-time jobs to supplement their incomes). Yet, Sweden's little league (and many other smaller European leagues) produce top talent at the top levels - something the US has yet to do, so I think it's delusional to overestimate MLS.
What I think is interesting is that if you find these discussions tiresome there is a very simple solution... just pass them by - nothing requires you to respond/post. It's like eavesdropping on a conversation and then complaining about the content - just keep on walking, you don't have to stop (so to speak).
No, the thread was about MLS being better than the LEAGUES in Norway/Belgium. And are you so sure the top talent from those nations aren't leaving young for other nations' club systems?
But we do have to scroll through the names of threads to find ones that aren't. It would have been better to continue to continue one of the bazillion threads on this subject https://www.bigsoccer.com/forum/showthread.php?t=138038&highlight=rank less than 2 months ago do we need threads to compare MLS to every league in the world, there's probably 100+ to cover then.
Before you keep going on and about how accomplished europe is in the world cup perhaps you should consider the fact that 1. The only time Sweden reached the final game was when they were at home. One of their third place finishes was in europe he other was in brazil where 3 teams withdrew from the contest. 2. The fact is europe has hosted half of the world cups ever played and has never won outside europe in the world cup. Also of all the teams to win world cups at home only european teams have managed to do this. Home field advantage is a major part of europes success in the world cup. 3. Most countries outside of europe don't have youth academies at all so a organised nation like sweden can be expected to provide its share of quality players. But lets not pretend that the leagues that restrict the number of non EU players make it easier for players from nations like sweden. I don't large numbers of these swede beating out many brazilians and africans for spots without those limits. And the same goes for a lot of other countries in europe. 4. Greece won the european championship by beating "powerhouses" like France, The Czech Republic and Portugal. How strong can the continent be? BTW who goes around comparing third place finishes from 1958 to prove how successful teams are? By that logic Uruguay is a more a football power than Sweden. The football world circa 1958 is irrelevant to the football world now.
I've read all your responses and I must say this has turned into an interesting thread. I was merely focusing on Norway and Belgium and not Sweden or Denmark etc. Still I don't think my answer was really forthcoming from any of the responses but I think that is because I wasn't very clear in my first post. Ok let me see if I can clarify. First of all are Russell and Gooch concerned to be above average in their respective leagues? Yes or no. If yes are they considered highly above average yes or no? Lastly do we think if they played in MLS they would receive higher or lower marks compared to their respective leagues? And before anyone says it I know I'm probably arguing something rather difficult to prove or apples vs oranges. Anyone that has exposure to this leagues obviously will be a better spokesperson than someone like me who has a little exposure to MLS and none to any of the other two.
My feeling is that the top team in Norway, Rosenborg, is better than the best MLS teams. After that it's a tossup. Since Russell plays for Rosenborg, you'd have to say he merits a look in a national team camp. In fact, my guess is that he'll be called up for the Jamaica match. Rosenborg is now playing in the group stages of the Champions league. I don't know enough about the Belgian league, but it's probably a similar situation. The MLS teams would be beaten by the top teams (Anderlecht, Brugge, etc.) but would compete effectively with the rest. Gooch is an example for American players wanting to start their careers in Europe. You start at a small team in a small European country, work your way up to a bigger club like Standard, and shazaam you're getting a cap. With the way he's playing I wouldn't be surprised if a bigger club takes a chance on him.