If you aren't getting paid by MLS and USSF, you are doing something wrong. Pretty amusing to go the internet and tell people what can and can't be a fan of. I am not a fan of MLS and a fan of the USMNT. As I have become more and more disenfranchised by MLS and coaches have continued to put undeserving MLS players in the USMNT, my interest in the usmnt declined. I would think that would be concerning to people but the MLS fan is happy to run of fans if they don't fall in line. Back to your first comment, I see no reason why I can't be a fan of the USMNT, MLS academies, and USL. Yes, you tell us on a regular basis about this 10 year thing and then launch into some our discussion how great the league is. We also had commissioner claim back then that MLS would be one of the best leagues in the world. Maybe you should tell him in your next meeting that if you really want people to accept it is a young growing league, you might want t he guy who runs it stop promising outrageous growth prospects to hopefully another dumb sap to come to a game. The league isnt close to being the best and think having "major" in the league title is still misleading. I dont no why when anyone criticizes the league, people interpret that as they don't want a league. I think they just want the league to do a much better job at things that would improve the American player instead of just making more money and giving the impression of the league. It is no longer the case that a couple of owners are doing a great service to soccer by funding an unprofitable venture. I would have no problem blowing up MLS and USSF and starting over with plan focused on soccer instead of marketing. Hell, USL has done same great things over the last few years. The federation could sanction the USL with pro/rel and outside leagues would have fit into it. I think a singular system with structure would blow up at this point. This isn't 2001. There is an audience for the game and it would be great if everyone was interested in it, instead of the mess we have now with no single entity having a huge fanbase. Phil Anshutz was an absolute savior and hopefully he gets the admiration he deserved. Maybe another one or two of the original guys deserve some credit, but rest don't care.
For KdeB it would be like playing against opponents in slow motion. `But in a less degree it would also apply if he played in the Eredivisie against the teams but the top 4. KdeB isnot a really good measuring stick, as he's of an exceptional quality and in my eyes the best player in the world the last five years.
Yep... you could have just reposted this from before. These types of posts are used as a distraction. This whole discussion is that MLS doesn't develop top players with that skillset by conscious or unconscious choice and the style of play does nothing to help. Further, because of the style of play, these deficiencies might not be readily apparent (those who don't understand the challenges are definitely going to miss it, be confused why they dont excel at the international level and continually push inadequate players like 4oldan) and only surface when they move abroad or we waste national team minutes on them.
It's not in the mission statement of mls to provide an environment to American players to be able to compete with other nations' players in tournements. Generally that's a byproduct of the league's quality. In my eyes there's one major hinder to US players being able to develop into top players in the league itself and it's not the quality of the league. The big stumbling block is the set up of the league as a level playing field. This not only makes teams more or less of the same level, but also pulls down match qualities to a league average level. This means that individual players hardly ever encounter a situation that forces them to up their game to make a chance. Also the absence of relegation and it's impact on you as a player plays a significant role. When you as a player are in a team that is threatened with relegation, you're forced to play with everything you have to prevent that. As such the better quality players take a boost from that battle against the better/best teams. They learn from/grow because of that and make themselves candidates for the better clubs. The top players in the better/best teams learn/develop by playing against these better/best teams, but also from fighting with the relegation threatened teams. This all is smoothed out in the level playingfield philosophy. You donot get stronger by day in, day out, year in, year out pushing 30 kilos. You get stronger by adding a kilo until it becomes easy and then add a kilo etc. Level playing field keeps you where you are, not to the next level, unless your level already is the best available.
Sorry dude, you're very wrong. Heracles, as all other Eredivisie and our second tier clubs are known for their sevelopment of players. Actually a large number of players the lazy foreign press (and fans) attribute to the last academy they were in (PSV, Ajax, Feyenoord, AZ) de facto were developed by those clubs like Heracles before being snapped up by the big clubs. As a matter of fact Heracles has developed/delivered players to among others the top Eredivisie clubs and Serie A clubs who were huge successes there and set them on track to become internationals (like Goosens with Germany). The same applies to FC Groningen. It's a very lazy statement and as such very inadequate concerning the truth.
Uh oh... I expect some of these guys to get worked up about this. I agree with everything you say. I will add a couple insights. Maybe one of them will give you something to think about. While not their mission, making it a clear objective would increase its popularity. I think there are a lot of USMNt fans that would give the league much more of a chance if they saw it was a priority. You hit on part of the way I like to think about in terms of playing tougher teams forces players to raise their level. I have youth coaches talk about wanting games to be split between opponents at, below, and above their team level. This really resonates with me and applies throughout a career as each challenges players to solve different problems. Playing down allows players try things they might not otherwise, fine tune approaches before trying out against stiffer comp, and can be used to ask players to play bigger roles. Better teams provide the reasons you wrote and similar comp the focus can be just on winning. A lot is talked about the competition that is created by pro/rel, but a atleast initially, there would be other massive positives because of the structure of the game in this country. Right now, the investment in the game is mostly at the top level by Billionaires (who arent soccer people) located in major metropolitan areas. The financial standards for owner net worth and stadium size is also unnecessarily prohibitive.. he major draw seems to be gameday experience of attending games, but that really isn't possible for a large number of Americans due to geography. Our lower leagues are disjointed, but there has been significant growth in that area, but I struggle to see the incentive to invest without much chance of making much. If the system was open, anyone willing to invest (which seems like quite a bit) could start up a team with the hopes moving up the ranks. This would increase overall investment, increase opportunity to play both in number and geographies, increase the demand for high level coaching. This would alleviate a number issues that we currently have... development of players would become a priority for many more teams, geographic challenges would be alleviated, innovation would be increased and rewarded, and scouting would improve dramatically to name a few
It's not my intention to work up (is that linguistically correct?) people with that post. It's what I see happening watching the odd mls matches. When Busio was mentioned in rumours to be on the want list of Feyenoord and being asked about that by American fans I watched several mls matches of him (and of some other players too). Personally I donot think any mls watching fan should bother about what level it is. It's your league, so enjoy it. I give a rat's ass about the difference in quality between Eredivisie and epl. I can watch matches and highlights of the epl, but hardly ever bother to do that. Why? Because the clubs I care about play in the Eredivisie and I could care less if some, for instance Real Madrid) fan starts pissing on the Eredivisie level ( funny enough after they were run over by an Eredivisie team). We create players, they buy them. So mls is your league, just have fun with it. It only becomes a different matter if one attaches objectives that arenot part of the clubs interests. With more money to be spent in the mls, the level will go up as normally better and better players are drawn to it then. However that doesnot tackle the problem I described regarding US player levels coming out of the mls. The level playing field then still is an issue.
I know you didn't intend to, but most criticism is met with strong resistance. Another argument i would throw it that makes developing quality American players lies in their goal to be a top league. Unless rules are changed they are going to need a lot of good American players. With roughly 30 teams and roster rules require a minimum number of players (let's assume 10 to 15), that mean they 300 to 450 American players who could play in a top league. I assume you post here because you are interested in how the game works here. Here are a couple twitter threads from a guy who I think lives in WV and heavily active the the grassroots youth soccer. "It feels"Fairly consistently we see MLS fans, people involved/employed in that ecosphere, and those who cover the league for a living not being able to understand the "why" behind everyone who isn't on board... https://t.co/3izziFvVmX— Chris Kessell (@THEChrisKessell) December 29, 2021 I asked this question after hearing that someone was surprised that many lower division soccer fans in the US view MLS as the enemy. I think the results of this prove that a sizable portion of these fans do... in fact hate MLS. It points to a few things... https://t.co/rNwzT7fIO6— Chris Kessell (@THEChrisKessell) February 3, 2021 These were old threads, that he just copied into response of this post. I think if read through these you will see some of the overly sensitive/entitled posts that you will see here that think it is some American duty to support the league (while more than happy to insult and make one not interested at all) as well as very different perspective of things. I often get the feeling that folks here think the ideas posted reflected American soccer fans when it is much more of a minority. Fascinated as to why non-MLS soccer/futbol fans go out of their way to rip on @MLS, unprovoked.I don’t happen to care much about #UCL or the Prem or Serie A or La Liga, but so what?If you don’t care about MLS, why do you waste time ripping on it???? Genuinely curious.— Dave Denholm (@TalkSoccer) June 20, 2022
If it wasn't for MLS McKennie would have just graduated and Tessman would still be at college. Neither would be playing soccerball.
lots of assumptions baked into that. It also the usual desperate response when the league is criticized. I refuse to talk about the leagues deficiencies but let throw out something completely different I think it does well.
MLS isnt attractive tv entertainment for general soccer fans. Goff has been putting out ratings regularly and MLS numbers pale in comparison to EPL, CL, Liga MX, etc. I couldn't find any of those easily (I am not good at searching twitter), I found these recent numbers for MLS and USL games (I am sure there is some extremely complicated and only adversely impact those MLS games. Cable numbers ...MLS, LA Galaxy vs Portland (ESPN & ESPN Deportes, Sat): 413,000 combinedMLS, ATL vs. MIA (ESPN2 & ESPN Deportes, Sun): 199,000 combinedUSL, Detroit vs El Paso (ESPN, Sat): 197,000MLS, Nashville vs KC (FS1, Sun): 88,000— Steven Goff (@SoccerInsider) June 21, 2022
This is the USMNT discussion board, the USMNT players it produces are much more on topic here than TV ratings. Our starting XI is going to feature MLS academy products, alumni and players, that's what matters on this board. Most Americans don't like or watch soccer, this isn't news. Even people who like a thing may not watch it on tv. I actually like basketball but didn't make time to see any of the NBA playoffs.
MLS fans constantly talk about the poor TV ratings, that’s not news or any gotcha. And if TV ratings are now fuel to the fire regarding player selection our Bundesliga and Serie A guys are in a similar boat to MLS if not worse.
That doesn't change that there many assumptions that aren't necessarily true to suggest where two FCD players would be today.
This was brought in the context of many of the discussions going on. It is hard see MLS spending a lot more money without bigger viewership and the contracts that go with it. It provided to help our Dutch friend get an idea of some of the really weird dynamics of soccer in this country and to make clear that you MLS fans are a much smaller percentage of soccer fans in this country than one might think if this was their only source of information. It was to show that there is surprisingly high interest in some USL games relative to what those on here would suggest. Average epl viewership in the states is in the ballpark of twice that of MLS. Add in all the other leagues and it begins to give a picture how MLS fans fit into the ov3r soccer Fandom in the US. The champions league final got roughly twice the viewers of MLS cup.
I don't know why you keep trying to make me out to be an "MLS fan" When MLS stops serving my interest, I'll stop watching. I watched Sunderland as much as I could and then TFC every week when Altidore played for them but I wouldn't have called myself a fan of the club and nobody else would either. I used to turn the games off when he was subbed.
I guess it is an assumption, but hard to anyone but an MLS fan pushing inferior MLS players the way you do. The constant defense of the league plays into it as well.
Brazil 2014 9 MLS players, mainly collegiates, 5 German dual nationals, USA bunkering with the likes of Zusi, Beckerman and Bedoya in midfield and Mix Diskerud on the bench. Average age 27, playing bunkerball, 45.5% possession, 11 shots per game for vs. 23.5 against (whoscored). Despite that whoscored have is the 8th best rating. Let's see how Qatar 2022 compares. Hopefully a mainly European based squad full of UCL regulars, playing the high press game, dominating possession and creating lots of chances. Even though the talent available has little to do with the boss directly, let's see what he can do with it.
I don't think arguing that Morris > KdlF or Zimmerman > Miazga is necessarily bias. It's simply based on opinion. Oh yeah and Miazga may be headed back to MLS and not even as a Designated Player.
I'm just saying, McKennie had an offer to play college basketball and Tessman had an offer to play college football. If this was 1995 what would you take?
Because there's no such thing as an "MLS fan" anymore than there's anyone that identifies as an "EPL fan". There are fans of individual clubs who are invested in those clubs succeeding in the near-term and growing as organizations / brands in the long-term. And I mean literally invested, as in spending actual money toward that goal -- not just starting arguments on the internet. So the average supporter of an MLS club is already putting more skin in the game than just sitting around whining. Oh, I mean "tracking the gaps" or whatever. I don't know what the relevance of that is; neither is a NT regular. The best environment for young players to achieve their potential is going to depend on the player. Or are you proposing some kind of plan to knock-up frauleins en masse over the next 20 years? OK. Take all the players that were developed by MLS academies, played in MLS ever or are currently in MLS out of the current pool. Who's your starting 11 for the World Cup under those circumstances?
I mean we're taking 26 players to Qatar of which up to 8 play in MLS. That's fewer MLS players than Klinsmann took in his 23 man roster in 2014. So what's the problem?
I guess Wes could have found his way to Juventus other ways but probably not as quickly. My "defense" of MLS players has been me essentially pointing out that a lot of criticism of Roldan and Arriola is people watching imaginary football, with video proof of the nonsense in some cases. I don't think you can find me calling for either of them in the first choice XI.
KDLF has a weird game to me in my limited viewing of him. He looks like a skilled dribbler without the speed to really make it hurt.