MLS is 12th in league rankings, according to this model.

Any ranking based on the number of top-quality players is going to vastly overrate the MLS.

Which isn't to say that the improvement of the past four years hasn't been real. It has been. But a couple of those leagues listed below the MLS are dramatically better.

 

I actually like the rankings. It looks beyond just the 32 winners all the way through the qualifiers, as well as uses the usual ranking methods.
It seems reasonable enough.

 

If anything this rankings method shows a comparison of how many star players each league has. Now we all know that a domestic league is built on the players that don't make the headlines, but this is still a cool way to judge the league's progress compared to it's peers.

 

Which leagues Brazilian Liga Do , Argiess, Belgian, Super League or J-League. I think with the exception of maybe 1 or 2 the list is about right the argument you make against the Brazilian Argies etc league is after the top couple big teams are the other teams that much better overall than MLS teams. I know alot of people like to se the 2007 ex of how good the J league is than MLS when Gamba Osaka destroyed Houston but as I understand the J league hasn't kept getting better I believe MLS has surpassed it. I mean didn't Cerezo S-Pulse just last year sign a scrub MLS player? Btw always thought J-League teams had some of the most bad ass team names S-Pulse Gamba Osaka. We need a MLS highlights show like the Gambare J-league show let Arlo White commentate it. ESPN you listening. I digress back on topic.

 

Interesting thought experiment, but any model with La Liga as the 4th best league in the world probably needs more tweaking.

And the article mentions it, but it appears the abundance of talent exported from Brazil and Argentina suppresses the ranking to an unfair degree.

This would be much, much more work, but it'd be interesting to apply this philosophy to all the clubs a player was with over the past 4 years. For example, Santos and the Brazilian league should probably get a little credit for Neymar, whereas in this model it is solely attributed to Barcelona and La Liga.

 

No, the MLS has a handful of great players, and then a gulf from the elite to the fringe starter that is unlike any other league in the world. That's the business model of the league, which is great, but if you rank leagues by the quality of their stars, the MLS will rank far higher than their actual quality of play would indicate.

And of course you could complicate matters further. Are you looking at the top teams, the worst teams, the median, how does pro/rel affect things, is this the first XI or are we looking at depth, etc etc etc.

 

Brazil, Belgium, and Greece are the ones I am thinking of specifically. Not sure I've ever watched any of the others.

 

WTF, we are dropping, I remember a thread last year that claimed MLS was ranked #7 ot 8.


BTW any ranking that has Brazil or Argentina that low is pretty Dumb IMO.


BTW found the thread of the 7th place ranking.

http://forums.bigsoccer.com/threads...n-the-world-by-sporting-intelligence.1986285/

 

not dumb but flawed, as somebody said those leagues get hurt because they are not "destination" leagues.

the way to improve it would be give the points for each player to every league he has played in (say for at least a full season or whatever criteria you'd want to use).

that way a player that starts in brazil and moves to spain and then england would count X points for all 3 leagues.

but i am not the one having to crunch those number so ...

 

That would still underrate leagues that are primarily made up of native born players who aren't good enough to play for their elite national teams but would waltz onto the USMNT or Cameroon or South Korea or whoever.

 

Brazil had a shit year this year in Libertadores.

But Brazil and Argentina send 5 or 6 teams to Libertadores and another few to Copa Sud Americana, and they usually do well.

People underrate their teams because they struggle vs. the top teams in their league (and yet they have more different winners than top European leagues), but take those shitty Brazilian and Argentinean teams out of their leagues and put them in other leagues in the Americas and they would look very good.

 

BTW if we applied this model to the Confederations Cup, the league in Tahiti would rank pretty high.

Edit, I wonder how far down the rankings would Liga MX fall if Mexico had lost to New Zealand for the world Cup spot.

 

This doesn't measure the quality of the league in the same way. The report you referenced takes in factors other than the quality of players/play on the field, whereas this one is concentrated to measure only that (theoretically).

So of course it will be lower since it is placing less (but still some) emphasis on parity, having world class facilities, etc.

Of course, the rankings at the subject of this thread are flawed, but they stem from a much more reasonable methodology than ones who use something like the Club World Cup as measuring sticks. I like this method if it is tweaked for accuracy. There has to be a way to give Brasil and Argentina the credit they deserve for their leagues, I'm sure they'll figure it out.

 

Rankings of this nature are always flawed in some way, shape or form. Impossible to truly establish reasonable criteria across the board.

The article did fulfill the goal it was truly intended for.

Get hits for their site and get net heads talking about a subject where there is no definitive answer.

 

Yes, but as I say above, what teams make the world cup and what teams do not would mess with their calculations.

If Sweden made the World Cup over Portugal that would affect the rankings, same with Ukraine over (I think France).

 

To improve this ranking you need to adjust the points across the league on a per player basis. MLS has 555 players, so you divide those points by number of players, and MLS would get 1.97 points per player. But you still have the problem of skewing.

But then you could broaden the formula by giving points for players who weren't in the 55 rosters, but still participated in world cup qualifying. Those players would only get 25 percent of their potential points. So if your team only had an ELO win percentage of 12, then that player would only get 3 points.

You could further refine it by looking at average minutes the player played in wcq and come up with a formula to make that part of his rating.

You could further expand the rating system by including ratings for all non-friendly action a player sees.

 

I think MLS probably could make a realistic claim to be around 20th right now ...

The league is coming along nicely and is attracting better foreigners than even some of the leagues ahead of us. But the real achilles heel is still player development. A league like Colombia or Chile could stand toe to toe with us simply because the average player being developed in those countries is still significantly better.

 

I wouldnt put any stock in these rankings, tbh.

 

In this country, what will improve player development more than anything will be money. You can bring in the best coaches, best equipment, have the best academies, but you must have the athletic talent. A minimum salary of $36,500 isn't going lure that talent. There's a lot of great talent wasted in this country of guys who are "too small" for football, who have enormous athletic talent and settle for specialty roles in college because a degree is worth more than a career in MLS for most guys. That's the talent you want in soccer in this country.

The question here isn't whether MLS can compete with the NFL for such talent, because those guys aren't realistic NFL prospects. The question is, when is MLS salary going to be high enough that when parents and those guys hear over and over again that those guys are too small for the pros, that they are willing to take their chances on a soccer career instead of brief glory in the NCAA and a college degree? My guesstimate here is that it will take something north of a minimum salary of $125k a year to start luring that talent. When that happens you'll be surprised how good player development looks.

 

Money is a big part, but I feel like an even bigger part is the culture. The culture of the kids and how much they play and how they play and where they play. Also the culture of the academies and the quality of coaches. It's basically the quality of the entire infrastructure. I mean China and Saudi Arabia throw more money at their young players compared to a place like Uruguay but we all know where the better talent comes from.

 

Which ones?

 

Significantly?

Even leagues I would personally consider "better" than MLS have teams that would be off the back end of the MLS table year in and year out.

It is all but impossible to fairly compare MLS (or LigaMX for that matter) with top heavy leagues. There is no tournament for the median teams of various leagues. The top couple teams in Holland and Portugal would be beasts in MLS, but are those leagues really "better" than MLS? Hard to say. Just as dominant as the perennial powerhouses would be in MLS, the relegation zone up and down teams would be fodder for rank and file MLS teams over the course of a season.