In the current "Soccer America," Mike Woitalla, has a column about the salary cap that addresses something I've alwasy been fearful of: the effect of the league being in a belt-tightening, austerity mode, on the quality of play and the potential for eroding the fan base. I have to say that so far, I've found the play to be very poor and unexciting. As he notes The other side of the argument of course, is that with roster turnover, you need time for the teams to gel-fair enough. But is there a point where the league underestimates the fan's ability to gauge the level of play vis-a-vis their willingess to spend money and go to the matches? Or to put it another way, at what point are those who "vote no," not just snobs but truly find the MLS game too poor to spend money on? I have a ticket package this season-so they've got me. But I wonder if others think they are close to that point.
A low numbers of goals does not equal poor play. Raising salary caps is great if you can afford it. Ask Mutiny and Fusion fans about economic reality, though. As a season ticket holder, you're helping support the league in its efforts to put higher quality on the field. I am extremely confident that everyone involved in the league would rather be selling out stadiums, getting NFL ratings, and paying backup midfielders $2 million a year. But no one can afford to pay those salaries, and just sit back and hope that the ratings come.
I thoroughly enjoyed the KC-Revs game even though it only ended 1-1. Nice combination play, defenders who didn't just boot the ball up the field, players attempting shots outside the box (not very accurately unfortunately), a late dramatic goal. A nice game. I can live with that. Woitalla is probably right in one sense but of course it's not our money; and just judging from the picture of him in the mag, the guy must be so full of himself his ego could fill up the Home Depot Center all by himself. (Don't know why I took the cheap shot; he's probably a nice guy.)
I'm with you, FlashMan. I enjoyed the Fire/Quakes match, even if it was scoreless. And I've never been able to get anyone to quantify "quality of play," but I'm pretty sure it's not just about how many goals are scored. Maybe the pitchers are just ahead of the hitters this early in the season? Is there a correlation between goals per game and attendance? Year...G/GP...Attendance 1996...3.37...17,406 1997...3.26...14,619 1998...3.01...14,312 1999...3.19...14,282 2000...3.19...13,756 2001...3.28...14,961 2002...3.01...15,821 2003...2.16...14,634 Scoring was at its lowest last year, but attendance was at its highest since 1996. Since there are a ton of other factors involved in attendance, I wouldn't make a straight-line correlation, but I can understand if some people might be turned off by all the draws and the lack of goals early.
I don't why anyone is questioning whether MLS is on the cheap.... ...when hasn't been? Don't rookies still get the same yearly wages ($24,000) as those in 1996?
I honestly think this has something to do with it. There is so much turnover in MLS - partly to do with the salary cap, partly due to other factors - that it takes time for teams to gel in the offensive third. DC United comes immediately to mind. This lends a bit of credence to Woitalla's argument, i.e., if the cap was raised a bit, teams would be able to keep squads in tact longer, and not have to start over every few years. That 2.16 number IS ugly. Let's hope it gets back up to 3 by the time the season's done. While I'm with you and don't agree that 'quality of play' necesarily equals more scoring, it's still to nice see goals more often than not. I'm sure the MLS marketing department - such as it is - would rather tout offensive play rather than a bunch of 'hairy chested Bulgarians', or even Craig Waibel, and no doubt potential investors, soccer experts that they no doubt are , wouldn't mind seeing more goals as well before ponying up the $10 million franchise fee. Okay, I'll quit rambling.
You asked, and the answer is... no. There is no significant correlation between goals/game and attendence. (correlation factor = 0.235, which is not even close to significant for this sample size)
Didn't think so. I'm glad someone here is good with math. PM me and tell me how you did that (I can't promise I'll understand it, but....)
Mike Woitalla's quote mentioned on the first post in this thread: quote: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ...the first 15 games gave us a depressing 2.27 goals per game is a product of the terribly low salary cap. ...MLS ditches "expensive" players such as Ariel Graziani-San Jose's leading scorer-and replaces them with Project 40 teenagers or college products, most of whom couldn't get playing time in any other top-flight league. ...In MLS, too many teams are built on journeymen and players too young to enter a night club. ...Prime MLS benefactor Phil Anschutz, who has commited millions to soccer stadiums-along with Lamar Hunt-also owns thousands of cinemas. He doesn't think people go to the movies because they're impressed with the buildings, does he? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I couldn't agree more with these comments. In fact on this thread I said something very similar: https://www.bigsoccer.com/forum/showthread.php?threadid=47416&perpage=15&pagenumber=1 MLS games are not as entertaining as they used to be. Too many low priced kids playing as higher priced players have been pushed out by the ridiculously low salary cap. MLS has lost this fan. I used to follow the league closely now I am no more than a casual observer at best.
The sample size is too small to be meaningful. The 1996 outlier would need to be removed. And like needs to be compared to like, so that a league with the Fusion and Mutiny isn't compared to a league without. In other words, conclusions are unable to be drawn from that set of data. My guess would be that an increase in scoring probably generally leads to a slight increase in attendance, just like most of the other major sports in the USA. The boost however is usually not significant enough to matter much to anybody. If this is the case for MLS, there's no way it would show up in a sample of data that small. The correlation coefficient he listed is derived by using the famous "least squares method." To do it from scratch you need linear algebra. Or for only two variables you can simply copy the formulae from your favorite stats book, or just use the CORREL function in Excel. Multiple linear regression (more than two variables) can be a VERY powerful statistical tool and Excel has an "add-in" that takes care of this, though once again a knowledge of linear algebra can get you by manually.
-A low numbers of goals does not equal poor play- True, but poor play equals poor play, and what we have seen so far this season has been... You guessed it, poor play. Passing has been terrible, and goals have been hard to come by. I agree, raise the cap now, before it gets too late.
Its funny how there are two opinions that float around BS. The first one is that the players who dominated MLS early weren't actually very good and that the teams from this century would in general thrash teams from last century. However, in this thread people seem to be saying that MLS is losing its overall talent level. I don't actually think either are true. I personally just think that we are seeing parity and mediocrity across the board instead of having 2 or 3 really good teams and 4 or 5 really poor teams. Also, Colorado and Dallas really are having disappointing seasons. If Dallas landed Tyson Nunez and Ronnie O doesn't get hurt and if Colorado has their French midfield leader the entire league might look different. Contrary to SA it isn't young players that are stinking up the show in MLS. There are a lot of veterans in Dallas and Colorado playing awful and the only player of note I can think of that they lost between last year and this was El Pibe. He wasn't a salary cap issue.
As a fan from day one, IMO the defenses in the league have gotten a lot tougher since 1996. I think Ruiz or TT would have a lot more goals back then had they played. Yes, the attacks are not the greatest right now, but the games are still good to great so far in 2003 from my view.
I didn't even mess with all that - I just dropped that data table into JMP-IN and did a correlation test. If you want to confirm it for yourself, do a scatterplot (plot all of those points on one graph, by hand or Excel) and see if you can come anywhere close to drawing a line (or smooth curve) thru the plot. There isn't a very good fit, and even if there was, it'd not likely be significant. You'd have to have a tremendously high correlation to be able to say that.
I think "quality of play," is simply an expectation of a certain professional skill level, that translates into quality in areas like: first-touch, crossing, ability to maintain possesion, good marking, fluid build-ups, the creation/execution of chances, and moments of individual creativity. With MetroStars, some of these points have been on display-most notably their defensive organization. In others though, they have been wanting and at least for me, cutting into the overall enjoyment of the matches. Although you and others may very well be right on the second point-Ty and Wynalda in a recent match had this same debate; Wynalda being more critcal on the quality of play ("no one seems to be able to make that crucial last pass"); Ty on the side that it's still early and the teams haven't meshed.
Valid descriptions....but still hard to quantify. Those still come down to one person's impression versus another person's impression and then someone will inevitably bring out the "I've been watching soccer longer than you, and I know it when I see it" argument. If there was a way to actually quantify that, comparisons would be much simpler (and, yes, I know those are things that don't lend themselves very well to quantification, and if you try you'll be shouted down by the "soccer and statistics don't mix" brigade).
i don't know if anyone has seen "contacto deporivo" but even the soccer commentators have said that mls is missing some spark---goals. I have to say this since DC United has sucked for about 3 years my turnout rate has also decreased.
There really is no alternative here, Ray. Everybody (well, everybody who pays attention) knows that the salary cap situation, combined with the 18 man roster, has chased a bunch of mid-level players. Dante Washington is one of the latest casualties. The top stars get theirs, because they put butts in seats. The kids get spots because they'll work cheap. The guys in the middle are getting squeezed, and in any league in any sport, it's the quality of the MIDDLE of your roster which determines how well you play. But the league is still losing money - there just is no cashe to do anything else. Hell, I'll bet NOBODY would be happier to see the cap doubled tomorrow than the league office. It would mean that they're making some money. Is the quality of play suffering? Well, that's in the eye of the beholder. An awful lot of teams are resorting to button-down defense this year, for a lot of reasons, and that doesn't make for great soccer. But it's the only league we've got, and if it's the best we can do right now given the available resouces and general level of interest, then it's enough for now.
Yeah I checked it on Excel and got the same thing (though I should actually do the linear algebra to stay in practice ). However, even a high correlation wouldn't necessarily mean a thing. I'm betting if you took the 100 most populated Metropolitan areas in this country and ran a correlation between murder rates and the presence of an MLS team in the city, there would be a fairly high correlation between the two. That still doesn't mean the presence of the Metrostars in New York kills a couple thousand people a year. The problem in each case is not dealing with "confounders," other unaccounted for variables which could be driving a correlation with no causal relationship (like the above example) or masking a causal relationship for which there initially appears to be no correlation. EG, if you ran a correlation between height and goals scored per game on headers in the EPL, the initial numbers may show no correlation. That doesn't mean height isn't an asset in scoring on headers though. You would have to account for the fact that keepers and defenders tend to be taller than forwards and don't get nearly as many opportunities as forwards (position played would therefore be a "confounder"). IOW, those numbers (the attendance and goals scored numbers) don't mean much one way or the other considering the size of the sample and the fact that a host of "confounders" haven't been tested for (IE, 1996 being MLS inaugural season is one such "confounder").
mls on the cheap Are there any players in MLS who put fans in the seats? All well and good to hang on to U.S. World Cup players and bring a couple back from Europe, but are they truly attractions. MLS has made much about building stadiums, but to me, it's really a big fat red herring. The game and players are on the field. The league will rise or fall based on that, not football lines, not luxury boxes. What about each team getting a two-player salary cap exemption to spend on whomever they want. Then the general managers would really have to earn their $$$. In a way, I guess MLS has reached a kind of soccer "maturity": DEE-FENSE.
I happen to agree with Ty in many ways, it's way too early to start with this debate. Give the season a few more weeks and then maybe we can start talking. One thing that I've noticed that has yet to be mentioned is the horrible start that LA has gotten off to and I believe that once this horrific road trip is over with you will see better play from them, and in turn more goals. At least that would be my guess as to the situation. Also I believe that the early season games in any sport period aren't as high quality as those played around mid-season. No one can tell me that the Packers were playing better football or the Kings were playing as good basketball as they were in the middle of the season and beyond. It's just a fact of life right now that teams are having huge turnovers in talent and it does take time to build a chemistry and knowledge of your teammates. I just hope that MLS realizes it won't survive with this ludicrious salary cap. I say raise it at least a million or half a million for the next few years and see what we can get for talent and how good the league can be without all the turnover that happens!!
That's why MLS should concentrate on developing players before wasting money on stadium, ads, or whatever... People want to see attractive soccer ..well, at least i do... Let's have a youth system and stop depending on the youth national team system to produce couple of good young players once in a while.
Possibly, but it's part of my job to know such things. Besides, someone asked. If you want to analyze numbers, a knowledge of linear regression is almost a a must have. A very powerful, if nerdy , tool.
analyzing numbers is fun and all, but if it is your job, are you seriously using excel to do it? I have found excel to be an easy to use mildly powerful program. Back on the subject, the problem with increasing salary is that Colombus and LA would go out and spend as much as they could, and some other teams woulnd't be able to put up enough money to match them. Keeping the talent level even has been important to MLS since the beggining.