News: Monday , March 28 , 2016

Yawwwwwwwn. Waiting for the coffee.... Oh good. One of these:

Re MLS playing through the international window:
It is even worse for the league’s image abroad that the second division of US Soccer, the North American Soccer League, does not schedule matches during the international window (Author’s Note: The NASL begins play in April).

I don't know what he thinks we're suppose to ................... WAIT! Here's the answer:
The answer to MLS’ scheduling woes seems to be to change the schedule to a schedule that closely resembles that of the Russian Premier League or the Scandinavian leagues.

And finally:
Although MLS will have to still go against the NFL it puts them more on schedule with the rest of the footballing world.

And let's face it. That's all that really matters.

Well coffee's ready.

 

Not sure my comment there will actually post. But considering he is wrong about the NASL (they play through every window the rest of the year), wrong about Scandinavia (they play a calendar year schedule), and wrong about the rest of the world (all of CONCACAF and CONMEBOL have played through international breaks) I'm not really sure why I should listen to what he has to say since he can't even do basic research outside of what he believes the top UEFA leagues do.

 

So, I've seen three winters in Sweden (two around Stockholm, one in the far north), 3 in Utah and have seen about 5 winters in Virginia. Swedish winters are only a small magnitude harsher in the lower 1/3 (Uppsala south) than Virginia and Utah. And from what I know about Boston, Montreal, Toronto, Chicago, et al, they are worse and last just as long as Sweden's. In that light, Sweden still does a calendar season.

 

You know, it's not so much the articles, themselves; we all play the what if game. "What if I hadn't changed my major in college?" "What if I hadn't broken off that relationship?" "What if I had made that move years ago?"
I think it's the attitude that these writers are coming up with something that no one here in the States has thought about. It's like Garber is going to read this and go, "Scandinavia!?! What a great idea! Hey Earl! Google their league; let's see what they're doing."

 

My issue is the lack of research that could be done simply in 10 minutes on Wikipedia and the lack of common sense on points they are arguing for. For instance, playing on a calendar like Russia would be a solution. The Russian season started July 17th and ran until December 4th when it took a winter break. It then started again March 5th and will run to May 21st. Now look at that yearly. You start March 5th, take a break from May 21st until July 17th, and run until December 4th. So the same exact schedule as MLS except you have a 2 month break in the middle of it. How in the world does that solve the issue which they are presenting as a problem? Russia plays 4 less games, which is one helpful factor since that is a month of weekends they don't need compared to MLS. But there is none of that in the article just a bunch of complaining about how the rest of the world respects international dates and we could adopt something like how Russia does it without ever actually researching what Russia does.

 

Oh, I agree. And isn't this part of the problem with so many of these 'MLS should do this...' articles? No research into why we do it the way we do. And I'm not sure the rest of the world really understands what a beast the NFL & college football is in the country. If the 22 greatest soccer players to ever play in the history of the world were to come back and play here, a Jacksonville vs Tennessee tv game would crush it.

 

Well, that, and pro/rel.

 

hahahahaha!

 

Off Topic

Just picked up this CD today . . . it doesn't totally suck.

 

Hmm, Costa Rica and Jamaica are in CONMEBOL - that explains why we suck against them!