Reserve teams: MLS teams can currently have reserve teams, but the teams play in the PDL and the teams earn nothing from developing new players. The Fire were just thanked for discovering and training Gavin Glinton by having the Galaxy select him in the recent draft. Teams should be rewarded for finding talent and be allowed to move them back and forth between the two teams Salary Cap: MLS needs to raise the salary cap so that the players can be paid a reasonable wage for being professional athletes. Having the average salary under $100k/player is not a good thing. Roster Size: This needs to be raised from 18. Teams can get to as high as 23 with roster and salary exempt players, but the way it is done by the league does not lead to actually helping a team out. Sale of Players: MLS needs to sell players before they get hosed. They have developed the tendency to wait and lose out on decent money, thinking that one player will earn them a gigantic windfall. It isn’t going to happen until MLS proves to be a suitable league to find talent. This means that players must be sold so that they can fight for roster slots and playing time elsewhere. That will earn MLS respect and money in the meantime. Money from Sale of Players: If the league can make $5 million a year selling players (not that hard to do), this money could be split with the teams. (2.5 million to the teams the players are from, the other half to the league. The league then takes this money to expand rosters and increase the overall salary cap. The teams could user their portion of the money to augment their management staff, player development (scouts, players, coaches, etc.), or advertising budget. This splitting of the sale of players with teams allows for them to be rewarded for finding and developing them. If the league becomes known as a decent place to find talent, players can be sold for greater money and the money can go towards greater things. More league advertisements, more activity in the way of SSS’s and expansion can be done. This increased activity will lead towards more investors coming into the league. They will see the league acting as a business. It will have set its sights on development and expanding it’s market. A nice benefit is that the draft will possibly take on less meaning, or even all the more. As teams will be forced to find players at younger ages and all over the place. Scouting will become even more important and the increased attention to detail and skill can only improve the league. Now don’t get me wrong, I do not see this as anything that will quickly become the great salvation. Rather I see this as a step in the right direction, and something that will help the league to continue to improve year after year. There will be no sudden moment of realization that all is well, but MLS will slowly make itself stronger and stronger and stronger. It should probably be noted that I believe that increasing the product on the field will bring in the fans and the media attention. We are actually halfway decent in those two respects, so the stronger the league becomes, the more attention and respect we earn from all facets. rip away -jim
Glinton isn't a real good example since he was already one of the best college players. His arrival on the FIRE Reserves probably had more to do with having three other college teammates there than any "discovering". BTW, the senior side has little if anything to do with player recruitment. Not to say the gist of your post is preaching to the choir. Let's hope it gets done.
i concur with you, it was more to make a point that the current reserve sides are completely meaningless
I don't think its meaningless at all. We can probably all agree that college soccer isn't the greatest professional soccer development tool. Having a vibrant PDL allows a lot of good college players to get in an additional 20 games over the summer against good competition and with standard substitution rules. The league is single-entity anyway, so I don't see the big deal if every team provides a summer team for local college players and creates a better, bigger draft pool for the entire league. The Fire may have not gotten Glinton, but that was because they decided they wanted Sleeth, who IIRC was plucked from the Seattle Sounder Selects. If we start talking about MLS teams kids from 12 on or finding a gem in a local ethnic league then we might need a way to reward that. The growth of the PDL has raised all boats though, and that's a good thing, IMO.
Samething. Let's say the FIRE find a good 16 year old no one knew about and put him on their PDL team, then he is lost to another side. What good is that? Why should the Fire or any team spend money and resourses developing players if they are just going to be drafted onto other teams. Makes no sense at all. Its not good for teams or the players.
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but although the league is single entitity, the PDL teams are not. Who is responsible for the costs of running the PDL teams? I believe it goes on the budgets of the individual sponsoring teams. If so, what incentive does Jim Smith, GM of the Crew, have to create a PDL team? The Crew organization gets all the costs, but none of the benefits.
If I recall, Faria tanked at the pre-draft combine to make sure that he wasn't selected by anyone other than Metro. So there's an example
Well, I think if every team does this it just increases the pool of players and every team ends up benefitting. But I agree that in the example you give it would be better to reward the club in some way. I think it's different with college players, or well-known kids from big traveling club teams. If we allow teams to claim them as part of their PDL set-ups, we might as well just go ahead and scrap the draft altogether (which is not a wholly unreasonable proposition).
the biggest current incentive is that it is another means to reach out to the community and establish your name... that will draw more people to the games, more dollars spent on merchandise, more word of mouth, etc.
WRT to sale of players, MLS seems to have decided that unless a player can be sold for substantually more revenue than they bring in playing for MLS, the league will keep them. I don't know how they calculate this, but let's take the example of McBride. I'm willing to wager he's the most popular Crew player and the focus of much of their marketing efforts. He's probably the most popular personalized jersey they sell as well. So he's probably worth a lot more to the Crew than current transfer offers for him would indicate. Also, the recent transfer value crash in Europe has depressed valuations. Is Pablo worth a mere $500K, which is what Burnley offered for him? I doubt that. Sachin
why wouldn't those players be drafted and then placed on the team's resevere squad?? it doesn't need to be in the pdl, that is just where current "reserve" sides play
The simple solution is just to allow teams to call/sign their PDL players up without having to go through a draft. I mean what are we afraid of? That one team has good scouting/coaching and gets 20 good young players? One team can't keep them all and eventually that player's contract is going to be up or the salary cap will take care of distribution.
Discouraged fans do lose interest. And once they've gone, a low-visibility league like MLS has a hard time winning them back. Heck, San Jose has had a strong team for two years now, but it's only starting to turn the corner attendance-wise. Obviously, a team's problems rarely boil down to losing a single player. Nonetheless, players like Cobi, Mathis, and McBride do a lot to legitimize their team in the eyes of paying customers. They're worth a lot.
Not really - these aren't true reserve sides because the vast majority of the players are amateur and cannot be called up without losing their NCAA eligibility. As it is, the NCAA is cracking down on the number of pro/semi-pro players allowed in the PDL. The PDL is, and will likely become more of, a developmental league. It is not a real-time roster pipeline and will never be, unless it divorces itself from the NCAA. Maybe MLS will have real reserve teams sometime, but it sure doesn't fit the financial MO. Are they really going to pay bucks to fly reserve teams all over the US when they haven't even previously wanted to pay contracts for more than 23 players? I'm not sure that I'd want them to anyway, given the critical financial needs for marketing and stadium development. Like I said, if every team has a PDL team, that creates better prospects for everyone. Jim Smith can have the impetus to start a team, because Don Garber can tell him he must.
quality of play will go farthest... don't sell the fans short, don't shove names in their faces when the product on the field is going to suffer... improve the product, names aren't needed... just talent and drive i'm a fire fan... i want hristo out, i want beasely sold, razov or wolff needs to go... they will free up money and allow the team to bring in new talent, the league could be active with the money they get from beasely... instead the league pushes mcfragiles, cry me a river donovans, head case mathises, and fat ass meolas the fans know that these types of players hurt teams by eating max. salaries and preventing teams from bringing in new talent or giving raises to those that deserve them... they set themselves up for a great working cycle, and then crush it by keeping their best players, thus ending the cycle of improvement prematurely the league prefers to put pennies in the bank, waiting for them to accumulate into millions of dollars, instead of taking their pennies and trying to make improvements to earn more pennies and continually do the same thing... til the league isn't doing this with pennies, it's doing it with far larger sums...
ok, i'm sorry... i didn't realize reading comprehension wasn't your strong suit you just repeated what i said, only you used a lot more words i had expected that people would understand what i meant by "reserve" sides and saying they didn't need to play in the pdl
you kidding?? those baboons can't even eat each other's fleas... someone has to go into the board meetings and shock them to get rid of the fleas i just pray the zoo handler who tells the baboons what to do pays attention
I thought I addressed why the PDL can't be a true reserve system and why I can't see MLS adopting a true reserve system. If that somehow missed a point you made, I apologize. I'll try to not tax your brain with so many words next time. In the meantime, you could actually offer realistic financial and political solutions to the problems that you mentioned at the outset. Or you could simply continue the self-congratulatory ass-grabbing that this forum is famous for.
eh, i skipped the middle paragraph... sue me but a variety of things could come up to make it financially viable... such as the pdl allows mls reserve teams in, they will be full of mostly youth players anyways (16+) and therefore comparable in age to other pdl teams this would keep travel costs down and also allow the reserve teams to move players up to the senior team... a few teams already run pdl teams, so that isn't a problem, although i would imagine that the cost would be a bit more, but i explained a bit of how to fund it... but investments cost money, and this would be one of the best investments the league could do what political solutions do you want? and my ass has been waiving for awhile now
One problem I have with PDL placed reserve teams is I think the reserve teams should be professional and would be better suited playing against D3 level compeition. More on this after lunch. Keep waving the asses.
d3 would be cool too, probably much better too... longer season and the travel costs would still be less than having the reserve teams fly with the senior teams to take on the other teams' reserve team i imagine this will be your area of expertise, so i'll shut up and go put some pizza in the oven and ed on the speakers
The next problem is the termination of the MLS/USL agreement. Always something with these people. Enjoy the pizza and do what you can with Ed