A broad based super league as a complement to the regular league is fine - generates interest and the money gets split up broadly. A 12 team SL where all the money -TV, gameday - goes to the select 12 and the SL controls the team rather than the domestic leagues controlling them - no thanks!
If it means enriching AEGs coffers, which enables the team to keep buying stars for the Galaxy, I'm fine with it. Big clubs have pressure to keep their elite status, which create interest in the leagues that they play in. This interest has a trickle down effect on smaller market teams and it's the smaller market team's job to take advatage however they can. If they can't find the know how or means to do so, then just fold. We live in a free market society, not a communist or socialist one.
Relegate them all to the equivalent of England’s National League regional league. Let them spend the next 5-10 years earning their way back to the top flight division. I’m afraid the die has been cast with this move. These teams have shown they think they’re bigger than their respective leagues and they are, even if they were able to walk this back, they’ll just trot it out every time they feel they’re not getting what they’re due. As a Spurs fan it’s an absolute joke. Haven’t won anything meaningful in 30+ years and 12 years since we’ve won anything at all. I don’t know you ever fully give up on a club you’ve followed since you can remember, I’m sure I’ll keep some notional tabs on them, but right now I’d much rather watch a Tottenham side play Maccelsfield to earn promotion than watch them play a meaningless game Real Madrid at the end of a Super League season.
I am fine with it. Two teams from Canada, four teams from MLS, four teams from MX and two teams from Central America and Caribbean. First year: Toronto Montreal Columbus Atlanta Seattle Minnesota America Cruz Azul Monterrey Pumas or Tigres or Leon (some type of cat) Saprissa Olimpia
A SL will kill the “free market” that exists now and create a de facto monopoly. Currently if you want to buy a League One team and pour money into it you can work toward promotion and finally work your way to the top like Leicester did. How is this going to be possible if a SL is created? Once the SL sucks all the money out of the TV contracts non-SL teams will be left with scraps. And even if another club got a rich benefactor and built itself up the SL isn’t likely to let them in and dilute their money making machine. The only free market would be to build a competing SL2 but in reality that will be impossible since the original SL will monopolize and dictate the moves of all the best players. Currently EPL and the other Euro leagues shares TV revenues with all member teams. That amounts to a massive trickle down that gives the leagues depth, makes cinderella stories possible and keeps it interesting. The SL is exactly the opposite - the current top 2 or 3 teams in each domestic league will become permanent SL members and quit sharing their revenue with teams 4-20. Yes, the smaller teams will get trickled on - but it won’t be with money. As far as I’m concerned just give those 12 teams their lifetime trophies and don’t bother playing the games. PS - No sports league is free market. EPL isnt, NFL isn’t, NBA isn’t, MLS isn’t. So support the league that you thimk will help grow the sport you love. I think SL will hurt the sport I love by concentrating all the best players into a very small number of permanent member teams. Why would anyone want to see that?
People keep asking for MLS to introduce pro-rel and this could be a vehicle for implementing that system without having MLS teams dropped down to USL levels which I think would help league soccer in the US. Nobody will want to participate in investing half a billion dollars to go play at community college venues if things go south. but playing well enough to move up to the SUPER LEAGUE?... now you're talking! I am thinking of this as another, higher gear for soccer in the CONCACAF region. the next step up. It's what the doctor ordered. I don't know about all the other technical stuff. Is the Euro SL going to take away teams from participating in their respective leagues? Is the Super League going to be an independent league? If that's the case then I am out but if it yet a hidher echelon of competitiveness then I am all for it. Especially in our region. Everybody here in CONCA are and have been in a rut for decades. Something like this could just elevate our soccer to the next level. I don't about Europe but for us here abouts? lets get'r done.
The SL teams say they will stay in their domestic leagues but the domestic leagues may not allow that for several reasons. One reason is that the non-SL clubs in the domestic league will have even less of a chance to compete for a title than they do now. The SL teams will get the big TV contracts while the rest of the EPL, La Liga and Serie A teams have to slash their payrolls. It will be like Division II or Division III schools trying to compete with the big boys. In any case League championships will be devalued - both the SL teams and the public will care less about a championship that only 2 or 3 teams can win. Also SL teams will be incentivized to field second string teams in domestic league games to save their starters for the more important SL matches. Plus their 2nd string will likely be strong enough to win against the other weakened teams anyway. So the domestic leagues may decide to go on it on their own and kick the SL teams out. Their revenue is going to drop either way - at least this way there could be some real competition for top spots. And that would allow them to avoid the embarrassment of teams who aren’t even fielding their best players still dominating your league. Here is a great overview of what the SL plan is at this time: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/19/...e-explainer.html?referringSource=articleShare
I agreed with your first post and it's implied meaning and agree with you here and your more articulated post. Was just being facetious with my reply.
You know, I am trying to imagine cosas chingonas over here and your facts are bumming me out SD. I get what you're saying tho.
I've been paying attention to the SL idea. It just sucks from all sides because it doesn't address the root cause of why they're doing this or why it's a problem 1: Corruption in UEFA and FIFA (by extension other orgs, too) As we all know these governing bodies do not feel they need to answer to the league, the clubs, or the fans. Proof of this is the next world cup is still being hosted in Qatar where 2nd class slave workers are dying by the day to build these stadiums specifically to host. That's a different conversation, but this leads to many of us having conflicting feelings about this. 2: Monopoly on competitions, and as such the revenue sharing. Champions League is controlled by UEFA, and formation of this league and the revenue is outside of UEFA's control. So it's in UEFA's interest to keep this from happening, so they can get their share of revenue. UEFA is one of the more important governing bodies (due to revenue), and holds lots of influence in FIFA. 3. Biggest Clubs are over leveraged, and sick of financial fair play. English Premier League is getting more equal by the season, and now there are a number of clubs who could compete for the champions league spots. Leicester City I think was the straw that broke their back and pissed them off. They probably leverage themselves depending on Champions League $$ and many of these clubs now can't guarantee CL spots due to increased competition and Financial Fair Play rules (Man City and Chelsea being sanctioned) and COVID just made things worse with zero gate receipts. So from the "parties involved", greed is the motivation behind all of their decisions. The ones being screwed and without a say in these decisions are the talent on the field "the product", the managers and players, and the ones actually paying to consume the product, "the fans". FIFA and UEFA has claimed they will ban any player from participating in any of their official competitions moving forward, which is a heck of a bargaining chip, not playing in a World Cup? That's nuts. Thing is, most of the worlds best players (who play in the world cup anyway) are already in the top twelve teams. Bayern and Dortmund are lone exceptions (and I forget what other league isn't getting involved but I know none of the german teams are, but the joke is they're a farmers league anyway, so Bayern and Dortmund make CL every season no matter what) I remember when the Qatar boondockle happened, and one of the trolling ideas was "screw FIFA, we'll make our own world cup, with blackjack and hookers" (apologies if you don't get the reference, Futurama joke). We'll see how this plays out in the future.
The SL in Europe appears to be a simple money grab. I have it each team will get like 3.5 billion for joining this SL. I have not verified a thing but I heard a reporter say this. You might find Gary Neville's reaction to this SL business interesting.
Great analysis. The big clubs financial people don’t like the risk of not qualifying for CL so they found a way to guarantee they make the big money competition. And what you say about Leicester being the last straw is probably true and the perfect example of why this is so sad. If the clubs had truly honored the fair play rules we wouldn’t be here. But they want it both ways - spend so big that other teams have no chance but also guarantees they won’t lose money. And if SL isn’t stopped they will get it both ways. So much for fair play - in every sense of the term.
I'm hearing that clubs are dropping out of Super League faster than Danny Peña dropped opposing forwards. #OldSkoolGalaxyHumor
Oh, wow........Yaaaaay!!!!!!!!!!!!! I didn't know that and am shocked they collapsed so quickly! I figured they had anticipated all the objections and were hard set on riding them out. Two pieces of really great news today. The other one is more important though - guilty, guilty, guilty!! (Sorry about the politics but it just came down as I was writing this.)
One thing I saw in all this, Chelsea and Man City never fully bought in despite being 2 of the 12. And Chelsea was the ONLY club not in debt.
Faster than Leandro Gonzalez Pirez can get a yellow and tossed out a game for unnecessarily risking a player's career? No way!
I think, if MLS desires to be an elite league and join the so-called "Top 5" -- in addition to all other things going right (that is, MLS continuing to grow in popularity and value) I think it'd still require a seismic shock to the existing structure. I think something like this "Superleague" idea would qualify. It would do so much damage to the historic capital of those legendary clubs, which is the only thing they'd have in the long-run over neophyte MLS clubs which are already catching up in total value. (The other "seismic event" would be something like an MLS/LigaMX combo league)
Huh? Ok MP#9, you are gonna have to break it down for me like I'm a 7 year old. Your last post seems sorta cryptic. Are you for something like the superduper league to jolt the level of our regions soccer to a higher level or are you saying it would harm the development of same so far as you are concerned? The euros SL seems like a no-go as it is structured but that doesn't mean something akin to that would not help elevate our regional soccer to a higher level. With a completely different structure, of course. As I said before, every aspect of soccer in Central and North America at the club and national team levels seems stagnant in comparison to the south americans and Europe to be sure for as long as I have drawn breath. Sure MLS has grown by leaps and bounds but where are we going when we reach true parity with a league like MX? Where is the structure to help MLS teams grow beyond that level? Or the MX? Look at the mexicans, how long have they been going round and round the merry-go-round oscillating between good and not-so-good with out ever breaking out their CONCA shell? They can't even get to semis at the world cup. That freaking league has been around more than a century? Don't even get me going on our youth development and the damned Olympics. We are quickly reaching maximum density in the league team-wise and reaching parity with the 100 year MX is but a handful of years away if that. So as we approach that milestone I can see past it and I do not see what will extend the limits of what is possible. At all.
Marketing, marketing, marketing. MLS would have to do something that would make it popular with a broader audience. The way NFL grew in popularity I believe with fantasy league betting. A great example of a marketing miss was Beckham. I think the general public was ready to pay a little more attention because of him. They tune into his first game, cameras everywhere including a Beck-cam but..... the soccer is borderline unwatchable to the poor players he was surrounded with. I remember seeing the excited people in the stands (non-regulars) at the beginning of the game and how inattentive they were after repeated mis-traps, bad passes, nothing remotely resembling the beautiful game. I always thought that was a great time for MLS to cheat and stack Beck's team and maybe hook newbies- the whole league would have benefited. Currently MLS doesn't have a player that a non-soccer enthusiast has heard of. And we have a crappy MLS website. Why couldn't they spend a couple mil on it? Even our decent content creators like Rachel Bonnetta quit because they couldn't make enough. But you guys are right - something needs to change if we really want to grow quickly. It could be new competitions like you guys are mentioning are any number of ideas could help. The NBA was completely turned around by David Sterns marketing/publicity/organization acumen. Garber has been good at creating franchises but he isn't a marketer. We need our own big vision - our own David Sterns - to liven this league up.
Don’t disagree with any of this, but coincidentally saw Nate Silver off-handedly said MLS was on par with MLB and the NHL in popularity now. It was tongue in cheek suggesting the popularity warranted a new break away American League with higher paid players. My probably bad and naive soccer hot take is that soccer is now roughly as popular in the US as hockey or baseball and so there should be a breakaway league here that has much higher payrolls than MLS. pic.twitter.com/18uoBWFqLN— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) April 19, 2021
I saw that post. But as some of the commentors noted many people who rate either football, basketball or baseball as their fave have the other two sports in the their top 3. So while soccer may be #1 almost as often as say baseball but still baseball has many times more fans. Also as a side note - I think Nate is losing it. I follow him and he’s taken so many weird stances this year.
I think what frustrated me about the entire saga was how much they were blaming "Americans" as if it was all our fault. From what I gather, the main driving forces were the Owners of Real Madrid and Manchester United, but I could be wrong. Real Madrid were definitely part of the "origin story". He even got a Judge in Madrid to rule "UEFA can't stop the formation". Its not that UEFA can't stop the formation, technically no one can, but as FIFA and UEFA is its own walled garden, they CAN have non-compete clauses for players and clubs. I myself have my own views about the way the league was structured. I am a huge fan for organically grown pro/rel leagues where anyone can form a pub team that eventually becomes a league powerhouse. Its one of my favorite things to do in Football Manager mobile (I don't play the full version, too much micromanaging required), take over a tiny team and become European powerhouses. That being said I 100% recognize why MLS isn't pro/rel just yet. I would love a future where that happens but if it never does, I accept that. The American sports landscape is just too saturated (and yes I've seen threads where "saturated" is overused) but its true. There is too much sports entertainment to fill the void, and it doesn't have a century of organically grown teams. All leagues had that but the American sports landscape just grew too weirdly due to how culturally our country is a melting pot. NFL, NBA, NHL, NASCAR, Indycar, NCAA Football, NCAA Basketball, MLS. Those are all sports leagues that dominate the airwaves (or at least add to news cycles) at some point in the year. Colin Cowherd (as much as he is right AND wrong about so many things) has mentioned that about LA and the NFL. There is just "too much to do" to support an NFL franchise that sucks. NBA has 2 teams, MLS has 2 teams, NHL team, MLB has a team or two (I don't even follow it), not to mention the NCAA college sports landscape. He talked about it when The Chargers were moving into town AND at the same time the Rams were moving back in.