Soccer, sports and politics (R)

Actually, it isn't. With the benefit of hindsight we know predictions made 10 years ago that MLS will be one of the top leagues in the world in 10 years and/or have numerous top players in their prime like Pulosic level and above is not true.

One doesn't need to watch MLS closely to know that those things haven't happened yet.

 

Define top league in the world.

Top 5, is not, but nobody said that.

Top 10, probably not (depending on what we measure), some people may have said that.

Top 20, I say yes, and most people would have expected this.

 

He's clearly the best in MLS.

 

Half of our fanbase HATED him. Stupid people. "He's just standing there! He doesn't run enough!" Yep just standing there scoring goals and holding up play. So sad he got injured in 2014 leading up to Costa Rica's amazing run, where he was instrumental getting them through qualifying. I'd love to go mtn biking with him sometime.

He's the best, most consistent goal scorer we've ever had, maybe until now with Chicho Arango. We also had Jeff Cunningham for a couple of years and he put up 22goals one season, but I don't really rate him.

 

Y'all keep talking about the quality. If you were Greek, you'd be happy to watch the Greek league. If you were a Swede, you'd watch the Swedish league. Same for Scotland, Portugal, Argentina, Brazil, Netherlands... all those people support teams in their domestic leagues and maybe check in every week to see what the glory teams are doing, but they don't sit around bleating about their league's quality or lack thereof. We have whatever quality we have and it's rising or falling or staying the same. But quality approaching a Dutch/Port/German/French level should not be expected.

The very discussion of MLS is an example of silly American arrogance. Structure your league the way everyone else does, or like UEFA leagues do when there's a difference between them and some other confederation. Don't change anything, and watch whatever you end up with, like everybody else does. We don't have any business with a great league until we can learn not to influence the rest of the world. MLS gets "great" enough, every league in what was once the world's game will have a Sawker Bowl.

 

I still don't get the MLS-hate by various posters simply because we don't have the superstars in their prime. It's such a ridiculous metric people use. It's like saying "I won't watch the Mountain West Conference even though I went to Wyoming because it's not the Pac-12". It's just silly.

Regardless, I went back to MLS 2013 to see how far the league has come since then. The following is based on Wikipedia entries for MLS or the MLS website:

• There were 19 teams, including Chivas USA. Only two clubs (Seattle and the Galaxy) had an average attendance that is above the league's 2023 average so far (21,900+). The Galaxy's #2 attendance in 2013 would place it #12 today.

• 10 years ago 9 of 19 team captains were American, 2 Argentinian, 0 Mexican, 0 English. Today 10 of 29 are American, 3 Argentinian, 3 Mexican, 2 English. In other words, the percentage of American captains is way down, signifying the influx of foreign talent into the league.

• In the September international window, MLS had 79 players called up to their national team (including 2 for U-23, 4 for U-21, 1 for U-19). I couldn't get the data for 2013 unfortunately. The breakdown of national team call-ups for September 2023 was as follows:

CONCACAF = 31
CONMEBOL = 27 (3 for Argentina)
UEFA = 15 (1 for England U-19)
CAF = 5
AFC = 1
​

Yes, MLS is not the best league in the world. But it's come a long way in 10 years and the future looks very bright.

 

I did not like that at all. I'm a big fan of immediate transparency. It's a ref's job to get the calls right, and the staff's job to make sure he's safe from fans whose passion crosses the line.

Pre-VAR is precisely when fans needed most to see officiating errors if they occurred. Calls/noncalls are that much more crucial when they cannot be overturned.

 

Interesting article on Deion Sanders.

 

He's a college football coach. He is loved if he wins and fired if not. Might as well do what he wants do to.

 

Dang. I miss the SuperClasico

Having two teams in the country’s second-largest market remained a focal point for MLS. During Chivas USA’s 10-year existence, LA was the only MLS market to have an intra-city derby. In all, Chivas and the Galaxy faced off 34 times, with the Galaxy holding a 22-8-4 record in what was called the “SuperClasico.”

https://ussoccerplayers.com/2020/05/the-short-history-of-chivas-usa.html

 

Maybe you shouldn’t pay attention to obviously moronic predictions. I don’t remember hearing anybody say that, ever.

 

I go on record for saying it now (I didn't before). I do believe in 5-10 years MLS will be better than it is today, thereby placing it in the top 10 leagues. Will it be on par with England's PL? No. But every year brings it a step closer. We are currently on par with the best league in CONCACAF (based on Champions League results), so now we are working our way up on South American and European leagues. MLS is certainly better than the European leagues like the Scottish PL and the Scandinavian leagues.

 

I mean Seattle did break an 18 year run of LMX champions, if Liga MX goes on another decade long run then we are not equal at all.

MLS better win 5 of the next 10 CCLs to make this claim. Or at least 2 out of 4.



BTW, I don't like the new CCL format, but it's all we have.

 

But again, since the pandemic they are dead even in home/away games in the CCL. It's not always about who wins it - the best team in the league is not always representative of the league as a whole (think Scotland). I'm not saying Liga MX is the same as the Scottish PL, just that the CCL champion isn't inherently the best way to evaluate such things.

 

But it's the only sporting way we have.

For example, Liga MX is better than Liga Argentina in many ways, better infrastructure, better organization, better pay.

But copa Libertadores from back when LMX was in it, showed that Argentina teams were still superior in the competition.

 

But the difference is on the one hand you look at who actually wins Copa Libertadores and on the other you look at head to head in the Copa Libertadores. Those are two very different measures. In my mind the latter is better than the former as a measure of overall league strength. Neither measure is perfect, but head to head is better than simply who wins the championships.

 

Meh, having a good record vs say Croatia doesn't mean that you are as good as them. IMO


Winning (making consistent long runs) a longer competition is better than just a few head to head matchups.


But the new CCL in theory will give us many more of those match ups, since it will basically be MLS vs LMX plus a few others.

 

That's dumb. We know that Boca or River is better than any team in Liga MX. No shit, Sherlock. But is a mean average team like Instituto AC better than a mean average team like Pumas? I very strongly doubt it.

 

Like I said, there is no sporting competition for mid table teams, so leagues are judged by their best, it is what it is.

The Saudi Arabian league may win a bunch of ACL titles over the next few years, that will move their profile higher.

Even if outside the top 4, the rest are shit.

 

BTW, I need to go check out the USNT forum, people most be losing their minds.

Everyone can have a bad day in the office.

1705316250933473620 is not a valid tweet id

 

Does CONCACAF have country coefficients the way that UEFA does?

 

I was really trying to find that Conservative Media Bias thread but I could not. This fills two of the three anyhow...

Raiders WR (now cut from the team, duh) and former Alabama player Henry Ruggs III DUI killed a woman and her dog in November 2021. Due to some sort of error with collecting the DUI sample, he got charged with manslaughter.

Last week, he got a sentence of 3 to 10 years. That sucks forthe family of the victim, but it isn't really what I want to show you.

Ex-Raiders WR Henry Ruggs III sentenced to at least three years in prison for fatal DUI crash in Nevada (nfl.com)

In court filings ahead of the sentencing, Ruggs' attorneys, David Chesnoff and Richard Schonfeld, included letters from high school administrators and teachers in Montgomery, Alabama, who praised Ruggs, and a testimonial from Democratic Alabama state Rep. Phillip Ensler.

"Mr. Ruggs is a man of good character who made a terrible mistake," the attorneys said in the presentencing memorandum. "His remorse is deep and sincere."

His plea deal avoided a trial that Clark County District Attorney Steve Wolfson said posed obstacles for conviction because Ruggs was not administered a field sobriety test following the crash and his defense attorneys argued that Ruggs' blood-alcohol test was improperly obtained at the hospital.

Wolfson, a Democrat, said the blood test provided "virtually" the only proof that Ruggs was under the influence of alcohol at the time of the crash. It revealed that Ruggs had a blood-alcohol level of 0.16% -- twice the legal limit in Nevada -- after the rear-end wreck ignited a fire in Tintor's Toyota Rav 4.


Huh.

Not one, but two references to the party of two potentially key people in the trial- one from a politician writing to attest to his character and the second tends to place blame on the DA for a beat cop's ******** up. The use of the second one is more problematic than the use of the first.

This is the National Football League's website, not some faith or race based website that kind of leads folks to believe. They didn't have to get into this at all but chose to by submitting that article in its entirety, uncredited, from the AP. You either edit this or you don't run it.