The current state of our youth national teams

There's a world at some point where USL brings enough that the math works, I think.

It's not right now, and MLS is understandable focused on working with / competing with LigaMX.

 

There has been a lot of criticism over the years about taking the training wheels off but slow and steady has worked fine.

I actually think it's a mistake to do too much with Mexico. At the rate MLS is growing they will eclipse the Mexican league and if they are partnered it will become a drag. They need to keep to slow and steady and not make a huge mistake.

 

Most of the do stuff with Mexico is about getting more Mex fans in the US engaged with the league. I think it’s slowly happening with the younger generations. Of course these folks are a large source of future revenue so it makes sense.

The MLS/Liga MX merger stuff comes completely from south of the border. They need it, they want it, but it will never happen.
As you stated, we don’t need to do it, and they will never ever clean up their act enough that we would ever be willing to do it.

 

I think what they are doing is about right. On a high level, a complete merger makes a lot of sense ... but Garber has said the details are insurmountable and I think he's 99% right. LigaMX would jump at most of it, but there's some huge governance issues and mismatches on goals and objectives.

Leagues Cup, though, is perfect. LigaMX gets US revenues, and MLS gets trial and credibility with LigaMX fans in the states.

And without tying themselves together too much.

 

Yeah....................I don't understand the thinking. That undoes the whole premise of their single entity structure.

People do understand that "expansion fees" are currently over 200 million dollars.
The owners of St. Louis didn't pay that with an understanding that they might be demoted to a league with Monterey Bay. As nice as it is in Monterey Bay FC. Ever.

What the league is going to do is continue generating revenue thru competition with Liga MX. There's no benefit financially to pro/rel with the USL. Liga MX brings a bring fan base and some legitimacy to the dance. MLS brings financial stability.

THe whole discussion as it pertains to player development is simple. Clubs/leagues can either prioritize youth/player development as a primary component of their business plan, or they can't. Clubs in North America can succeed either way. It has to be a CULTURE within clubs. More and more clubs in MLS are believing in it.

 

The dynamics of promotion and relegation are interesting in that they probably drive more viewership or interest in the league, but they also make each club worth much less, hence the fact that it will never happen. Saudi Arabia bought Newcastle an EPL team for just over $400 million. That's roughly the same amount that Real Salt Lake just went for. Any team that faces the risk of relegation is just going to end up seeing a big hit to their overall value and MLS owners are just never going to sign up for this.

Interestingly even the bigger teams in the EPL whose value is the most secure were trying to lock in the Super League.

 

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Before that they were guaranteeing more CL spots for their leagues. As for driving viewership? That sounds very EPLcentric to me.
I mean, there was interest in Spain and Germany but it wasn’t some must see event. It was for hardcores but the average person cared about he top places much more. It was more of a footnote type thing. Fans care deeply about their clubs first and foremost, they wanted to know who went down, but it was hardly must see. Now, if you are talking about the teams in the battle then yeah, but their thoughts on pro/rel never sync with what the average yank fans is. It’s about pain and worry if their club will have financial issues. It’s about understanding that they will never be more than pawns in the game. Club allegiance is so deeply rooted that they root because that’s what their dad did, and his dad, and it’s tradition to root for your local squad. Foreigners convienently root for, and become die hard fans of the best team at the moment when they are growing up it seems. Real, Barca, Man U, etc. No fear of pro/rel there, just the fun of watching others suffer. All of a sudden there are Man City fans everywhere. Shocking. Couldn’t find any here 15 years ago. The other side never is as committed to, or loves something as much as one thinks. Especially in this day and age where the gap between the haves and decent teams continues to grow.

Just a thought.

 

Because you are limiting your thinking to 'old style' relegation or that MLS is the only way to make money with soccer over the next 50 years. The growth of soccer will ultimately extend well beyond just 30 markets. What about a 'relegation' system (call it by another name or structure it differently) Use your imagination. A system by any name whereby the odds of getting relegated are extremely low and the financial hit to being relegated stings abit but isn't financially crippling. These guys are businessmen and have figured out a way to grow the game through 30 markets, that incentive in a business of expertise doesn't ultimately end at 30, it extends to ways to extract and incentivize revenue beyond 30 markets to cover an entire nation. How will that work? Use your imagination as most entrepreneurial spirits do everyday and not as a old method of how things work now or in the past. This isn't going to happen tomorrow but at some point it only makes sense for the growth of the game.

 

The expansion is a great point.

The TAM era has definitely caused the drop that starts in 2017 -- that's exact timing, where they added $2-4M in extra spend that was targeted at outside talent (though it's been shifted back towards GAM in recent negotiations).

Either way, more spend is going to bring in more competition.

If we count the number of players who have moved to Europe that wouldn't have pre-Pulisic era, I think the number of starters in MLS would be pretty close to 2013.

The difference would be, those 110 or so players are much better than the 110 in 2013.

 

Let’s not forget that a lot of players who would be getting minutes, and were, get bought a lot more quickly now.

That also skews the number a bit.

Also, A lot of those newer teams heven’t had enough time to get their systems up and running. It takes several yeas at least for an academy to start baring real fruit IMO. Maybe longer.

I for one would rather have less guys playing, as long as hey are quality, instead of letting a lot of guys play who clearly aren’t.

 

Seems to me that 2021 and 2022 are actually 2020 and 2021. Other wise why skip 2020 and include an only partially complete 2022 season?

 

NYCFC played the second half with 3 home grown players at Montreal. Reyna started for Dortmund, Sands came on in the 67th minute for Rangers and Scally will probably start for Gladbach later today.

After 8 years of existence having 7 home-grown players playing at the top level in their leagues shouldn't be sniffed at.

 

The cold bitch slap of reality.

I can‘t stress how incredible these interviews are. Lived and worked in Mex City for two years.
Talking in this fashion would have been treasonous even a few short years ago.

It goes to show that such a conservative, insular culture, that changes incredibly slowly is scared to death of one thing more than almost anything else.

The US becoming better at futbol than them. Wow.

Even I didn‘t expect this.

Anyone post this on that famous Mex gringo board I hear mentioned here so often?

 

Oh yeah. I used to mention to co workers down there that the best thing that could ever happen to Mex Soccer was for MLS to be competitive with them. It would force them to actually break out of their comfort zone and improve. Yeah, I was laughed at over Dos XX‘s.
I got laughed at a lot this last decade by Euro buds, locals and my friends south of the border.
They ain‘t laughing anymore. They all make their superior comments, keep trying to minimize and downplay what we are doing, but they know it‘s real now.

Slow, steady, stable is boring, but it is easy to predict future benefits and outcomes. This wasn‘t hard to see, but man the average human being
just can‘t do it. To bad. It‘s been a great thing to watch, and we will still be on the upswing through the rest of this decade. All the indicators are there. It‘s great to see, and it has been a long time coming.

Big props to Garber and MLS.

I laugh, mock, and have little respect for hot take social media fools.

Good job US Soccer. Built from nothing. 100 years behind the world. No respect in it‘s country. Still way behind several pro sports here, (college basketball and football are pro sports), but making waves.

Impressive.

Let the fools rant differently about how dumb they all are and how they can do it better. Those folks never amount to anything.
Down deep they know it.

 

Agree that slow and steady is boring but after the NASL flash and crash it was the only way forward. Kind of like trying to stop a tank. It's slow but it's always moving forward. Coupled with the American economy MLS has a teal chance to be a real player soon as other countries are grappling with economies for their leagues decimated by covid on top of teams overspending (like NASL used to) to stay with the cool kids and teams to go bankrupt. I know MLS isn't a top 10 league but go look at attendance for the bottom teams in some of those leagues that have 10 to 20 teams and realize MLS has almost 30 now and still growing and every team has better attendance than the bottom teams in every league except the top three.

 

But, to the average Mexican fan, they still believe their team is way better than us by using 30+ years of record instead of current statistics. Even their media put the blame on their players not playing well, rather than the US playing better.

 

There is gonna be a lot of push back and denial. This is such a big deal down there. The mental part of it is huge. This is their thing! Not the gringos! They are coming up with every excuse possible, but unless they fix the real ones, and some are gonna be hard to fix, then they better get used to a strong US, which means losing way more often than in the past. Culturally that is going to be hard.

I sent messages to my two friends there to see what they thought of this. They are fairly reasonable, so I look froward to their response.

Since the NL they have almost exclusively blamed Tata for everything, so we shall see.

 

Not every team is gonna do what we want. The Timbers are one of them. That‘s OK.

 

I remember talking to a Mexican fan right before the NL games. He felt no way they were going to lose the trophy specially to the USA. He pointed out how one-sided (3-0) was the last time USA played MEX. I told him to watch out; the USA that lost to MEX only had FOUR (Pulisic, Mckennie, Stephen, Dest,) possible current starters. His reply was that it didn't matter. The NL finals we won without both Robinsons, Zimmerman, Musha, Aaronson, Adams (saw 15 minutes) and Dest playing out of place as a LB.