With Canada I think it depends. They can catch up to the US for the simple fact that aside from Hockey, there are no other sports the dominate the cultural landscape. US soccer will always be behind in respect to the NFL, MLB and NBA for athletes and people’s attention. Canada did something right with the inception of the CPL. But already they made a huge blunder by putting the league behind a paywall. I will not pay One soccer a penny to watch the Hamilton Forge etc. Edmonton’s team already folded. Not a good sign. You cannot progress as a nation if you don’t have a good culture. And that comes with your domestic league. The CPL can improve on the MLS by leaving their system open, adding promotion and relegation etc. They have a lot of work to do
Looks like Australia are trying a play out of the Claudio Gentile playbook (on Maradona 82) with Baccus “marking” Messi
Took Baccus minutes to do a Pepe on Messi Body check leading with elbow and knee . Not even a yellow when it was clearly intentional!
Australia parking the bus almost immediately, pathetic, i hate when these shit teams do this. Another reason why team expansions are a bad idea for upcoming tournaments
Not only is this the WC but it's the knockout stages, either play or gtfo. If you have to defend for 90 minutes you have absolutely zero reason to be in this tournament, play the game.
Just curious, do you really think adding promotion and relegation for the CPL or MLS will improve players and teams?
I don't think so at all and it’s an outdated 19 century mentality. I think many clubs in Europe are hindered by getting relegated as they sell off players and simply implode. It's not like you can improve from one year to the next and go worst to first. Most clubs after being relegated have to start all over again. Palermo was sold for €10 Euro and ended up in the 4th division and then stayed in the Serie C for a few years and only now got back to the Serie B where they are struggling. They could easily get relegated again so I don't see how that helps a team or caliber of play or an individual player or a given national team , for that matter. The only teams I know in Italy anyway , who got better after going down was Milan and Juventus. Both cases was due to a scandal Totonero and calciopoli. Milan won right away but only because Berlusconi bought them and Juventus will always win. Also, just because they do it everywhere else doesn't mean it will work in North America where there is a different approach to sports. If anything, most club owners would probably end up folding their teams to avoid huge financial losses.
I don’t want to devolve the thread further into talking about MLS, but you’re talking about financial viability and I’m talking about what system produces better talent. If you can’t see why a closed pyramid system cannot compete with an open one, it’s best we don’t continue this conversation
I'm talking about improving a player in the league or in the national team. I don't see how promotion and relegation does this. It literally makes no sense. Forget about MLS but look at Italy and tell me how relegation has improved players or the national team for that matter? I am Italian and lived in Italy and worked at Fiorentina when they were relegated to the C2 and I'm telling you it didn't help the team or the players. The only thing that helped was when Adriano Galliano graced them a division so they skipped the C1 , got promoted to the B and then owner Diego Della Valle came in bought whole new bunch of players (Luca Toni for starters ) and got them promoted back to the Serie A. Hardly any players from their C2 team were left when they went back the Serie A other than Angelo DiLivio who was kept on the benched out of loyalty.
Italy is a great example. Without promotion and relegation we prob never discover Giovanni Di Lorenzo and maybe don’t win the Euros Without helping Palermo up to Serie A .. maybe Luca Toni never gets to Serie A
Yes Luca Toni scored 30 goals in Serie B in 2003-2004 but he was bought from Carlo Mazzone's Brescia. Palermo only came up to the Serie A because Maurizio Zamparini bought the club from Franco Sensi as well as a slew of good players. He bought Gianluca Berti from Empoli , Giuseppe Biava from AlbinoLeffe , Fabio Grosso from Perugia, Emanuele Filippini from Parma and Luca Toni from Brescia. Without his money and those players, they will have never made it with the players they had militating in the Serie C & B.
Because every game matters for every team in the table not just in the top tier, but for every subsequent one. The teams with the good players and projects get promoted. The teams with the bad players and projects get demoted. The games that involve relegation battles are just as tight and pressure filled as the race for the scudetto. This life and death environment breeds more intensity and by consequence better players and competition. In the MLS, the teams that are not playoff bound go on auto pilot. Many games become meaningless because there is a “regular season”. The teams that are bad get rewarded with “draft picks”. I can go on. Zlatan buried the MLS for similar reasons. Then the best talents of the MLS get bought from European clubs. You’re left with lesser talents and older European players who are looking for a final pay day. That’s the last I say on this. If you want to talk MLS, this isn’t the thread or the forum
Why is it such a taboo to talk about MLS when you brought it up initially? First of all, if you live in North America, you know it will never come to fruition because clubs and leagues don't believe it in and owners won't invest in a sinking ship. Secondly, it's apples and oranges. I lived in Italy and in Europe and am Italian and I'm telling you that aside from the fact it will never happen, what works there, won't work here. Non lo dico per iniziare una discussione oppure avere un argomento , dico solo che questo concetto non funzionerà mai in un campionato nordamericano. Fra l'altro, non accadrà ne ora ne mai..... Scordatelo!