Crazy FOXSports.com feature on what if the world's greatest soccer players played professionally in the United States, that being in Major League Soccer ... http://foxsports.lycos.com/content/view?contentId=1249164 Which players would play where? What would it take for Major League Soccer to get to the point where really good players would come to the U.S.?
The people who don't watch soccer probably wouldn't know the difference between Real Madrid and an MLS team anyway. I don't follow the NFL and I doubt I'd be able to tell the difference between the NBA and college basketball. I doubt there'd suddenly be huge interest just because the best players played there. Similarly you could take the NBA's players and stick them in British basketball teams, but it would suddenly make basketball popular here. To do it of course you'd need to pump a huge amount of money into MLS, far in excess of what the likes of Real Madrid and Man Utd receive, or you wouldn't be able to poach the players from europe.
From the article: "Would American fans actually want to watch a collection of foreigners play a foreign game on American soil even if they are the best there is? With NASL history as our guide we'd say "sure." People got into that league." The guy's an imbecile. MLS has better average attendance than the NASL did. While the Cosmos and a few other teams occasionally drew an Old Trafford-size crowd, for every time that happened you'd have a team in Memphis or Atlanta drawing an A-League crowd throughout the whole season. If people "got into that league," it would still exist.
If the best played here more people will come out. I dont think it take a genius to figure that one out.
I guess the question is: would enough people come out to watch the best play, and would enough people watch on tv for a lucrative tv deal, for MLS to pay these players what they would be worth. I think the answer to that is No. People keep wanting to put the cart before the horse. I am a firm believer in letting the US league grow. It may be very small now, but I think that a soccer culture needs to exist before soccer will ever become "big time" here in the states. And, I believe a soccer culture is being created. Let the league grow. Come back in twenty years and ask me the same question, and I hope that I'll be able to say: a lot of the world's best players do play here in MLS--and they're all Americans...
That article's completely tongue in cheek, you're just supposed to look at the photo gallery on that page. Link to the photo gallery is below: http://foxsports.lycos.com/content/view?contentId=1249212
those pictures are some of the stupidest things i have ever seen. but i got a good laugh from them and i do appreciate that.