You still have it wrong. 36 team. 4 div of 9. 2×8 = 16 + everyone else once (36-9) = 27. 16+27= 43. ----------------- Once you get beyond 32, you cannot play a div × 2 & everone else once with 4 divisions anymore. Not & keep it under 38 games. Even breaking it into smaller divisions does not work beyond 34 (8 div of 4 or 5 works + 1-2 extra vs extra divisional rivals). You have to either accept not playing everyone every year OR just play everyone once with a couple rivalry games for each team filling out the schedule (play those twice).
Let me try this again, and then I should probably stop picking at it. I think I basically agree with where you're going. I think we're also talking past each other a bit. With 32 teams, 8x4, that's two games against the other 7 teams in the division (7x2=14), and 24 other single games against the other 24 teams. How is that not 38? 14+24=38. What I utterly failed to state is that while this is the last number where you can have everybody play, I don't think it's the best idea. You clearly can't do it above 32 teams, but I think they should do fewer sooner. Honestly, If i'm showing my cards, I think 38 games is too many for MLS. I think they should keep it at 36 or less for sanity and safety's sake regarding travel. 34 this year was very reasonable. I also happen to think, and previously posted elsewhere, that it's better to start skipping teams at some point. I think there are ways to do that, skipping a meeting every third year or every other year as needed. They've got to start skipping teams in the next couple years to set the new expectation and start ironing out kinks when the next teams arrive. I'm not sure they should focus too hard on home-and-away. Single games against most, skip others, with a few select regional doubles is fine. They're not going to give up semi-regular meetings between all the teams, but skipping teams in some way or another is a great idea.
38 games plus FA Cup and League Cup is what most EPL teams play. Only 6 teams add the 6-10 games of European competitions. MLS teams with 38 league games and US Open Cup will be fine. The biggest problem with travel is that the teams had to fly commercial, which means connecting flights for a lot of places. Hopefully, the CBA will fix this. Charter flights will make travel,much easier, even for FC Cincinnati, whose airline partner is Allegiant. If there is an issue, it's the international calendar, especially in World Cup years. It's tough to lose players for 4-6 weeks in the middle of the season. Going beyond 32 teams will add complexity even when not playing home and away in your division, and non division teams every other or third year. It can also force unbalanced conferences - see 34 teams 2@17, or 2@8 + 2@9. Or, 35 teams means 5 of 7 or 7 of 5. Then you are complicating who gets into the postseason.
In Garber's state of the Union he drops Phoenix, Las Vegas, and Charolette as the current bids being looked at for the 30th spot in MLS. Charolette are front runners at the moment.
MLS expansion update: Don Garber says Charlotte "has done a lot of work to move their bid to the front of the line" to become MLS's 30th team. Competing with Las Vegas and Phoenix right now. Announcement could come in the next couple months.— Subscribe to GrantWahl.com (@GrantWahl) November 8, 2019
FC Tepper's Millions makes even an older NFL venue look good. I'm feeling pretty good about my recent guesstimate putting Las Vegas and Phoenix up there too. I'm not all that special though because it's not hard to see whose name is in the news and parrot that. Meanwhile, in Detroit, some may be wondering what's different with their NFL stadium plan. (Hint: control of stadium revenue streams, held by the Lion's ownership) They'd walk in tomorrow if they had a fully-controlled stadium plan, because it's a big city and the proposed ownership group's got serious money in play. San Diego needs the stadium, and I don't recall them having a billionaire patron. The city's an easy pick. If I had to put odds on who else could sneak in while Detroit and San Diego are stuck, it would be Indy. There's at least the faintest of pulses in the news. Not as strong as the Desert Derby cities, but faint is better than suspended animation. I wonder what's keeping Gilbert from getting something done in Detroit. Other projects seem to be getting done there. Then again, San Diego's having a miserable time too for its own reasons. Maybe it's just the development climate in the Motor City not being conducive to this kind of project. A sudden emergence happened in St Louis tough, and that bid looked like it was completely inert. Give it the right circumstances and timing, and Detroit or SD are shoo-ins.
What's keeping Gilbert from doing something in Detroit is the fact he wasn't going to do anything in Detroit at all. The MLS team bid and stadium was a cover for a land grab in downtown and to stop from building a jail that would affect the property value of all of the other land and businesses he owned downtown around the jail site. Once he secured the land the jail was suppose to be built on he changed his mind, added the Ford family and submitted Ford Field as the stadium knowing full well MLS was not going to go for it.
Exactly. It was just a real estate play using MLS as a bait-and-switch. My guess is that the Ford family got something out of the deal (maybe just a guarantee that Gilbert wouldn't be putting an MLS team in the market) for their role.
I cannot lie, another NFL/pointy stadium does not excite me. Counting Yankee stadium, how many is that now? NE, Van, Sea, Chicago, ATL, NYC, and Charlotte? Seven. Almost 25% of the league. Only 4 are turf at least. And hopefully Citeh & Chicago move off the list soon.
I'll throw a contrary opinion out there and argue that MLS is expanding way too fast. Why? 1) There is not enough playing talent to support so many teams. 2) There is not enough management talent to support so many teams. 3) You already have quite a few big-market teams struggling due to lack of talent (Chicago, NE, San Jose)....so why do you want to dilute the talent pool even more? You've already got a lot of small market clubs that have very little chance of competing against the bigger clubs due to the preferences of DP's to go to the world-class cities (NY, LA, Miami, etc.).
I wouldn't group San Jose in with Chicago under Hauptman. Now that the Fire have new ownership, Colorado probably has the least involved owner in MLS.
Yeah, point 1) is silly. The quality of players and the depth on each MLS team have, in general, both increased as the league overall has expanded.
I'd be very surprised if there was an issue with talent scarcity. If anything, I'm sure there are improvements that could be made in grass roots ball and identifying players at an early age that could be brought in to development academies and such.
All three points are silly, there is no need to call out point 1 specifically. MLS is too large for the managerial depth? hahaha. Particularly in the last few years, some of the most successful coaches have been foreign coaches. Yes, there is some interesting quirks about MLS, but as long as the manager is paired with a knowledgeable GM, foreign managers doesn't seem to be as big of an issue as it used to be. Obviously, MLS teams have to find the right manager for their situation, but that is true for any managerial situation.
Shouldn't we at least give Chicago's new owner a day of MLS off season before we declare Chicago's problems rectified? The guy was a 49% owner of the Fire at the end there and they didn't seem too much different than when Hauptman was 100% owner.
Really? I think the level of attacking talent has increased due to increased signing of South American/CONCACAF talents, but I don't think the quality of the defending has improved at all. And there aren't too many teams with top-quality keepers either. Simple math says that when you have 28-30 teams, talent is going to be stretched thinner than when you have 16-20 teams.
Only when you consider the US player pool as a closed market. The problem is that isn't even remotely true. You have already identified the primary reason why the notion that talent is going to be stretched thinner as a soccer league grows is total bunk.. There are a ton of non-US soccer players out there and MLS has no problem bringing in foreign players over ever increasing quality. It's also worth noting that MLS is dumping a bunch of money into developing US players, so even if there, MLS is growing the pool of US players as it grows.
I could maybe believe that the defending has been stagnant, but I think the better observation would be that the defending has been improving - just not as quickly as the attacking has. It'd hard to look simply within MLS to see this, but if you compare MLS vs LMX over time, you can see a (slow but) general improvement there for MLS' defending capabilities and a (slightly faster) general improvement there for MLS' attacking capabilities. As to you second point, you're assuming that there was only 16-20 teams-worth of talent to begin with. Between a growth in bringing in foreign talent and the large increase in development mentioned above, the baseline has grown mostly in lock-step with the number of teams. We have a big enough country that water-down really isn't a worry.
The same argument was made about pitching in baseball as the mlb expanded. It's not an issue. Lots of good players leave the game at various levels based on available roster slots. The key is to have a solid minor league, and other opportunities for kids at the youth level. There is also a role for interscholastic competition as well in player development. The big 4 sports develop more than enough players. Look at their player development infrastructure. MLS needs to look at that model and develop a road map to get there.
ICYMI: City administrators briefed members of #CLTCC in small groups last week about tourism fund debt capacity, disclosing it has room for about $100M — which just happens to be the amount sought for @MLS training HQ and stadium upgrades https://t.co/CA7Orfqukr— Erik Spanberg (@CBJspanberg) November 11, 2019 City Administrators have informed the Charlotte City Council that there is about $100 Million available on tourism fund. Unless Tepper is actually greedy there are very few reasons to believe this thing won't happen, even if it is another case of Nashville (the city that somehow got a team) in the eyes of a few. I fully expect Tepper to want to make money from his teams in the long run, any owner that says they aren't is a liar but, I also don't believe him to be a crook the way some have painted him to be over asking to use money from a tourism fund dedicated to the kind of project he is trying to start.
A 49% owner has no authority if someone else has 51%. Now that he has 100%, he's already gotten the team out of Bridgeview. He may keep Rodriguez and Paunovic for 2020 but he's already done more for the Fire than Hauptman did.
30. Charlotte 31. Las Vegas 32. Phoenix South: MLS: Atlanta United, FC Dallas, Houston Dynamo, Austin FC, Orlando City SC, Nashville, Inter Miami, Charlotte North: DC United, Philadelphia Union, New York City FC, New York Red Bulls, New England Revolution, Toronto FC, Montreal Impact, Minnesota United East: Sporting Kansas City, Saint Louis, Columbus Crew, FC Cincinnati, Colorado Rapids, Real Salt Lake, Phoenix, Chicago Fire West: LA Galaxy, Los Angeles FC, Seattle Sounders, Portland Timbers, Vancouver Whitecaps, San Jose Earthquakes, Sacramento Republic, Las Vegas
How much do we think travel affects the quality in MLS? Put another way, would a more regional, unbalanced schedule improve quality of play or alleviate mid summer fatigue in a noticeable way?