Guys, ignore desjardfan. He's posted a lot of **** here before on how much he hates the MLS, and he's obviously just an ignorant troll that doesn't shut up. He clearly has some serious psychological issues that need to be checked out by a professional. My guess is he is a European living in the US with serious insecurity issues...he compensates for this by being as incredibly condescending about American soccer as possible and having a superiority complex about the "European system." Pretty sad, really, and I really wish this small group of Europeans would get a life instead of constantly worrying about how bad the MLS is and how badly it needs to change to the European format.
-Owners still invested in multiple clubs/Why are we still exapnding?
Over 15 years in, this is absolutely ridiculous and screams of a league that is too concerned with expansion than finding owners for clubs that already exist. AEG and Hunt still have control of two clubs while the league continues to shell out new franchises to the highest bidder.
Because the new markets desperately want teams. Vancouver and Portland were going crazy for teams and they will be well supported...why would we turn them down? Montreal and St. Louis had to be turned down, and they would have been great choices for expansion. Since Beckham came the buzz around the league has grown drastically and cities are now begging for expansion teams...we have to ride this wave of popularity.
-Failure to follow the FIFA calendar
While it doesn't effect the competition in a great way because the vast majority of players are not regular internationals, it does bring the legitimacy of the league into question, and MLS continues to dodge it saying that they're looking at the problem, which is obviously a euphemism for, "We just don't give a ****."
No, they don't follow the FIFA calendar because money is too tight and it effects only a handful of players for about one or two regular season games per year. No one notices, and the only people that really care about the MLS not being on the FIFA calendar are Europeans.
-Teams from one conference can win the other conference's "Championship"
That's probably enough said in itself. Either do a split-league playoff system properly or do a single table system with a separate cup competition. Case in point:
Don't get me wrong, I don't like the playoffs, but unfortunately, they're a necessary evil. The mainstream American audience prefers them, we want to see the team that can win in the important matches against the big teams, when the game is on the line. I prefer the European system, but most Americans don't, other than the few Eurosnobs. They don't generate the bulk of the league's revenue or represent its potential market. More improtantly, the playoffs are necessary because it gives each team an incentive to win. In Europe, the bottom teams get relegated, and all of the top half teams are fighting for continental spots. But you don't have this in the MLS, so there wouldn't be incentive for the lower to mid level teams to play hard and win, and there wouldn't be fan interest for those teams. If you include the playoffs though, almost all of the teams are fighting for playoff positions, so it gives the teams and fans a stake in the competition. And the playoffs of course are sold out games that generate TV interest. I don't like them, but they're a necessary evil for the success of the league.
Also, plenty of leagues use American style playoffs, Mexico, Bolivia, and of course you have leagues like Chile who have playoffs as well. Why don't you go around criticizing those leagues? It's clear that you're a European who is so insecure that you have to bash everything about our league, since football is one of the areas you can feel superior about (though it's not like the quality of the SPL outside of the Old Firm is anything to be proud of).
-Failure to enhance the US Open Cup
MLS simply does not give a toss about the history and potential importance of this competition, mainly because they can't stick their name in front of it. This could easily be used to appease the typical American sports fan who only cares about knockout round playoff structures and allow MLS to have a true table position champion, instead of the MLS Cup and Supporter's Shield, because who remembers who won the most games during the 1997 MLB season? No one, because it doesn't matter when you have a playoff structure. Also, would allow for better understanding of the sport at large, since the rest of the world has such a competition coinciding with their league calendar.
I wouldn't disagree with this too much, it should be marketed better, but I think they don't because it would confuse most Americans, who aren't used to the European style where you have a domestic cup. I personally don't like domestic cups, I think they're pointless and I love the fact that Argentina got rid of theirs. Anyone though that stops watching the MLS because this tournament isn't well promoted isn't a true fan.
-Continued expansion dilutes an already weak talent pool
Keep adding teams to a league that doesn't have enough quality in the first, keep filling rosters with less and less talented players from four-year universities. Pretty simple, especially when the top talent keeps escaping the continent.
Sigh, already answered this, and few people oppose expansion. The time is right and we have to capitalize on the new popularity of the sport...why wait 20 years for our youth system to develop when the markets are there now? If we fail to take this opportunity, the league could be left in obscurity forever. We need a lot of cities involved to make this a truly national sport.
-Took 15 years to figure out that youth development is important
Holy ****! You mean we should concentrate on developing our own talent instead of relying on college programs with zero-budgets to do it?!?!?!?! See: What happens when you get a bunch of Am. football men in the room used to having a free development system (NCAA football) at their disposal and can't imagine for a second they would have to pay for it themselves. This is systemic throughout the entire US Soccer structure.
I'll answer this in some of the next posts, but it's clear you don't know anything about our youth system or the progress it has made recently. We have to use the NCAA because it's what we have available to us, and it will be continue to be relevant until the academy system has been in place for at least a generation.
-This is a sport with successful blueprints to follow from every corner of the world, and you're still f*cking it up
Seriously, how hard would it have been to look at EVERY OTHER TOP FLIGHT IN THE WORLD to get this right a long time ago? The scapegoat is that you have to reach a broader audience, or one that doesn't care as much about football as the rest of the world. Not true, because unlike the rest of the footballing world (Europe in particular) the population of this country is massive and you only have to capture a small part of the audience to still have massive numbers. Get 10% of this country to care and you've won: that's 33 million people. Double that and you've got a base that's 1.5 times larger the population of Spain, same size as France, Italy, and the UK. You don't need to appeal to the masses, you need to target a group that ALREADY EXISTS.
The way you alienate a fanbase is by providing substandard competition, and with the growth of FSC and ESPN's coverage of the sport at large, plus any number of fine websites that allow to stream games from around the world, MLS is still relying on being "the only game in town" when, in fact, it is most definitely not. Americans will pay a premium to watch top-flight sport, but they will continue to feign interest in a league that is marginalizing itself by its own hand.
And that successful blueprint has absolutely nothing to do with our situation. None of those countries are nearly as large as the US, and none of them have as many sports to compete with. There is a reason we use the franchise system in EVERY pro sport in America...it's the only system that works here. But you have some psychological issues and are bent on insisting that America follows the European format no matter how impossible it would be to implement. I'll answer it in some of the following posts, but you were the guy that ranted about how the MLS needed promotion and relegation...no serious American soccer fan wants promotion/relegation or thinks it could possibly work here. Do you seriously think an owner would invest in a team if it got relegated? Do you seriously think a city would pay taxpayer dollars on a stadium for a team that could get relegated? It's clear that you're completely delusional and have an irrational hatred for the MLS and want it to look like the European leagues for no reason...and the passion you have for this cause is only a sign of your own mental instability.
As far as the MLS not doing well in terms of TV viewership, I'll answer it in the following posts, but obviously it can't compete with the Prem. No one will watch a second-tier league when they can watch European football. This wouldn't have been a problem a few decades ago, but we're in an era of globalization where you can watch these leagues with simply TV packages and online. Americans know what good football looks like, and no matter how European the MLS looks, if the on-the-field product isn't there, people won't watch it on TV. They will eventually, but that won't happen until our youth system churns out a lot of quality players, enough that the MLS is one of the top leagues. More and more of our players will start staying, and a more profitable league will mean higher salaries. This has nothing to do with the structure of the league, it's about the quality of the on-the-field product. We'll get there, it'll just take some time to let the investments we have made in our youth system pay off.
The fact that you think the MLS is "alienating the fanbase with substandard competition" also shows how little you know...the MLS is not seriously trying to put bad players on the field, we just don't have any good ones. Do you seriously in your right mind think there are better players out there that the MLS has turned away for its own deviant reasons? That it's trying to make it a substandard competition? It's one of many incredibly irrational statements you have made on these forums, and your arguments just don't make sense.
A bunch of nonsense about Beckham
You're ******* retarded if you don't recognize what he's done for the game here. I have actually lived in this country my whole life. When I went to the World Cup in 2006, no one in this country had heard of a football player, though a few knew Beckham (mostly from the movie Bend it like Beckham). No one knew anything about the MLS. Beckham came over and put this sport in a spotlight it had never been in this country. The MLS' viewer ratings and attendances skyrocketing. People on mainstream sports talk shows actually talked about the MLS, when before it had been considered a basically semi-pro league. The fact that the whole thing was incredibly controversial made it even better, as average Americans had an actual opinion about the situation. Americans, actually talking about soccer at the water cooler. Right around the same time I started seeing soccer jerseys everywhere. Mostly from Europe, but you'd get the occasional MLS one. People in cities around the country started begging for an expansion team, and they noticed how many people filled the seats whenever Beckham played, even though he's not a flair player. The Seattle Sounders were created and turned out to be the most successful expansion team in American sports HISTORY. In any sport. By the time World Cup 2010 rolled around, many people tuned in wanting to see Beckham play the US. We had record TV ratings and when we beat Algeria, people were running through the streets celebrating. I have never seen ANYTHING like it in America.
If you don't think Beckham has expanded this sport into the mainstream than you're ******* delusional and clearly don't care about the growth of the sport in this country. You're more concerned with your own ego and looking down on other people and the sport here to make yourself feel better. Pretty pathetic, really.
I think MLS has the potential, but, the American mentality towards football isn't exactly the best, heck, they don't even call it football .
It's the overall culture that holds it back, which I'll address in the following posts. But remember, football is futebol in Portuguese, which as you know is a nonsensical word and just an adaptation of the English word for football. As futbol is in Spanish. In Italy, it's Calcio (which means heel). In Australia and New Zealand and the US, it's soccer. Football used to be called association football (known as assoc. football for short), and rugby was rugby football. Football became known as soccer in these countries to differentiate it from rugby football, which in America evolved into gridiron.
Nah, I think you're absolutely right. But, like I said, they need to not focus on trying to get everyone to care because it's never going to happen. It's not like there aren't people who don't give a toss about football in the UK, or France, or Germany, or Spain, or...
You need to maintain the target market that already exists and growing that, because it is a HUGE number already. More people in this country identify football as their favorite sport than do baseball or basketball. That should be a sign that there's enough people here that already love it and you don't need to pander to Johnny-NFL fan anymore.
The 'huge number' would much rather watch the top league than a second-tier one. We won't win them over until we reap the rewards from our youth system, which could take a generation. The vast majority of Americans simply won't care about a foreign league (which is why they aren't interested in soccer at the moment), and once the MLS gets good, we'll win them over. They outnumber the fans of European teams we have in this country now
You make some good points, a good read.
One thing I think may contribute to the failure of the MLS is the issue concerning advertising and the commercialisation of football.
American TV channels love their adverts, there were so many advert breaks during the Superbowl that I lost count, and could the TV channels desires to cram in as many advert breaks as possible hinder the success of football (soccer) in the US?
Because of the flowing nature of football and the fact that there are very rarely breaks in play of longer than a few seconds this could bring up issues as it would make it nigh-on impossible for the TV channels to have regular commercial breaks, and less commercial breaks = less revenue for the channel. Because of this the TV channels may be less willing to pay a large amount for the rights to show MLS games as they will be unable to recoup their investment through advertising to the same extent as they do with American Football etc.
I remember reading somewhere that at some point (might have been in the NASL) that they tried to implement prolonged stoppages during normal time when the ball went out of play so that they could fit in commercial breaks but I feel that this would ruin the spectacle for fans in the stadium and isn't really in footballing nature.
I'm not sure how adverts work for basket ball and ice hockey but I know that these sports have their games divided into quarters rather than halves like football (soccer), so if they don't have adverts during play they can still fit in 3 sets of commercial breaks between the quarters whereas they could only have one set of commercial breaks in a football (soccer) match - at half time.
This has a knock on effect, as we all know (somewhat unfortunately), in Europe, most teams are highly dependant on income from TV revenue, so if american TV stations aren't willing to fork out big bucks for the rights to MLS games, then there will be less TV revenue for the MLS or clubs to invest in youth training or big-money transfers.
Doesn't really matter too much at the moment since TV ratings aren't so high, but when the MLS becomes popular enough that a lot of people watch it on TV, it will be making money one way or another. And of course you can just do the Latin-American style advertising, where you have small, short ads on the bottom of the screen throughout the game, especially during goal kicks, set pieces, injuries, etc. And there's half time, which is a 20 minutes. Keep in mind though that a football game is very short, not too much over an hour and a half, so 20 minutes of halftime ads plus whatever you can get at the bottom of the screen really isn't too bad of a ratio. If the sport is popular and gets good ratings, it'll make money in a variety of ways, and there are plenty of outlets for advertising...stadium names, for example, and sponsors on the uniform (soccer is the only sport in America that uses that type of sponsorship, you wouldn't see it in the other American sports), among other things. We just need to focus on improving the on the field product and waiting for it to get popular.
I completely agree with Godcubed here. You cant lampoon Becks for the failings of the MLS. Sure he probably moved for the money but would you do any different in his position?
One player cant make a league great,it takes a lot more than that. And the reason that he hasnt been that successful over there is because hes playing in the twilight of his career. Hes not likely to set the world alight. I dont particularly like Beckham but i think he doesnt deserve the criticism that he gets.
But this is just my opinion and i know others will differ.
The MLS has obvious flaws and i believe if the Draft was abolished it may help improve the standard of the game but i dont see it developing much in the next 5 years.
The standard will improve with an improved youth system, but that takes a long time. We've already made a European style youth system more or less, but only within the past couple of years, and our coaching obviously isn't there yet (no one over the age of 30 played soccer when they were young, and the few that did played a primitive brand with terrible coaches, and we can't simply bring over European/Latin imports because the players they coached were much different than Americans, players who were much better and naturally understood the game better from having played and watched it from a very young age). Eventually it will make the draft unimportant, but it'll be about a generation before we reap the benefits. For now, the vast majority of our best players come through the college system, so we have to use the draft and make do with what we have. The NCAA seriously needs to reform its rules, so hopefully that will happen. The draft is also necessary in a franchise system because it's the only fair way players can be allowed into the league (there's also a lot of issues as far as legality with the NCAA rules, you can't have pro teams "tapping up" college players, the NCAA is really strict about those types of interactions, and for good reason), not to mention, it ensures parity.
@Niall: Very true about the adverts. It's a struggle for American networks to figure out, but I think they're getting the audiences are there, and there are a lot of different ways to get advertising into a live sporting event besides 30-sec commercials.
(edit) Also, basketball and hockey have a lot of natural breaks in the matches besides the intervals between quarters and periods.
@Steve: The draft is one of the many jokes perpetrated by MLS on the American football fan. Like I said, there's a clear blueprint laid out by every other league in the world, and MLS has laughed in the face of it and football fans in this country long enough.
Already talked about this. Ads can be put on TV at any time throughout the game, just short ones that only cover the small part of the screen. There's also halftime. 20 minutes of halftime plus some small ads is a very good ratio for a sporting event that lasts less than 2 hours. American football has more commercials, but the games are like 4 hours long. But it's really not that important at the moment, since TV ratings aren't high yet.
As for the draft, I already covered that, and it's clear you just hate the American sports system more than have any concern for how successful we are. The academies are supplying more and more players but they just started a couple years ago. What do you want us to do until then? The draft will always be necessary because the majority of American soccer players use the NCAA system. Yes, it sucks, but we should reform the NCAA system and work with what we have. I think the academy system will soon overtake the NCAA in terms of producing talent and the draft will be an afterthought. But we use the draft in the American sports system, and there is no way getting around it. It's necessary within the franchise system, and it ensures parity in the league. And even if we did decide to get rid of it for whatever reason, the amount of illegal contact between the clubs and the NCAA players would be absurd...the NCAA is very strict about this, and for good reason, and it's one of the reasons why we have a draft in ALL American sports.
Yeah the squad contracts are a joke aswell. Im not 100% on how it goes but i dont like the idea of the small salary cap either. Any promising american players end up playing in europe because they can earn more there. If the people in charge of MLS got rid of these stupid rules and followed the european leagues foundations i believe that the standard would improve quickly. I have quite a few mates from the states that like football but only follow the european leagues.
The major pitfall is trying to implement the same ideas as other american mainstream sports. The fanbase would be there if the structure of the league was followed. Also if the structure was good i could see more european players moving to the states to play football for economic,lifestyle and monetary gain. An influx of players would make the league more appealing and in turn generate more revenue.
There's a lot wrong in this paragraph. Have you heard of the NASL? The league dies without a salary cap. All of the good players would end up on one or two teams. The league needs to spread the sport to new markets, and you can't do that if the expansion teams have no chance at being any good. Parity is necessary for the league and for the franchise system as a whole, which is why we have salary caps in American sports.
As far as the best American players leaving, that's not a problem, and no salary would keep them in the MLS...if you're a professional athlete, you'll want to play at the highest level. Until the MLS is as good as the Premiership it'll be a developmental league, and there's nothing wrong with that since all but 4 or 5 leagues in the world have become developmental leagues in the past 15 or so years.
As far as European players coming, they do come...Beckham, Ljungberg, Henry, etc. and of course Latin players like Schelotto and Juan Pablo Angel. We won't attract top-level talent until the league is better but we're doing a good job. This has nothing to do with structure, it has to do with wages, and few teams can afford to bring over an Henry or a Beckham (with the DP rule, the owner pays the wages of the player). But we're doing a good job and keep getting better and better players to come at a younger age. Henry was very good the season before last. So if anything, that's one of the things we're doing well, and yes, it does attract fans. Beckham was huge for us and made the league a lot of money.
@Steve: There's a reason it says "former season ticket holder" in the title of this. You've got "first team" players making under $40,000. That is crazy for the top flight of a professional sport in this country.
Square peg >>> round hole, all that.
The fact that you seriously think MLS teams can afford to pay their players more than that shows how delusional you are. It also shows that you clearly have this irrational, blind hatred for the league and criticize it for everything you possibly can.
I think the talent level of the MLS is its biggest problem at this point. The casual soccer/football fan here wants to see guys they know from international competitions like the World Cup or even Confederations Cup, but the vast majority of those guys (save Donovan) play in Europe. The Premier League gets a surprising amount of airtime on shows Sportscenter on ESPN because people know a lot of the names there. Rooney's bicycle kick was on the highlights for a week.
I don't think the MLS can thrive until they can develop and attract top-flight level talent. People in the US like to be the best when it comes to sports. No one would care about the Tour de France if Lance Armstrong hadn't won 7. I think a lot of people are uncomfortable with the fact that we produce so little soccer talent and that there are probably 20-25 countries above us in the soccer/football world.
I absolutely agree that the MLS hurts itself by ignoring what works for dozens of other leagues and trying too hard to mirror the NFL, NBA, etc.
The MLS won't be watched until the on-the-field product is there. The quality is not high, and it is very ugly football (it's a poor imitation of British football, which isn't known for being attractive). In another era, we could have gotten away with this, but Americans have been exposed to top flight soccer. They can easily watch the Premiership, La Liga, Bundesliga, etc. on TV or the internet. There's no reason for a new fan of the sport to watch a second-tier league when they can watch this. Americans are used to their sports leagues being the best at their respective sports. They just won't tune in to a second-tier league that doesn't have the best players. So it's tough. But once our player development improves and we produce better and better players, the league will slowly improve, and will in turn get more fans and make more money, which means we keep more players, and it'll be a cycle that will hopefully end with us being a successful league.
You have to wonder how many great American footballers there could have been over the years had the USA have had the culture and structure of more traditional footballing nations.
If we had the culture and youth development of other nations, we'd be a top 5 team (that's not nationalism, that's just the fact that we have a huge, well-populated, wealthy country with great facilities and good weather, as well as ethnic diversity). The structure doesn't matter though, if we had a franchise system with these things we'd be just as good as the European leagues.
It's just embracing the portion of the culture that's already in place, and MLS refuses to do so for its own selfish and ill-founded reasons.
This shows your blind hatred for the MLS. It is a business for Christ's sake. Do you seriously think they aren't trying to make a long-term profit? What are these "selfish reasons?" The MLS just wants to survive and not make the same mistakes as the NASL and other failed professional sports leagues (USFL, ABA, etc.). Eventually it wants to make itself into a very profitable league. That's what businesses do. There is no conspiracy, the MLS isn't trying to hurt itself for "selfish" reasons, that's just your own delusion.
Also, it's pretty clear that you have no association with US soccer culture, so we're not interesting in your views on it. The MLS has to get in touch with mainstream American sports culture, not the few Europeans living in the US who have a superiority complex about their sports systems. The American soccer culture that is here is generally happy with the way things are going with the MLS. Many are impatient, but they are the ones that don't realize that it takes a couple of generations to get good at a new sport like this (one the rest of the world has been playing for 150 years). There also is the occasional Eurosnob that thinks we have to imitate everything European that we possibly can (including the team names, which is how we get names like Real Salt Lake and FC Dallas), but they're not really a part of our soccer culture. It's pretty clear that you're a European living in America with serious insecurity issues, though if there's the odd chance you're an American, you should be ashamed of yourself and I'm sorry there are "fans" of the sport in this country like you.
If things went accordingly to favour popularity of football in the USA in the dawn of the sport, a European structure and development style, I think they'd run rampant.
The structure isn't important, it's the culture and youth development, which I'll address in the next two posts.
I think one just has to look at the talent of some of the African nations and wonder what the **** happened to keep America down for so long? A lot of it still comes back to a disjointed and horribly mismanaged youth system.
And how much do you actually know about the American youth system? The MLS doesn't really make the profits to support an academy system like the ones in Europe, but they have gone ahead and created one anyway. All of the teams have youth academies now and they are being consolidated into leagues that focus solely on development and not results. As of last season we already have 21 homegrown players in the MLS, with a bunch more due to play this season. Considering the lack of organization and experience on the part of our coaching staff, this is a huge accomplishment. Again you're just berating the MLS with no understanding of anything you're actually talking about.
Another thing is that kids here rarely focus on one sport. It's soccer/football in the spring, baseball in the summer, American football in the fall. I can't help but think that hurts development.
This is by far the main reason we aren't good at the sport. It's even more important than the lack of a youth system. We just don't have the culture to produce good footballers. In any country in the world, as soon as you can walk you play with the ball in your yard. By the time you're 4 or 5 you constantly play with your friends. By the time you're 9 or 10, you have years of experience learning this sport. You have developed great ball skills, a great first touch, and most importantly, a natural understanding of how the games works and the right movement (the fact that you've been watching the game your whole life helps a lot too), and creativity. At this age, you then go and learn it in an organized team, with expert coaches. By the time you're 16 or 17 you're an amazing footballer, whether or not you're going to go pro.
In the US you don't even kick the ball until you're about 6 or 7 when you join a co-ed recreational team. The atmosphere is very laid-back obviously, and you're coached by a parent who has never played the game before. You don't play the game in your free time or watch it, and by the time you're 12 or 13 you've never developed a proper touch or any technical skill, much less creativity. You never naturally learned how the game works or the proper movement since you only learned it on a team and not on your own, not to mention you were taught by terrible coaches. If you joined a semi-serious team early on, you were probably taught by someone who actually played the sport. They probably do not know how to coach and if they received coaching when they were younger they would imitate that backwards style of coaching, and they only focus on winning and not player development. Chances are you were taught tactics as if from a textbook, and you were supposed to be taught those tactics once you already knew how to play the game on your own. The fact that you never really watched it also means you don't get how tactics work, not to mention you never got the chance to imitate players you watch.
So by the time you're 12 or 13, you're miles behind your average 12 or 13 year old player in Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, Spain, etc. much less the good ones in the academy system. And of course at this age, if you are a male you will switch to a different sport, especially if you're a good athlete. If you do stick with soccer you definitely don't have any aspirations of becoming pro, since the vast majority of American pro soccer players make next to nothing. You might try to get a soccer scholarship, but that has nothing to do with going pro, and the NCAA route isn't really a good route for development.
All the MLS games I've watched limited commercials to half time only. Although that could change in the future, who knows.
I discussed this earlier and I actually don't think it's that big of a problem, and there are plenty of outlets for advertising in the sport.