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the pittsburgh riverhounds have a stadium right across the river from downtown, beautiful skyline view, shockingly close to public transit (not a thing that normally happens here), and somehow decent parking as well. plus they are a third division soccer club in a city that couldn't give two shits about the sport. how MLS clubs struggle so mightily to find urban stadium locations, i will never understand.
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Feb 28, 2016 01:21
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CaptainYesterday posted:You need enough money to convince the city that building a soccer stadium won't become a white elephant after two seasons. hounds don't have any money at all. they spent one year in the stadium and the primary owner went bankrupt and they had to sell the team. maybe they just lucked into ultra prime real estate, idk.
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Feb 28, 2016 02:12
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Do over Ham posted:City politics and real estate prices/availability are rather different in Pittsburgh, I would assume, than in places like Boston, New York City, Washington DC, Chicago, etc. oh there's plenty of land available (kind of), it's all being turned into comically overpriced condos. property values are skyrocketing and developers are flush with cash. it's those people who find it easy to acquire land, not half-broke third division soccer clubs. and it wasn't even unused land, they tore down a concert venue to make room. i wasn't here when they went through the whole planning process, but given what i have seen of local politics since then, it is absolutely shocking that someone said "sure have this prime loving real estate." i will grant you that it's unquestionably more difficult in boston and new york, but we're most certainly not like detroit. detroit's urban area is filled with vast swathes of empty lots. pittsburgh ain't like that at all.
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Feb 28, 2016 18:01
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Do over Ham posted:True; I didn't mean to imply Pittsburgh was like Detroit in the sense of being an empty wasteland; Pittsburgh has recovered from losing its heavy industry rather better than Detroit or most of the other rust belt cities, and none of the rust belt cities are as bad as Detroit. But your urban areas are nowhere near as crowded, overpriced (yet - though it sounds like it is moving that way), or (I'm guessing) as subject to stifling local politics as is the case with Boston, NYC, Chicago, etc. regardless, they include one free beer at every match with season tickets, which is a pretty slick deal
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Feb 29, 2016 04:27
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quote:And Orlando City has full territorial and TV rights for the Tampa Bay market, said Leonardo Santiago, the team's vice president of communications on Wednesday. MLS is the worst loving league and i cannot wait until the people who think of these idiotic rules are either fired into the sun or the league itself collapses under the weight of its own stupidity
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Mar 11, 2016 20:59
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Crazy Ted posted:To drive this point home, it is roughly 90 miles between Orlando and Tampa-St. Petersburg. Not even the arcane Major League Baseball territorial rules are this crazy. "we're gonna be the best league in the world! by inexplicably replicating everything everyone hates about major american sports leagues but tolerate because they have no other choice"
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Mar 12, 2016 01:43
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Aardvark Barber posted:Pittsburgh Riverhounds fan checking in! Hoping to get out to a match sooner rather than later. OH BOY it's a nice stadium. the supporters section is somewhat cringe-y but i mean you can't really avoid that in american soccer. they're fun though so whatever. i got season tickets this year for the first time.
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Mar 20, 2016 01:01
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Do over Ham posted:MLS related but also pertains to NASL and the Rowdies, Cosmos, Strikers as well: most of the original MLS team identities were developed by nike and that's why most of them have been changed. the fire were supposed to be the "chicago rhythm" with a purple/black cobra logo; thankfully the ownership just ignored nike on that one.
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Mar 31, 2016 12:41
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Do over Ham posted:the people who run the game in this country are partisans of their particular organizations only, and have no interest in preserving the history of, or promoting the best interests of, the game as a whole. it's like when someone asked bruce arena how he felt about promotion/relegation and the FIRST response that came to his mind was something about how phil anschutz didn't deserve to have to risk one of his investments being relegated. they have no genuine interest in growing the sport, they just want to grow MLS and benefit their invite-only group of investors. ANYWAY GAME DAY TODAY RHINOS ARE GOING DOWN maybe, idk, i really have no clue how good any of these teams are
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Apr 2, 2016 19:43
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hounds played really well but the rhinos scored early and their stupid ginger goalkeeper had himself a game. could not have asked for worse weather, 40 and pissing rain. solid crowd showed up despite that. e: also, can we go to these games and actually support the clubs, rather than starting pissing contests with rival supporters groups? the "steel army" and the rhinos traveling support just chanted about each other all night, at one point even criticizing one group's drum playing. no one cares. it's childish and cringeworthy and encapsulates everything people hate about american soccer. keep that poo poo on reddit. oh and the rhinos fans had their shirts off by the end of the game. cool, guys. you're cool. i see your pasty white skin and i feel fear. wicka fucked around with this message at 15:18 on Apr 3, 2016 |
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Apr 3, 2016 14:58
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we didn't see it clearly, our section is at the other end of the field, but a hounds player kicked a NYRBII player in the back and the latter did not move afterward. ended up stretchered off the field. gently caress.
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May 8, 2016 02:14
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so a few red bulls players tweeted photos of ouimette on the team bus wearing a hospital gown, all of which have since been deleted. which is odd. i wonder if he wasn't supposed to leave.
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May 8, 2016 04:32
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fyallm posted:So the owner of FC Cincinnati has decided to try and break our previous USL attendance record this weekend.... He is trying to get to 25K Saturday... bring back parkes, let him kick burfict
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May 12, 2016 22:28
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Simone Poodoin posted:This video is making the rounds and he's even being called "a future Keylor Navas", does anyone follow Pittsburgh? Is he consistently that good? no idea, gilstrap started every game prior to that one
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May 18, 2016 14:58
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CaptainYesterday posted:It's all politics. Namely, MLS/USL vs. NASL. MLS and the USL are painting the NASL as a dead-end league, and it's tough to counter that while the USSF is getting requests for both lower divisions to move up on the ladder. This is what happens when you let the free market dictate soccer! it's quite the opposite of that, actually
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Jun 7, 2016 17:49
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Do over Ham posted:True if it were pure free markets USSF wouldn't exist at all (or it would exist but have no say over league sanctioning) and there would be no D1 or D2 requirements, or, we'd have USSF and pro/rel. But we have neither. What we have instead is a weird mixture of semi-free markets and economic chaos mixed with arbitrary regulation and politics. i just hate that we have a league system in which the league is a personality itself that bickers with other leagues. i don't care about MLS or NASL or USL, these are just containers for teams that organize things and set up media contracts, why are they fighting with each other and forming alliances? all of these leagues need to focus more on growing the sport and not just on growing themselves. more often than not those two things are not as intertwined as they think they are. Do over Ham posted:It should be: if you meet D2 requirements, and especially if you also want to go to MLS, you should have to go into NASL first. That would stabilize NASL and put a permanent stop to this endless and pointless war between USL and NASL. totes, i wish they would just all merge and stop this slapfighting. then MLS could stop expanding for a hot minute, stop diluting the talent pool, stop putting teams in lovely cities no one cares about (MIAMI), focus on consolidating and growing the teams they have, then maybe invest some money into the second and third divisions. then maybe we'd have some stable clubs and academies from top to bottom and really start churning out players. Do over Ham posted:Seriously, I've lost count; are there any USL teams, that are not MLS reserve teams, that haven't announced MLS plans yet or have rumors of MLS plans at some point? Even teams that are in ridiculously small markets like Charleston are talking MLS (El Paso number 98 TV market; Charleston SC is number 99 TV market!). definitely all of them have MLS "plans." the hounds have a 3500 seat stadium, one of the stands is temporary, we average like 1600 fans a game, yet they have draft plans to expand on their current footprint to 18,500 and join MLS within ten years...
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Jun 8, 2016 14:10
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TheNakedJimbo posted:I wonder which city in the world has the worst total population to stadium size ratio. Charleston only has ~120,000 people in it. In order to fill a 20,000 seat stadium, 16% of the entire city would have to be at that game. Even if you factor in the whole metro area, which is about 550,000 people, the stadium seats about 4% of the city's population. Expecting that high a level of interest and involvement doesn't seem reasonable. (Pittsburgh filling an 18,500-seater would only be 0.7% of the population.) well the reason they all suggest they could be in the MLS in the future is because they know there is no way to attract a stable fan base to a minor league team without suggesting the possibility that they could eventually be a major league team. and i'm sorry, but that's the strength of promotion/relegation. not that it should be ever be considered with the current state of our 2nd and 3rd divisions, but i don't see any other way to foster a stable lower league system, and in turn support the kind of grassroots player development necessary to actually turn MLS and us soccer into something relevant on an international stage.
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Jun 8, 2016 20:13
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Do over Ham posted:If we did have pro/rel cities like El Paso and Charleston would have a chance to make it to the top flight but they'd actually have to earn it. Not likely, but fun when it actually does happen. Not going to happen in USA soccer in our lifetimes probably but it is still worth thinking of other ways of doing things. i'd love to hear other ways of doing things. no one has really suggested anything. i always get frustrated when pro/rel is raised and people dismiss it out of hand with "oh you just want to be like the europeans" or "americans will never accept that." first off, the poo poo the europeans do works, so yeah, maybe we should try some of it. and secondly, how do you know americans never would accept pro/rel? most of them have never experienced it. the fact that our leagues grew in a weird vacuum, playing sports few others cared about, really doesn't prove that doing things differently is an inherently bad option. and there are millions more americans watching those foreign leagues than MLS. regardless, don't think of pro/rel as a feature that you're selling to fans. think of it from a purely functional perspective. MLS wants to be a top league, wants to help the US become a top league, but they've never explained how they are going to grow that level of domestic talent. to me, the best way is to implement pro/rel, allow lower leagues to grow and stabilize, and allow teams in those leagues to build academies that can train youth players for free. if they have another idea, i'm all ears.
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Jun 9, 2016 02:14
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Nostradingus posted:I would love to see pro/rel between divisions 2 and 3. It would introduce the concept to idiot Americans and would lend some gravitas to lower-division competitions. but I don't think MLS is ready for it and NASL and USL hate each other too much to let it happen. i think the best way to do it would be for MLS to stop at 24 teams or whatever, merge with NASL/USL, and then start investing in developing a second division. once the second division is stable in the way MLS is, start promoting/relegating teams. but you are never going to second a second division to that level unless you explicitly say "this WILL be a path to the top."
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Jun 9, 2016 02:52
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Nostradingus posted:The idea of relegation would scare the poo poo out of potential owners and moron American Chelsea fans. MLS is still a niche sport and I don't think it would be good to scare off what few fairweather fans there are well, no, i think it's ridiculous to suggest any fans would care. if anything it'd attract fans, but in all honesty, i don't think fans are going to care either way. it's more that i think it's a necessity in order to produce a successful top league. and the owners won't have the ability to worry if you tell them "sorry, MLS is closed, only the second division is accepting new teams." in that case pro/rel is a good thing, it tells them they there is a defined path to MLS as long as their team is successful.
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Jun 9, 2016 21:40
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total attendance figures for the top three leagues + NWSL, through 6/6: http://www.kenn.com/the_blog/?p=8105 cincy and the god drat portland thorns are outdrawing five MLS clubs (columbus, DC, colorado, chicago, dallas)
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Jun 19, 2016 18:57
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i like a lot of what the NASL owners are saying, though i wish they wouldn't have used the word "today" wrt to pro/rel, that gives MLS an easy thing to latch onto. it's most certainly not for today.
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Jul 2, 2016 03:47
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Do over Ham posted:Lower league soccer says goodbye to Minnesota United (miserable bastards! i heard it was just going to be Minnesota FC and they'd use Loons as a nickname
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Aug 18, 2016 11:59
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). We hardly knew ye. 
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don't tell MLS clubs to be unique and clever, that's how you get real salt lake
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Aug 20, 2016 21:00
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Welcome to GBS posted:Thoughts on ideal Tier 2 + 3 situation going forward? Should USL become tier 2? it's inevitable without promotion/relegation. i mean, even if you think the idea itself is awful, that's fine, but it's not debatable that minor leagues are pretty much always a backwater poo poo show. that's not going to change while MLS funnels all the money and eyeballs into itself and takes every successful enterprise from the lower divisions.
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Sep 22, 2016 01:39
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so, like, will NASL be happy when they are are relegated to the dustbin of history?
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Nov 14, 2016 03:09
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omg, they're playing it at st johns' hilarious stadium?
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Nov 14, 2016 03:13
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fyallm posted:This was my favorite part of #MLS2STPETE We have a similar problem in Pittsburgh except the ball either hits a train or flies into the river. "Problem" is maybe not the right word, it owns.
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Dec 7, 2016 14:57
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awyeahz posted:you guys are not gonna believe what's going down in the us second division Just merge them and spin the MLS reserve clubs off into a third tier reserve league.
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Jan 7, 2017 03:37
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