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camoseven posted:Should I go to the DCU v Toronto game tomorrow or should I stay home and not use 4 hours of my life on it? Depends if you have any really creative booing you want to try out?
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Aug 5, 2017 02:09
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wicka posted:I'm also just pessimistic regarding TV rights money as a whole. Sports have been largely insulated from cord cutting but there's no way that continues. ESPN has already seen revenues slashed due to the shrinking number of cable subscribers, and obviously that filters down into the amount of money they can spend on the likes of MLS. Other networks have been picking up the slack but eventually they're going to have to cut back as well. MLS may get the big deal you mention but it's gonna be tight. I kind of agree with this much at least, except that that pessimism extends to the Euro leagues (and basically all other televised sports) as well. Sky is already squeezing blood from stones to pay for the PL's TV deal, and frankly that isn't sustainable either. Even less so, really. I'm not arguing that this leaves MLS in a better position for not having had that TV money in the first place - more that the whole landscape of money and sports is due for a shakeup when that bubble bursts and we'll honestly just have to see what happens. As for the article, I think the author was way too credulous regarding the league's claims that it is losing money. On one hand, he ignored revenue streams the league is known to have (though SUM is tricky to talk about because nobody knows how much it makes, only extrapolations of how much it is worth), and claimed there was going to be no growth in sponsorship revenue when the uniform sponsorship deal alone quintupled this very week. On the other hand, he underestimated salary expenses by at least half because, I think, he calculated from the salary cap rather than using the MLSPU disclosures or any other source that tabulates what has actually been spent. MLS' finances are incredibly opaque in places, often by design, and a better version of this article written by someone with less of an axe to grind could really have dug into that and taken a thorough, educated guess at what they actually are and whether the league is sustainable. Unfortunately, the article we got made so many elementary, self-undermining mistakes that it's worthless as anything but clickbait.
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Aug 5, 2017 04:42
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Shrapnig posted:Are we really going to compare Sky's four year £5.2 billion TV deal for the Premier League with MLS's eight year $700 million TV deal? In the sense that it's quite likely that neither of them will be that big next time around, as people stop paying for cable/satellite packages anymore? Yes. Otherwise, no. What exactly did you think I was trying to say in that paragraph you quoted? Because I'm not sure what part of it you are responding to here. Dallan Invictus fucked around with this message at 05:06 on Aug 5, 2017 |
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Aug 5, 2017 05:03
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Shrapnig posted:Say we cut both deals in half for the next contract. MLS folds at worst or greatly struggles at best and the Premier League will be just fine because there are 200 other countries that will pay for TV rights to the Premier League while there are two who would pay for MLS TV rights. Those 200 other countries add up to 60% of the money the domestic deal gets, and if the domestic deal weakens, a lot of them will also be cut for the same reasons. The PL earned around 60% of its reported revenue last season from those TV deals, MLS made around 15% of its reported revenue from its TV deals. Neither is going to go under from a cut in that number but they will both look different. What follows is: does the PL look even remotely the same, talent-wise, without the TV money fountain? What happens to the demand for it in other countries at that point, compared to the demand for their domestic leagues? I don't know. Neither do you. That's all I was trying to say.
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Aug 5, 2017 06:32
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paddyboat posted:There are eight (8) MLS matches in today none of which are on normal television. Aren't you in Chicago? All the games today are on local channels/RSNs, and the Fire are playing so there's at least that one. Assuming you don't have Live. National TV games on one specific day is definitely an improvement from "national games on whenever the gently caress", though.
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Aug 5, 2017 17:30
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Tigren posted:How about there being eight (8) MLS matches on and the first one doesn't start until 7PM. Spread them out over the day and I'll spend 10 hours watching our lovely league. Squish them all into the evening and I'll be lucky to watch one. You'd think a Galaxy fan of all people would appreciate not scheduling day games in the middle of August. paddyboat posted:Part of my point was that if MLS wants lots of people to watch, they should put it on national tv. Maybe they don't and just want MLS Live money, but it seems like a bad way to grow. I think that's not entirely the league's decision. If the national broadcasters only want three games a week then that's what happens. MLS Live is a backup plan, not a priority. Dallan Invictus fucked around with this message at 18:40 on Aug 5, 2017 |
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Aug 5, 2017 18:34
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binge crotching posted:I didn't realize how compact the West standings were. 4 teams tied for 2nd place, and any of them could make it as high as 1st or as low as 7th next week. The top 7 West teams all have exactly nine wins and they are separated by a total of six points. Somebody is going to miss the playoffs solely because they constantly draw or lose winnable games and I BET I KNOW WHO IT IS. 
Dallan Invictus fucked around with this message at 05:23 on Aug 7, 2017 |
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Aug 7, 2017 05:19
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Nostradingus posted:I'd laugh at this but the last time I made fun of an old guy signing, it was Schweinsteiger and it actually worked out The difference is that Schweinsteiger was Actually Good, just not good enough for United and Bayern. I'm not sure Senderos has been good anywhere. In other news, DC making Deadline Day Deals, signing a 28-year old Hungarian winger from Kaiserslautern in the 2. Bundesliga. Is he going to save their season? Probably not but he SURELY can't be nearly as bad as every other attacking player they have.
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Aug 9, 2017 20:08
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whypick1 posted:Now can the Galaxy screw themselves even more by finishing dead last the year before LAFC comes to town? I know this was a joke but what the hell I'll consider it. On one hand, Minnesota, Colorado, and DC still exist and Are Bad. On the other hand, at least one of those teams appears to be way more active in the summer transfer window (which, again, closes in like six hours) than the Galaxy are, so really who knows? edit: case in point, in the time I spent writing this reply DC have been linked to Paul Arriola (Galaxy academy product, I think, so they'd have needed to grab his rights from LAG) from Tijuana AND Russell Canouse from Hoffenheim. Even Minnesota are trying to move out deadwood and otherwise staff their surprise "ten wingers and a GK" tactic. Meanwhile the Galaxy, somehow, seem dead silent on the market. I'm pretty sure the Wooden Spoon is the one domestic honour the Galaxy have never won (according to Wiki the 2008 team tied with San Jose for last place but finished ahead on a tiebreaker), so it would at least be novel! Dallan Invictus fucked around with this message at 22:23 on Aug 9, 2017 |
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Aug 9, 2017 22:15
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Tigren posted:We signed and have already started playing Pele van Anholt and the other dos Santos brother. Just because we aren't making last minute moves doesn't mean we didn't make any moves. We're also, supposedly, still willing to make deals up until the end of the transfer in case anyone wants to send us a Bill Hamid. True, and I forgot about those two (JDS especially should have an impact, both in himself and possibly in helping GDS be a more consistent force). On the other hand you're still relying on Zardes more than any sane team should. When does Lletget come back from his injury, are you expecting to see him this year? Honestly as good as Alessandrini has been, I feel like Lletget getting injured on USMNT duty was when your season really derailed. B.B. Rodriguez posted:I hear we're taking calls about Jermaine Jones. Which ever one of your teams is going in on that is dumb as all hell.  I hope whoever was calling about him gets named and shamed.
Dallan Invictus fucked around with this message at 22:50 on Aug 9, 2017 |
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Aug 9, 2017 22:47
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Hello Towel posted:Anyone from Vancouver want to tell me about Christian Dean? Wasn't he a high draft pick? He was, in fact! 3rd overall in 2014, GA class and contract, etc, etc. quote:Why hasn't he done much in MLS? 1) Injuries. SO MANY INJURIES. 2) Tim Parker, who we drafted 13th a year later, turned out to be much better than he was and won the starting spot, and Dean hasn't really been able to develop enough (or stay healthy long enough, honestly it's been a bit of both) to be reliable enough/good enough to be 3rd or 4th on the first team CB depth chart, so we traded him to you guys for a change of scenery and grabbed Aaron Maund from RSL today instead. Hopefully he does well for you but, um, yeah. edit: speaking of changes of scenery, Ethan Finlay off to Minnesota for allocation money (to be fair, it's rather a lot of allocation money, 425k in total of various types over the next two years). I always had a soft spot for/kept tabs on him and thought he'd become a star (even though it turned out he WASN'T actually eligible for Canada) but he never quite made that last step and, well, I'll let the Crew's headline for the press release say it all: quote:TRADE | Crew SC acquires TAM & GAM in trade with Minnesota United FC Hopefully playing for his home team will inspire him a bit! Dallan Invictus fucked around with this message at 02:04 on Aug 10, 2017 |
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Aug 10, 2017 01:18
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TheBoyBlunder posted:Edit - Can anyone check if Gil has a higher rating in Football Manager than Powers? For what it's worth, he does: Powers has 115CA/121PA, Gil has 106CA/134PA. I still can't imagine why Colorado thought they could trade for a player on loan though.
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Aug 10, 2017 05:28
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So, just as the window closed last night the Whitecaps signed...an Egyptian DM named Aly Ghazal, who played in Portugal's first division until this winter (when a Chinese team bought him and then didn't play him?). I think the best thing that I can say about this transfer (especially as a TAM signing) is that it's not for Gareth Barry, as one particularly nuts Twitter rumour suggested yesterday. He also plays CB so maybe some extra depth there? I just don't think he plays a position we needed to fill (unless Laba is leaving, but I don't think he's exactly hit Big European Move form in a while.) oh well we'll see what happens
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Aug 10, 2017 17:12
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You getting these from anywhere in particular? MLS sometimes does dumb things but going with St. Louis for 25/26 seems particularly dumb when there are better options for the first two AND there are guaranteed to be two more picks made later while they've had time to maybe get their poo poo together. They were contractually obligated to allow for the Miami process to work out (plus, similar to NYCFC, the market itself is one they wanted enough to put up with all kinds of obstacles to the process rather than just walking away), STL isn't remotely that compelling.
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Aug 22, 2017 17:26
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Tigren posted:LA Galaxy have been shutout 4 games in a row for the first time ever. So what do we do to strengthen our attacking force? Welcome to the team, DOMINIC KINNEAR! To be fair, anything he can do on the training pitch to shore up your increasingly patchwork defense (didn't van Anholt blow out his knee this week?) will probably also help.
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Aug 30, 2017 01:05
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Azerban posted:NASL is dead They were always going to die, it would just have been preferable for them to do so in a way that everyone knew it was their own fault rather than that of a Shadowy USSF Conspiracy.
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Sep 5, 2017 20:49
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Crazy Ted posted:Basically the way the USSF governs the sport in this country is a farce. Are you even surprised by this genre, given the cast of characters at that level? The USSF wants stability in the lower leagues (really they want stability period), but they also don't want to be the bad guy and just pull the trigger on either of them (especially since D2 sanctioning is currently the deadman switch on the NASL and its break fees), so they'll give the lower leagues endless chances to get their poo poo together and always be trying to hammer out compromise solutions, but at the end of the day one league is on track to meet the standards (IIRC, if they shoved the MLS2 teams down to a D3 they would meet them already?) and one is barely treading water let alone making progress. Dallan Invictus fucked around with this message at 16:01 on Sep 6, 2017 |
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Sep 6, 2017 15:46
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Bio-Hazard posted:Even with the DA in place, people still won't play along because politics and money. I can imagine it only sharpens at the top. Pretty much. I agree that the USSF should just run the lower leagues more-or-less permanently if the various children can't get along, but I think the different context makes that trickier to do at pro level than at youth level, and it seems clear that isn't their ideal outcome. They want to nudge the leagues together rather than force them.
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Sep 6, 2017 19:48
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Azerban posted:Florida Man arrested on domestic violence charges Man, at this rate Orlando is just going to forfeit the rest of the season and come back to try again next year. Crazy Ted posted:You would think that after trying to do exactly this for no less than eight years with no success to show for it, they'd...you know...realize it's never going to happen unless either one cannibalizes the other or they both fail. That's the contextual issue here, I think. At least with the DA most people agree what it should DO, the political disputes are about who should control it and get the credit and skim fees off it. If the USSF ran the lower pro league permanently, could it really avoid the question of how it should interact with MLS (which seems to be the main philosophical dispute of this mini-Soccer War)? By letting market forces work themselves out and just stepping in to mediate, the federation doesn't have to take a side on the broader question (though I suppose many think they already have?). On the other hand it means they look ineffective. It honestly looks to me like market forces have like 90% decided this war anyway. If it weren't for Tom Fath's bloodymindedness IDK if the NASL would have even played this season. If I were Gulati I would try to leverage the USL into accepting any NASL teams that want to jump to the USL (even the Cosmos and Miami) - it's a lower-effort road to the same ending. I have no idea why D2 vs. D3 sanctioning matters in the slightest without pro/rel, but it appears to matter to USL officers, so the fed can use it as a stick. quote:And then the USSF would be right back where it was in 2000-2005, when the USL acted like yearly "franchise fees" were a personal ATM for the senior officers and it started the chain of events that led us to where we are now. You would know better than me how many of the people involved there are still around, but one hopes they've learned their lesson.
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Sep 6, 2017 20:57
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all-Rush mixtape posted:If the USSF has taught us anything, it's that laissez-faire soccernomics don't work. Ironically correct is the best kind of correct.
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Sep 6, 2017 21:24
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Vancouver made that win over RSL way harder than it needed to be, but it really looks like the team is starting to click in its weird inexplicable way. With the game(s) in hand I'm even very carefully starting to think they could win the conference, which would be hilarious for multiple reasons. The run in is going to be tricky though. COL and MNU at home have "trap game" written all over them, and literally every other game is against a playoff contender, including 2 away Cascadia games. Plus the West is such a knife fight this year that the only certainty is blood. Hopefully Atlanta, Columbus, and the Galaxy (lol) can do the business today.
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Sep 10, 2017 17:12
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Yeah, um, individual lovely owners/lovely FOs will always be with us whatever the structure of the league (barring the revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat, anyway). Hell, sometimes it is the SAME lovely owners. That said I'd like to reiterate: Dallan Invictus posted:Counterpoint: the expansion teams are by and large the ones that give a poo poo. Keep expanding until we have enough Actually Ambitious teams to contract DC and maybe, just maybe, you can finally be happy. Fancy, how's that compare to the supporters' section at RFK though (aside from the ST requirement anyway)?
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Sep 16, 2017 02:08
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wicka posted:At least some structures innately punish poorly-run teams instead of making it impossible to fail. Those structures don't innately punish poorly run teams, they punish poorly financed teams. Kroenke is just as poo poo an owner for Arsenal as he is for the Rapids, but Arsenal being relegated is about as likely as MLS adopting pro/rel (arguably it is even less likely), because while there may be seventeen teams in the PL that are better run or have more ambitious owners than Arsenal, there are absolutely not seventeen teams that are richer than they are and can afford to pay better players than they can, and this is what actually matters in the structures you are referring to. Dallan Invictus fucked around with this message at 20:39 on Sep 18, 2017 |
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Sep 18, 2017 20:02
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Your Boy Fancy posted:This may come as a shock to some, but it's nice to have hobbies that don't involve politics and current events, and this is mine This is literally the logic Team MAGA uses to complain about Colin Kaepernick, you realise? Except that this kid is literally doing even less that's objectionable than Kaepernick is.
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Sep 23, 2017 01:49
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joshtothemaxx posted:Except Kaep doesn't do anything objectionable. I swear I was thinking of adding "(not that Barron's doing anything laudable either)" but left it out because I didn't expect anyone to be THAT picky. No I don't think Kaepernick is doing anything reasonably objectionable either, Christ. There are people who object to it because "this is my safe sports hobby space and how dare he bring politics into it". These people are wrong. But at least Kaep is actually making a political statement for people to react to in accordance with their various ideologies. My point was that Barron isn't even doing that, unless you count "existing as the President's son and presumably wanting to play soccer". But yeah, agreed, this topic is going nowhere useful so I'll drop it.  I hope Olsen is fired and Thohir/Levien sell anyway, you guys deserve better.
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Sep 23, 2017 02:30
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Your Boy Fancy posted:I love him to bits as a human being. And I wish he had a different job. All five of the coaches that got canned this year (a new record even!) have kind of fit that same mold, so Olsen and Curtin should probably be looking over their shoulders. "Beloved former player/club stalwart" seems to not be enough anymore for most of the league if you aren't a good coach too, which honestly feels like a good sign to me.
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Sep 23, 2017 16:29
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I dunno, I think it would be lamer to only qualify by getting gifted 2 points/a team you're chasing getting docked a point via some ticky-tack poo poo like that (then again I wasn't a fan of Celtic in 2014, maybe they were all like "didn't care, made the Champions League"?). Dude played for the last five minutes of a 0-0 draw, it wasn't even the most consequential officiating screwup in that game. Rule of law is important but so is a sense of context. A salary cap penalty sounds about right to me.
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Oct 6, 2017 21:58
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R. Mute posted:Maybe looking at your league as a business venture first is the problem. Professional sport has to be considered that way almost by definition. If you can't afford to keep the teams going there is no league and that has historically been kind of difficult in this neck of the woods, so those of us who've been fans of domestic soccer for a while kind of develop this lens. Gigi Galli posted:What do you guys think will happen now that the us won't be in the World Cup? There must be a correlation between mls attendance and profits and the USA being in the tournament right? I feel like more people give a poo poo in World Cup years, or immediately after. Honestly you'd think there was a correlation there has generally never been a World Cup bump for MLS in recent memory. Maybe a general bump in interest in the sport but even that's iffy. Everyone expects an Olympics bump for like track and field and that never happens either. Americans like big events where they can cheer and wave the flag. Any translation from that to ongoing interest in the underlying sport has historically been so small as to be incidental. tl;dr arguably it is a missed opportunity but I feel more for the players and fans than for the suits, the suits will be fine. quote:The league is already in a really stretched position with the 200000 teams it wants to create; I would hope that some of this wild expansion stops in light of what just happened. The value of the league seems like it's ready to drop; I have never been a huge fan of this take mostly because the expansion teams are the ones that are doing well in the stands and boardrooms and (to a certain extent) on the field. It's the legacy teams that mostly seem stretched (as you put it), which may be the perspective you're approaching things from as a Revs fan. Honestly the league will be fine business-wise if they keep picking owners that know what they're doing and cities that actually want a team and put butts in the seats, and all of that is for the moment trending up. TV less quickly but personally I always viewed that as a long term project, everyone you're competing with has had like decades worth of head start. quote:I feel like the league as a whole and the national team are too tied up in each other's business. This part, OTOH, may actually be true, which is deeply ironic to me because the second-biggest reason that the US is out tonight is because of MLS players playing well for teams that aren't the US. You guys used to dream about moving to a more competitive confederation and then it turned out you accidentally created one, and then both Klinsmann and Arena, along with most of your players, were too slow to realise this and it cost them. Dallan Invictus fucked around with this message at 04:41 on Oct 11, 2017 |
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Oct 11, 2017 04:33
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Niwrad posted:Leagues can't be successful these days without raking in broadcast fees. As long as no one watches them on TV, they're minor league baseball. And at some point you're going to run out of suckers willing to pay $150 million for teams that generate minor league baseball revenues. That's when the ponzi scheme comes to an end. Reminder that the most popular and orthodox (well, barring occasional financial shenanigans for teams to avoid relegation) soccer league in the US draws NHL-level TV audiences (and the NHL endlessly wrings its hands over its US TV ratings and relies on Rogers massively overpaying for broadcast in Canada). I've never understood how anyone thinks this is a structure problem and not an "Americans largely prefer other sports" problem. The US will have a good league when the broader class of Americans actually like the sport enough to sustain the professional and development infrastructures it needs in more than the twenty-odd MLS cities and a few standouts in the lower leagues, regardless of how harshly that future professional infrastructure decides to punish the Galaxy for having a bad year. The problem with encouraging economic competition in the US soccer landscape, leaving entirely aside the question of cultural preferences for parity is - how much demand even currently exists to compete over? Making more Americans like the sport locally requires, among other things, actually keeping the goddamn lights on and maintaining a certain level of visibility until it becomes part of the landscape. The Soccer Wars last century and then the NASL failing both set the sport back decades here, even if you don't blame it for FIFA pushing a professional league on a country that barely wanted one at the time just because the USSF wanted to host the Cup, which then of course turned out to be MLS. In that respect one could say missing the WC is a problem for visibility, but honestly we have no way of telling, the last time you missed the WC was the last time Canada loving qualified so my sympathy is really rather limited here - up here the sport itself is still visible and everyone's just gotten used to repping wherever their family's from when the tournament comes around, and even that's contributed to it growing, and to kids sticking with it and actually thinking they can make a living pursuing it (thanks in no small part to MLS existing and surviving, just like there will be thanks due for the CPL if it sticks, because frankly not everyone will ever be good enough to play in Europe even once youth teams can actually afford BOTH to pay decent coaches AND not price themselves out of reach for everyone but gentrifiers). And no shortage of growing pains. You get used to them. Or maybe I just have PTSD. Dallan Invictus fucked around with this message at 05:24 on Oct 11, 2017 |
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Oct 11, 2017 05:16
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XyrlocShammypants posted:Nirwad he was, in a convoluted manner, speaking about international soccer leagues (the Premiere League) and how even that is probably lower than NHL viewership. Or maybe he meant MLS? I don't know, I am pretty sure when you combine canadian and US viewership MLS is smoked by NHL so it wouldn't make sense I was referring to Liga MX, which draws 1-1.5million views a week in the US, similar to the NHL. The Premier League aside from Big Six derbies draws like half the NHL's audience. My point has forever and always been that structure only takes you so far if the underlying demand isn't there. And it isn't, here, or else the leagues that are "doing things right" would actually be doing well enough that a domestic league that could take that audience could sustain the spending that would be required to take that audience. You can only spend money you're not making on competing with other clubs for "good players" for so long, that's one reason why the NASL blew up in the first place, and it's also why sugar daddies in the lower leagues in Europe are a rotating cast of charlatans leaving chaos and ruin in their wake. Except in Europe there's enough of a fanbase to quickly resurrect those local clubs when the investors they chase in the Red Queen's Race to compete fiercely for talent and get promoted instead get tired of losing money and gently caress off. Does that happen with such regularity here? God I said I would avoid the soccer Internet for a while after the US went down in flames but CLEARLY I COULDN'T STOP MYSELF.
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Oct 11, 2017 05:58
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The reason I'm so vocally in favour of expansion is specifically because the expansion teams are actually trying whereas DC and the Revs and plenty of the other 96 teams are, well, special. If MLS is going to exist, you change it through its owners. So bring on more Blanks and fewer Krafts and keep showing what soccer in America CAN be, and meanwhile DC or NE and all the other sick old men can exist until someone with money realises they can do it better and buys them out like the league did to the Vergaras. Bad soccer is better than even worse soccer, and absolutely better than no soccer, and nobody should pretend that the answer to "adapt or die" is always going to be "adapt". Sometimes you die and nobody replaces you for fifteen years. This has happened before and it can again. I have no particular desire to relegate them into oblivion because I don't think their hypothetical replacements would be any better on the quality standpoint, let alone on the financial stability point. There aren't quite enough people that are actually willing to spend nine figures ANYWHERE in soccer in America, whether that's investing in shared infrastructure through franchise fees or doing poo poo relatively on their own, that I think any of you are being reasonable to be picky. Where is Silva's equivalent of the WHL or ABA? Where are all these people chomping at the bit to spend large amounts of money on soccer in America but just hate the idea of doing so in MLS? If quality is the reason nobody should watch, well, you need money to get quality, and unlike in the 1950s, these days you're competing for that money with much better foreign product. How do you win that competition with Organic Local Growth in deeply hostile soil? But hey, you guys do you. I think you're wrong but this isn't my ball (but if TFC parachutes into the CPL and wins thirty straight titles after you guys storm New York and put Garber's head on a pike then I will resent you fucks forever). Dallan Invictus fucked around with this message at 06:33 on Oct 11, 2017 |
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Oct 11, 2017 06:25
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XyrlocShammypants posted:Real talk, there are maybe only a few teams in this league with players that could/should brace a Jersey from the team store. Did autocorrect screw you here with "brace"? I've read this sentence like twenty times and I can only half-figure out what you're trying to say. all-Rush mixtape posted:I've use the term 'laissez-faire soccernomics' to describe the lack of uniformity in American soccer before, as the people who should be regulating leagues are afraid of getting sued by people with more money than them. The good news is there is an election coming up for USSF President, and there are actual challengers this time! Sunil Gulati's Time may be up in February if he doesn't bring change. I agree that that is the good news and that laissez-fair soccernomics is Not The Answer. The bad news is that I genuinely expect (more out of professional instinct plus a lot of thinking about the ChampionsWorld lawsuit's result, really: IAAL but I am not an expert in antitrust or sports law in general) that a more muscular USSF might well lose an antitrust suit and, unlike baseball or to a lesser extent the NFL, they don't have that societal entrenchment to depend on to entice the courts to play nice for the love of the game. Dallan Invictus fucked around with this message at 07:45 on Oct 11, 2017 |
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Oct 11, 2017 07:40
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Dirk Pitt posted:You’d be wrong here. He wasn’t perfect but he had a plan that was cut way short. Lord knows I disagree with like 90% of every wicka post but he's right about that. (but the draft is basically MLS' appendix, it's not important or septic enough to be killing the league but at least it gets eyes on your occasional Jack Harrison types that fell through various cracks here or elsewhere). If Klinsmann wanted time to implement His Plan, he should have stuck to being a technical director (where he did have good ideas, and which is usually a long-view role) and not tried to coach. And Gulati should have seen past the Big Euro Name and actually looked into who was behind what limited success Klinsmann found as a manager in Germany, not to mention picking someone else as the desperation hire after Klinsmann ran out of time. And Arena should have stayed in LA instead of thinking he could ride to the national team's rescue (though honestly who knows if he could have saved the Galaxy this season), or at the very least rotated his squad for the last game. Hell, if he had done THAT, the rest of your squad could almost certainly at least have tied loving Trinidad and this thread wouldn't be on fire. Yesterday had many fathers and it came down to inches in the end. Perhaps it shouldn't have ever been in that situation. But again I point to the fact that frankly, the bottom half of the hex is better than it used to be and better than you all imagine it to be (take it from a fan of one of the teams they beat to get here). This shouldn't be a cakewalk for you anymore. I can't believe anyone is simultaneously arguing that US soccer culture should Punish Failure More Harshly but also fiercely defending the head coach that abjectly lost the first two games of the Hex after failing miserably at the 2015 Gold Cup (something which could have gotten him fired on his own in a country that cared about the continental tournament).
Dallan Invictus fucked around with this message at 15:32 on Oct 11, 2017 |
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Oct 11, 2017 15:16
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Babby Thatcher posted:The USA will never be good until they stop treating youth football as a revenue stream, a hobby/status symbol almost exclusively for upper-middle class kids. You can't produce large numbers of international quality players without a grassroots game, and it's only the sheer size of the country's population that has kept them generally competitive for 20 years. Pretty much all of this (even the lmaos, but quietly and passive-aggressively as is the song of my people). I am more agnostic about MLS' structure (I mostly see it as a reaction to the level of demand for pro soccer in the US in the last 20-30 years, and a means to get rich people to invest large amounts of money in the sport despite that weak demand by clamping down on their downside risk) but it's not the problem, the domestic talent pool is the problem. If MLS actually faced competition for more domestic talent because the academies, youth teams and even colleges produced more players worth poaching, a lot of its roster restrictions would be untenable because they couldn't reliably suppress salaries anymore, so those of you who hate them might well be happy in the end. (the domestic quota might well go as a consequence but it is tangential to the problem and frankly I don't mind it existing nor that the CPL will have one). Some of this is already happening but it needs to happen in more places. More professional teams spending on dev can make that happen (which is another key reason I favour expansion, considering that I don't believe MLSHQ's claims of losing money and I accordingly don't believe the Ponzi scheme claims), but what the USSF can do directly is, say, put some of that surplus into making coaching training and youth teams less expensive through various means (and for gently caress's sake, allow the payment of solidarity fees at least and/or training compensation - and it's not MLS opposing that, it's the USSF and the player's union in the latter case. MLS handles solidarity fees claims just fine for the Canadian teams). Dallan Invictus fucked around with this message at 15:57 on Oct 11, 2017 |
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Oct 11, 2017 15:52
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Shrapnig posted:The biggest detriment to US Soccer in my opinion is the high school and college game. The emphasis on technique and tactics stagnates and the quality of play drops off a cliff. NCAA soccer's level of play is shockingly bad and if I were talking to a kid who was high school age and had the ability to be a pro soccer player I'd tell him to skip the NCAA entirely and go on trials at European clubs and get into their setups. I agree with this but bewbies is right that "just go to Europe" cannot be a large-scale answer. Honestly it is fixable though (at least in high school - the NCAA is a huge obstacle but on the other hand they barely care about soccer so maybe they can be pushed to behave or at least nudged out of the picture). There's nothing inherent to high schools that means they can train decent football or basketball players but not soccer players, it's about the coaches that are available to one sport vs. the other. Part of that is about the relative status of the sports in America but there are still levers here for the federation. Subsidise good coaching training, make it more accessible and cheaper. Costs for secondary and post-secondary schools will go down, costs for youth teams will go down, the former at least will pass it on to the kids even if the latter don't, and either way you get more kids in more places seeing good coaching. I don't think the demand is currently there for as many professional teams as it would take to do this all on their own all across the country, but USSF can do out of necessity some of what the NFL and NBA do out of laziness.
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Oct 11, 2017 16:39
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Dirk Pitt posted:I think there are rules that allow American players to make more than others in MLS? This is not quite correct. Your Michael Bradley or Jozy Altidore types that are being lured over from Europe to their DOOOOOOOOM are just like any other Designated Player contract - their impact against the salary cap is fixed and their actual pay is an unrelated number that is whatever the team owner wants to pay them and can afford to, so there's no limit on what they can earn regardless of nationality. This is why Kaka, not an American, was the highest-paid player in MLS. (I say was because, in what is either unfortunate timing or a deliberate news dump, he announced today that he won't be returning for 2018.) What IS correct is that the domestic player quota (among other things) means that Americans are worth more to MLS teams than they are to foreign teams, much like the "English player tax".
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Oct 11, 2017 22:08
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XyrlocShammypants posted:So no Kaka and no Pirlo in MLS next year. Looking pretty thin on anyone worth getting a jersey for. Not many aging thirty something players left to dominate mls backlines nowadays I'd think you would be happy about this but I should probably know better. Our billionaires are learning? Villa and Schweinsteiger will basically be the only ones left I think: Giovinco will be 30 eventually but he's not the same sort of signing exactly, he was a twentysomething Juventus fringe player brought over to clown on MLS backlines (and did so so successfully that he managed to make Toronto fall in love with him and even make Jozy look good.) Dallan Invictus fucked around with this message at 01:06 on Oct 12, 2017 |
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Oct 12, 2017 00:54
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Well, if NYCFC actually ever get Willets Point they might as well get used to the commute.
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Oct 12, 2017 21:42
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Aww, it's cute that he thinks he has leverage here? (also why the hell does he think he'd do better in Austin, didn't they lose their USL team to Orlando five years ago and not improve the situation much at all since then?) edit: ^^^^Also given this, lol what is he even asking for? The original teams are in a panoply of iffy situations compared to the post-Toronto expansion teams but Columbus would have been the last of them I expected to snap first, they've seemed solidly middling in their fortunes. Dallan Invictus fucked around with this message at 05:11 on Oct 17, 2017 |
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Oct 17, 2017 05:06
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| # ¿ May 14, 2024 21:36 |
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sportsgenius86 posted:The stadium is admittedly in a really iffy part of town but it’s not dangerous to go to games either. Downtown, there’s really no place to put it and any place that might exist is going to be as far away as it is now in an equally lovely part of town. Thanks for the local context. That entire wave of stadiums located "basically anywhere near the cities we're based in that will take us" that were the initial SSS brain-wave before BMO Field has clearly backfired all over the place, but Columbus is nowhere near the worst off in that regard (see: Chicago, Dallas, arguably LAG) and I can't imagine how anyone will believe he isn't entirely to blame here whatever groundwork he laid. I can't imagine this is the kind of publicity the league wanted right before the playoffs so I am curious how they'll spin matters in the morning and how this'll develop in the next few days. If he genuinely wants out of town I wonder if he wants to sell instead? Dallan Invictus fucked around with this message at 05:38 on Oct 17, 2017 |
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Oct 17, 2017 05:33
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