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I'd love for a midfield of Dier & Lamela against a midfield of Wheelchair & Noble all mic'd up. The absolute comedy!Just saying though, I love watching baseball or basketball and a player is mic'd up. I don't mind it.
Never been a big fan of Rooney, but he has had a penchant to pop up now and then with the highlight moments. Admittedly, this one had large amounts to do with the shit opposition. No way he hawks down a player in England like that in 2018, the Orlando player should have chipped it to the empty goal on the first touch for either of his unmarked teammates to finish off, the long ball Rooney played was pretty much of the hit and hope variety, and the defending/keeping was shocking - total embarrassment the keeper didn't attack and claim that ball, it was in the air for ages.Fair dues Shrek
Never has a logo oozed more estrogen
Potentially the new logo for a new MLS team.
I..... like it.
Those birds should have neck tattoosAll its missing is the Cuban flag
Oh mate the sad thing is I kinda follow the foreigners there. Talisca would be a great nutrir us. Watch out for him.Before I rummage thought the entire thread... It quickly turned into another MLS thread, right?
I demand to know why the likes of Totti & Nabil Bentaleb aren't fully schooled in the week-to-week of the Chinese league and sharing the wealth by now?
Loads of Brazilians play there, in Portugal we always keep an eye for Brasil football because hundreds play in our leagues. Literally almost every team in Portugal as 5 or 6 Brazilians for squad.Just trolling... I knew you would be all along.
Not really.... I'm shocked!
There's a new kid on the MLS block.
The thing with NYRB is that they are actually a New Jersey team masquerading as a New York team.Is there a similar grudge with New York City FC being formed on Red Bull New York's turf? To be fair, though, I would rather take a cucumber in a condom right up inside my harris than support a team called Red Bull New York, even if they were there first (albeit under a less sick-inducing team name). Then again, NYCFC are owned by City Football Group, aren't they? Ah. It's fortunate that me living in New York and having to decide who to support isn't a problem that is likely to come up any time soon.
Or a DC United fan.Sounds like something a faux NYCFC fan would say
Build that wall!! #MAGAI heard this right when we got knocked out of World Cup a qualification, but some pundit said the MLS is making Central/South American players better and not Americans. I found that spot on. If you look at the best players in the league, mostly all of them come from other countries.
I think one of the challenges is the disparities within MLS between the clubs. On the one hand, you have a cluster of 6-7 teams with large budgets, and a serious intent to win. And you have 13 or so other teams which either haven't got the resources, or the intent at board level, or both.MLS is growing at a very healthy clip for a young league. Competition from other domestic sports leagues, a lack of meaningful continental competition (CONCACAF Champions League will never compare to the UEFA equivalent or even the South American cups), and the established hierarchy of prestige for leagues will keep it from being a global phenomenon (in my lifetime there's no way that MLS, the Chinese league, Mexican league, J league, etc will challenge the big Euro leagues for the top players or global popularity).
Identifying and developing talent is light years ahead of what it was in the late 90s, but that's still the greatest gap between the US and euro/south american leagues in terms of quality of play.
Single entity ownership in MLS, restrictions on the freedom of movement of players into/among/out of teams in the league + salary considerations are a big hurdle but talent development needs to continue rising. Upping the number of intelligent, qualified coaches should be objective number 1. Eliminating the financial burden for players to play competitively should be done. Changing the mentality of youth development should be next...one of the greatest problems is that even the most talented youngsters aren't put into environments that challenge them/teach them to grow into a professional player. As someone that has been fortunate enough to observe the operations of some great euro academies up close, the trial by fire that exists in those structures simply doesn't have an equivalent in the academy setups in America yet. By and large, football is still very much considered a game here and not a lifestyle.
Sadly foreign legitimacy rulesNashville hired Ian Ayre to run the club...welp, I guess that puts an early end to my third attempt to drum up legitimate personal investment in the MLS. US football remains firmly within the exploitative grasp of “useless cunts with accents”.
The desire by owners for a closed European super league pre-dates the formation of the Premier League, the idea has just never been popular enough among fans and far too complicated to set up. This is just the same bullshit by people involved in the sport to make money that has been peddled for decades.Seems like typical American arrogance to do it their own way ! Ridiculous to have a closed league.
Get the mls package and never miss a game!!!!!!! LolUntil MLS gets their shit together with games being aired on t.v. then they'll never compete with the other top sports in America
Just nitpicking but I think a decent percentage of the NBA's players come from outside the US/Canada these days. Obviously we've still got the dominant league, but it's a bit more like hockey where there are a lot of stars from other countries. Same goes for MLB. So I don't think the franchise structure/lack of relegation is the issue, it's a lack of interest. If MLS could even attract the same attention as the NHL, the smallest of the big four leagues, it would be massive relative to all the foreign soccer leagues except the top 4 or 5 european leagues.The problems that will always impact the MSL versus most other US sports is that it can't be controlled through salary caps, regulation, or by the US media ....
Football is a world sport, no one country (or even national organisation) can set all the rules ... feck in 50 years they still can't all agree on the standard pitch size ...
The reason there are no salary caps, that there are promotion and relegation, that there are independent national leagues is that players are not 'owned' by clubs the same way they are in the NFL or NBA, they are fully covered by standard employment legislation and freedom of movement ...
If the EPL places a hard salary cap on it's clubs all the best players would immediately tear up their contracts and feck off to a country that pays more, nothing the owners could do ... this scares the shite out of the US owners ... not being able to control your players as personal property (I will avoid the 's' word) means you're taking a huge risk ... buy an NFL or NBA franchise and you are guaranteed to make money ... that just doesn't apply to MLS ...
The USA is the only country in the crazy world of NFL / NBA ... but in Football (soccer) it's just a small player ... if it wants to compete, and it does, it has no choice but to follow what the rest of the football world does ... you can't have a 'single tier' league and hope to be competitive ... there's a reason no other country does this ... football needs grass roots, it needs a National Team, those successes are vital, feck England still harp on about 1966 because that victory took English football to a whole new level ... the USA needs more 'grass roots' football, it needs more International success, they have the players they just need a break ...
That all sounds a bit negative but it really isn't, previous 'failed' attempts with single tier soccer attempting to mimic other US sports have always gone a bit wrong, not failed but not quite taken off ... now that there are clear signs of 'league' structures growing beneath the MLS things will improve ... that is the future and it will happen ...
Says a supporter of a #neverred club with a giant fuck off red AIA on the shirt. Let's pause a moment for a hypocrisy check before pre-blaming the US for the commercialisation of football, yeah?In what way, it's still made up of geriatric players on a last hoorah, and second rate players. How come all of the big American investors come straight to Europe to Hoover up clubs, and don't invest in local teams? If they did then they could provide salaries that encourage Americans to look at football as a viable sporting alternative to the domestic games.
In some ways I hope the game never takes off there, if it does the corporation's will shit on the game with advertising - turning it into 4 quarters so the US can have their ad breaks, which tv companies believe you can't survive without.
America has a strong established sporting culture? Really, when did that happen?Says a supporter of a #neverred club with a giant fuck off red AIA on the shirt. Let's pause a moment for a hypocrisy check before pre-blaming the US for the commercialisation of football, yeah?
Furthermore, the "big" american investors aren't involved with any sports outside the NFL, NBA, and MLB. The Americans getting involved in European football now are, for the most part, second-rate guys who are late to the party and missed the value explosion. They're basically house flippers who get into lower level clubs hoping a few additions, a bit of facilities work here and there, will put the club in the upper echelons and allow them to cash out.
The reason they're interested in the euro clubs is plain to see. They're looking to flip an asset in the short term for a windfall. MLS clubs are massive loss leaders, and anyone getting involved in the league is playing the long game - that for $200M today you can buy something that will have an NFL-esque value ($2-3 Billion in today's dollars) 20 years from now.
The league is nothing like the NASL. The NASL went bankrupt for doing precisely what you're saying the MLS should do - overspend on players hoping they will attract the attention. We've tried putting the cart in front of the horse before...didn't really work out too well.
I love hkw MLS' problems always come back to the players being retirees and the lack of promotion/relegation. The reason the MLS underperforms the US' population is simply that few people in the US give a fuck. Most US sports fans still see the sport as something for pre-schoolers. No amount of pro/rel or appropriately aged players will fix that bias...its going to take another generation or 2 for the sport to properly bed in.
For an easy comparison, look how long it's taken for basketball to grow roots in Europe. Those leagues are mostly filled with complete shite and a mix of NBA has-been to never-weres. But it's getting better, and the pipeline of talent is less an occasional drop and now almost a steady leak of 1-2 players a year coming. Long way to go yet, though.
TL;DR - it's hard to transplant a sport to a foreign nation that already has a strong and established sporting culture.