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The August Soccer Thread....


SirFozzie

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Bale seems to be moving towards the door, the main question seems to be - how ridiculous will the deal turn out to be? Spurs also just brought in Soldado for £26M.  Celtic beat Elfsborg 1-0 at Parkhead last night, St. Johnstone and Motherwell play tonight - Djibril Cisse is pretty much shitting himself at the thought of facing James McFadden according to the Daily Record. Oh, and the mighty East Fife have a mystery trialist who put 2 "superb" goals past a Celtic XI the other day, good stuff!

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So, in the midst of yet another year of the MLS "All-Stars" getting getting their asses kicked mid-US Season by yet another Euro Club team playing their Pre-Season (AS Roma this time), Heir Garber announces plans to expand MLS to 24 teams by 2020.

 

Hey Garber, why not, I dunno, MAKE THE FUCKING 19 WE ALREADY HAVE ACTUALLY ATTRACTIVE TO OUR TOP PLAYERS?!?!?!

 

Whislt our best player plays for the MLS, at least over half of our prespective WC squad plays outside the US.  That's a problem.  That's what needs fixing.  Maybe not make MLS a fucking has been/never will be League?  Talent is spread thin enough as it is, adding 5 more teams isn't gonna help, but hey, Garber can't turn down $25 mil a pop in franchise fees.

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Yeah, but if you look at the best competitive teams, lot of their players play for the same domestic teams (shit, Spain is the best National Team in the world, and 3/4th's of the team play on Barcalona).  We have 2 good teams and 17 mediocre teams in MLS now.  We're gonna go to 2 good teams and 22 shit teams just because Garber wants more money?

 

Overexpansion killed the NASL for years, and is hurting the arguably hurting the NBA now.  the MLS doesn't need more teams, it needs to attract better players to make better teams to make it better to watch.  

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"It's our year " - Liverpool fans

Its amazing to me how Liverpool and the Cowboys haven't come up with some cross-marketing agreement yet, since their exactly alike, but in different sports.

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Yeah, but if you look at the best competitive teams, lot of their players play for the same domestic teams (shit, Spain is the best National Team in the world, and 3/4th's of the team play on Barcalona). 

 

The Brazilian side that beat Spain in the Confederations Cup Final had 10 players with European clubs and Fred.

 

The Dutch side from the 2010 World Cup final had, at the time, only 3 players in the Eredivisie.

 

If you're going to insist that MLS needs to be as good as top European leagues for top American players, I think we need a better argument than "Spain is really really good."

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I remember the opener in '09-'10 at Tottenham losing 2-1, looking dog shit in the process, really was the time that ended.

 

How does a PR wizard come up with a list of banned words for a club without going over said list with your sponsors? And let's loan Skrtel to Napoli too while we're at it... not like they have any money or nothing. There are some positive signs but it's pretty clear ownership still haven't come close to having a clue about football yet.

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Too early in the window to say so.

Not even the actual football department where most of my concerns lay. How many PR guys have they gone through, each making blunder after blunder? Their first guy goes overboard on the Suarez racial case. The next one, Jen Chang, loses his mind, threatens Duncan Jenkins (a perspiring journo!) in public. And they've replaced Chang with this brilliant fucker who makes a wonderful list of no-nos, only for the press to find out that Warrior uses one such phrase as part of their shitty marketing campaign. That part of the equation should not be difficult to handle.

 

Then there's Ian Ayre being given way too much responsibility with only the Standard Charter deal on his CV (and who knows how much he had to do with that). If the owners aren't going to be hands on, then they should have a vice-chairman (a la David Dein) and/or an experienced DOF to oversee the day-to-day operations, And not Damien Comolli btw. And the stadium. It goes on and on. I want to support FSG but they've made it so difficult.

 

Thank fuck for li'l Phil.

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Please, I'm a Newcastle fan, you've got nothing to complain about.

At least you get fun shit like Lambeezy.

 

Edit: Although... an attack consisting in part of Diego Costa and Suarez would provide lolz and tears. Still think Suarez leaves but Costa's such a massive troll, he's even got the mug for it.

Edited by Swayze Express
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Please, I'm a Newcastle fan, you've got nothing to complain about.

At least you get fun shit like Lambeezy.

 

 

Not sure I agree with the sentiment that a rambling, delusional alcoholic idiot being your Director of Football, and almost certainly the main man in a constructive dismissal case in November is fun as a man paying upwards of £500 a year to support the team but sure, for everyone else, I can see it. Gomis and Remy close to being completed by all accounts though, which definitely means they won't sign.

 

Football league bar the Premiership starts tomorrow and it's really been a long time coming.

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I'm not a huge football fan but I love expansion talk.I like the MLS expansion plans.I think soccer has worked in the USA (there's more soccer on TV than any other sport, along with a domestic league that outdraws a lot of NBA and NHL teams). And it's worked because soccer fans are soccer fans -- there aren't a lot of casual soccer fans, but there's enough hardcore fans to have made MLS what is it today. MLS games aren't like traditional pro sports. The crowds do a great job imitating European clubs. It has more of a college basketball vibe than it does a NBA feel. It's really a differentiated product.That differentiation is really getting people who are casual soccer fans (like me) interested in going to Union games here in Philly. I haven't been yet but my friends who have gone swear that it's ridiculously fun and a great atmosphere. The quality of play is sort of besides the point, I think. People go to games knowing the on-field product isn't like the Premiership or La Liga but chanting and the like is a lot of fun.I think the MLS next step is to get to a big enough league where they could have a viable promotion/relegation system. People who don't know how European team sports work bug out when they hear about promotion and relegation. In order to make it work, you need a really big top division plus a really solid minor league system, obviously. You need flagship teams (a version of the Arsenal/ManU/ManC/Spurs/Chelsea but obviously not as good) plus franchises that won't see their attendance figures plummet if they relegate. And the second and third division leagues also have to be strong enough to have some meaning to fans in bigger cities who got relegated.They're really getting to that point. They're essentially promoting teams already -- the Sounders, Timbers, Impact and maybe Orlando next. The NASL is expanding to some major league-type cities like Sacramento. There's also a NASL team in the Cosmos that will get more attention than the two MLS teams (Red Bulls and whatever the other NYC team is) based on name recognition alone; they'll get promoted if attendance is any good and if the owners don't run the franchise into the ground.It's super impressive to see the league develop in this manner.

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They should have interest, though.It's really far away, though. If they want to ape England, they'll need to have a lot of solid franchises.They have a lot of solid cities now but not enough to pull off promotion and regulation. The second division only has eight teams and was in the middle of a logistical nightmare a few years ago. (And has that weird split-schedule.) There's only a total of 41 pro teams in the US and Canada under the USSF right now. There's also a bunch of USL-Pro teams that are really shoestring and play in front of a few dozen people.

 

 

But it's very possible. I think it's something US soccer fans would really like to see. And since it's the only league that would have relegation/promotion, it would definitely stand out among the other pro leagues.

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You will never, ever ever ever ever ever, get a pyramid system in the US.  Never.   Not with having to pay $40M for a franchise, not for the money to run the grounds, and not with the loss of money from getting relegated.  There's only 4 teams that would allow it because their owners are familar with to the system (Chivas USA, NYRB and NYCFC, and Seattle).

 

What will happen, is that Garber will grab up any franchise in the MLS that can fork over the $40M, and the league will overexpand and dilute the talent pool even more.

 

Shit, the only reason that the MLS exists is because FIFA couldn't be bribed(enough) to overlook the fact that a World Cup Host Nation didn't have a legitimate Top Tier league.

 

The NASL is the number 2 league because they're just starting to recover from overexpansion.  Teams coming up from the NASL to MLS aren't on merit, its on the fact that they came up with the money to bribe Garber pay the franchise fee to enter the league.

 

The biggest problem with the MLS is that its run by Garber, and not by the USSF.  

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