"The point is to make the league competitive against other leagues"
That will never happen.
The MLS will never be at the level of the top European leagues.


Never is SUCH a long time. Almost a full century. I can't go that far.

@ghug

No, it's about the PLAYERS, not the teams, given this thread is about the US National Team. Improving the MLS should help there, but only if you do it in ways to strengthen players. Relegation battles bring pressure - something teams at the lower end of a league table really don't experience without it - and that's great preparation for international tournaments.

No one in America really cares. I even asked some soccer players, they don’t care.

The world may take this as a victory but if they knew Americans they would know we don’t care.

Ignorant zach proves zach is ignorant.

Even if I agreed with you, HR, no professional sports team will ever do anything for the players unless it brings in viewership and money.

You're arguing that subjecting the players to a more competitive environment is essential. That's debatable in itself, but whatever. I responded that the relegation-free American system creates a more competitive environment. You turned around and said that it doesn't matter because the teams are still worse, which is true, but irrelevant to the argument at hand, which is the competitive environment within the league.

Making the MLS look more like a European league in structure and rules wouldn't do shit for it. Putting better players in it would.

@Jeff Kuta
Why? MLS makes pennies compared to the Big 4, their ratings have been mediocre since a peak in 2012. The ratings are high for the World Cup and thats the only time Americans care about soccer.

Besides Soccer is just so boring to watch, just people kicking the ball back and forth for 90 minutes. Hockey and Football, there are hard hits and constant action, Basketball is constant action and jaw droppping hoops. Its comparable to baseball in excitement, but Baseball has been popular in America for 100 years. I just don’t want watch a game where if one player lightly grazes another and they drop to the ground and start crying hoping for a red card.

They are trying to make this a big deal, it isn’t. Ask your friends, they probably don’t care.

Baseball is not exciting. Golf is not exciting. If people can watch baseball and golf the way they do, people can handle soccer.

Zach, you're ignorant as hell about the intricacies of a soccer game, and if you think flopping isn't worse in, say, basketball, which you apparently like, then you should actually try watching a soccer game instead of thinking you know things.

Why would I watch a game of some people kicking around a ball and scoring like 3 times vs Tom Brady lighting it up, or Patrick Kane taking some awesome shots, or Lebron James destroying the net, or even Aaron Judge hitting it out into the Bronx?

I don’t actually like watching basketball, but I know its popular and a lot of my friends watch it.

I watched the 2015 Womens World Cup final, they don’t cry and Team USA destroyed Japan. I rather enjoyed that. I watched some of 2014 World Cup final and was bored out of my mind. I would rather watch baseball, if you know how to watch baseball its not that boring. 90 minutes of nothing compared to other sports.

I think the fact that youll watch 8000 commercials in football as opposed to very little stoppages of game in soccer has always been a solid argument

@Zach

are you kidding me? football is basically a bunch of steroid junkie guys smashing their heads together getting brain damage, and taking a 35 second break for every 10 seconds of running.

"if you know how to watch baseball it's not that boring"

do you mean drunk? because that's the only way most people can make it through a baseball game. i mean jesus, it's like organized standing, but with even more steroids than football.

Basketball is the one sport i'll agree with you is fun to watch, but the difference between it and soccer is, Basketball you need to keep your momentum up the entire game. it's constant accrual of points, whereas soccer is much more decisive and difficult to score goals in. when someone scores a specific goal, there's history behind it. in basketball, there's rarely ever ONE shot you can pick out and say "that changed the game." sometimes those shifts occur, and sometimes you get dramatic late winners, but really everything is offset by whether or not (and by what margin) 80+ points are being scored earlier on

oh never mind you DONT like Basketball? ok...

I didn't say baseball is boring. I said it isn't exciting. If you haven't noted it lately, you might try looking at my username. You could reasonably infer that I rather like baseball. I said that it isn't exciting, which seemed to be your metric for enjoying a sport, but it is becoming clearer that you value the whole "toughness" thing, which explains why you like sports where players' brains are visibly traumatized on scans and chronic pain lingers until death but don't like sports where players can actually live regular lives after they retire at age 33 having hopefully scored a decent contract that can, if they're smart with it, keep them eating at the steak bar for the rest of their lives. That is ignorant. You don't actually care about the sports themselves; you just care about the perception of the sport and whether or not it meets your macho man criteria.

Baseball is roughly like watching paint dry waiting for something to happen. "Football has something like 30 minutes of actual play over four hours and is mostly watching fat guys bash into each other (Sumo is more interesting frankly). Basketball is better, but also involves action for less than half the minute of the game (40 mins over two plus hours.

Soccer meanwhile has nonstop action, tactics and far more grace and subtlety than all three of the other put together. Goals are hard because you have to put a lot of planning and instant work into scoring. Consequently, a lot of Americans are more interested in soccer than other sports. Sure not as many as "football" but plenty.

I'm giving Ogion an unusually large number of up votes today...

@Zach: It is true that MLS doesn't make as much money as the other sports, but it is the fastest growing of them all.

You may live in an area where traditional American professional sports leagues are deeply ingrained in the culture. And by your condescending tone against soccer, you don't seem too open minded about it.

However, there is a HUGE wave a soccer that keeps growing and growing in the United States. Heck, my ultra-conservative cousin in Ohio officiates high school soccer now and he didn't play either!

Missing the World Cup is a pretty huge setback. US Soccer will have massive budget problems. Gulati needs to pay the price.

http://money.cnn.com/2017/03/03/news/mls-growth-don-garber/index.html

I am a soccer fan, perhaps not as much as some here, but to say soccer is non stop action is ridiculous. The clock not stopping is not the same as non stop action.

The defenders passing the ball back and forth and finally back to the keeper for him to kick the ball 70 yards down the field is non stop action.

Anyone who finds baseball boring doesn't understand the mental intricacies of the game and the chess match that happens between pitcher and hitter on every pitch.

The same with the strategy of football and the 11 on 11 human chess match that is every ball with pre snap motion used as recon of the opponents defense and trying to create confusion and mismatches.

Anyone who says any sport is boring just doesn't understand the intricacies and strategies of the game.

That depends on your definition of "non-stop action." Teams that play long-ball usually fail unless they have a player named Jamie Vardy.

Well, then, the same is true of soccer. Actually, I understand a lot of the intricacies of baseball. I still find it not worth the time. But that's another story. Football I know less well.

But if you are watching the critical off the ball movement you'll understand why holding the ball in the back is sometime the good way to go. But you have to be able to see patterns as they open and close within fractions of a second. This is what the call having a football brain.

@Jeff agreed that soccer is growing big time. You won't find a more diehard pro football fanbase than the Chiefs and some people last WC were calling KC the soccer hotspot of the country with the interest shown. Our MLS side has a very strong following and sell out most matches. They have won two MLS Cups and four US Open Cups and now the US Soccer National Team Training Center is being built here.

"But if you are watching the critical off the ball movement "

A lot of which occurs off camera when watching on TV.

I think soccer should get rid of the offside rule..help to get more goals scored. Field hockey is a similar game, it had an offside rule but got rid of that, much better game without it.

MM, this is like those typical suggestions like "make the goals bigger" etc. that very much misses the point. IN fact, the offside rule has been part of the game for well over 100 years for a simple reason that it's critical for avoiding "goal hanging" which is milling around the goal hoping to poach. As it stands, you have to actually beat a defender, which makes for a much better game.

@KB, yes, some off teh ball movement happens off camera if the camera work is crappy. But then, a lot of what's going on in baseball happens off camera also. Doesn't detract from the value of it. That's getting increasingly weak.

and yes, Kansas City rocks for soccer, as does St. Louis. It has for 100 years or so. (interesting that the US Open Cup is the oldest competition in the US, and is second only to the FA cup as a soccer competition.)

"But then, a lot of what's going on in baseball happens off camera also"

Not the main action of the hitter/pitcher match up.

The main camera shot is facing right at home plate.

Plus with runners on base you can have split screen action.

I'm not sure I've ever seen split screen in soccer.

Baseball is just boring. There is more thought behind one play of American football than an inning of baseball. It just seems "intellectual" because it is so slow the commentators have nothing to do but over analyze every detail.

Suggesting that a fundamental rule of soccer changes is absurd. Most of the world loves the sport. It is just America that doesn't.

"Baseball is just boring. There is more thought behind one play of American football than an inning of baseball. It just seems "intellectual" because it is so slow the commentators have nothing to do but over analyze every detail."

I would say you don't understand the game at all.

It is quite a bit more than throw the ball, hit the ball.

I agree that baseball is boring. It's a highly skilled game, but there's a lot of time spent with no "action." When there is action though, it can be quite interesting, especially with multiple players on base.

Part of the reason it is boring is because very few players are involved with any pitch or hit. Makes the action easier to follow though.