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Thread: 2013 MLS Thread

  1. #136
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    Re: 2013 MLS Thread

    Quote Originally Posted by Yachtzee View Post
    Looks like Orlando just took the lead in the race for the next MLS team.

    http://www.kansascity.com/2013/10/22...dium-deal.html
    Everything I've read indicates that the next 3 MLS teams in are going to be Orlando, Miami and Atlanta. I expect the next franchise after that will also be in the SE to help expand MLS's footprint in that region.

    Also, it's beyond frustrating to know that there will likely never be a team to support in Cincinnati.
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  3. #137
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    Re: 2013 MLS Thread

    Quote Originally Posted by Yachtzee View Post
    Looks like Orlando just took the lead in the race for the next MLS team.

    http://www.kansascity.com/2013/10/22...dium-deal.html
    Pretty much a done deal. Should be joining with NYC in 2015.

    They had like 20k show up for a NASL championship game and have a great supporters group. Should be a very solid addition to MLS. And they might get Kaka...so there's that.

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  5. #138
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    Re: 2013 MLS Thread

    Quote Originally Posted by BuckeyeRed27 View Post
    Pretty much a done deal. Should be joining with NYC in 2015.

    They had like 20k show up for a NASL championship game and have a great supporters group. Should be a very solid addition to MLS. And they might get Kaka...so there's that.
    Plus, no major in-market competition other than the Magic. Should be a great fit w/ MLS.
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  6. #139
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    Re: 2013 MLS Thread

    Quote Originally Posted by Caveat Emperor View Post
    Everything I've read indicates that the next 3 MLS teams in are going to be Orlando, Miami and Atlanta. I expect the next franchise after that will also be in the SE to help expand MLS's footprint in that region.

    Also, it's beyond frustrating to know that there will likely never be a team to support in Cincinnati.
    How far is Columbus Crew Stadium from Cincinnati? As much as it would be cool to have a team close to me to support in the Cleveland-Akron area, I can get all the Crew games on TV. I'm only about 2 hrs northeast and know some season ticket holders willing to make the trip down on the weekends. I'll probably pick up a ticket pack when my kids are older. A 2 hr drive on 4 or 5 Saturdays a summer doesn't seem too bad to see some live MLS soccer.

    I also follow the University of Akron Zips, who manage to draw 3000+ for college soccer.
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    Re: 2013 MLS Thread

    Quote Originally Posted by BuckeyeRed27 View Post
    Pretty much a done deal. Should be joining with NYC in 2015.

    They had like 20k show up for a NASL championship game and have a great supporters group. Should be a very solid addition to MLS. And they might get Kaka...so there's that.
    sharp

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    Re: 2013 MLS Thread

    Quote Originally Posted by Yachtzee View Post
    How far is Columbus Crew Stadium from Cincinnati? As much as it would be cool to have a team close to me to support in the Cleveland-Akron area, I can get all the Crew games on TV. I'm only about 2 hrs northeast and know some season ticket holders willing to make the trip down on the weekends. I'll probably pick up a ticket pack when my kids are older. A 2 hr drive on 4 or 5 Saturdays a summer doesn't seem too bad to see some live MLS soccer.

    I also follow the University of Akron Zips, who manage to draw 3000+ for college soccer.
    Crew Stadium is probably a 1:40-2:00 drive, depending on whether or not you hit traffic going through downtown Columbus on your way north to the stadium. I've been to matches before (and, frequently, can get cheap or free tickets via a friend of a friend who works for the club), and I always enjoy watching professional soccer.

    It's one of those silly sports things -- they aren't "my team." They don't have my city on the front of the jersey, they don't play in my home town. Maybe it'd be easier if I had some connection to Columbus, but I've never been to Columbus for longer than a day or two (and, truth be told, kinda dislike most of the people I've met from there).
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    Re: 2013 MLS Thread

    Quote Originally Posted by Caveat Emperor View Post
    Crew Stadium is probably a 1:40-2:00 drive, depending on whether or not you hit traffic going through downtown Columbus on your way north to the stadium. I've been to matches before (and, frequently, can get cheap or free tickets via a friend of a friend who works for the club), and I always enjoy watching professional soccer.

    It's one of those silly sports things -- they aren't "my team." They don't have my city on the front of the jersey, they don't play in my home town. Maybe it'd be easier if I had some connection to Columbus, but I've never been to Columbus for longer than a day or two (and, truth be told, kinda dislike most of the people I've met from there).
    I suppose it's different for me, having lived most of my life as a Reds/Bengals fan in Northeast Ohio. Aside from baseball and football, I've just followed the Ohio teams.

    Ideally, Cincinnati or Cleveland could pick up a team in the NASL or USL-Pro and develop a relationship with the Crew, so that if the Crew wanted to send some players out on loan, they'd have somewhere in state to do so. Plus, you'd have the possibility of the teams going head to head in US Open Cup play.
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    Re: 2013 MLS Thread

    It's pretty crazy that it took the Red Bulls 18 years to win any type of trophy. I'm sure they will lose in the first round to Montreal on an Henry hand ball in the box.

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    Re: 2013 MLS Thread

    It's official. Orlando City is the 21st team.

    http://www.mlssoccer.com/news/articl...set-2015-debut
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    Re: 2013 MLS Thread

    Quote Originally Posted by Yachtzee View Post
    It's official. Orlando City is the 21st team.
    I like the way Orlando has gone about building an identity and a fan base. It's following the Portland/Seattle/Montreal model. I hope San Antonio gets serious consideration as well. If they're going to go to 24 teams (and I'd prefer they didn't because it will water down the product), I'm in favor of prioritizing good organizations.
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    Re: 2013 MLS Thread

    Quote Originally Posted by M2 View Post
    I like the way Orlando has gone about building an identity and a fan base. It's following the Portland/Seattle/Montreal model. I hope San Antonio gets serious consideration as well. If they're going to go to 24 teams (and I'd prefer they didn't because it will water down the product), I'm in favor of prioritizing good organizations.
    I agree that Orlando's model was well-thought out and allows them to hit the ground running, but disagree with you on expansion.

    Assuming that Miami is an inevitable destination for the 22nd expansion team, 14 of the top 30 US MSAs will still have no MLS presence -- Atlanta, Phoenix, Detroit, Minneapolis/St.Paul, Tampa/St.Pete, St. Louis, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Charlotte, San Antonio, Cincinnati, Cleveland.

    You can't grow the game as a national sport, long-term, leaving so many places (and, by extension, so many people) without a "home" club to support at the first tier. It'll also continue to cripple the potential growth of television dollars and sponsorship deals when so many millions of TV households live places where the league is irrelevant.
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    Re: 2013 MLS Thread

    Quote Originally Posted by Caveat Emperor View Post
    Assuming that Miami is an inevitable destination for the 22nd expansion team, 14 of the top 30 US MSAs will still have no MLS presence -- Atlanta, Phoenix, Detroit, Minneapolis/St.Paul, Tampa/St.Pete, St. Louis, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Charlotte, San Antonio, Cincinnati, Cleveland.

    You can't grow the game as a national sport, long-term, leaving so many places (and, by extension, so many people) without a "home" club to support at the first tier. It'll also continue to cripple the potential growth of television dollars and sponsorship deals when so many millions of TV households live places where the league is irrelevant.
    You also can't grow it by putting a third-tier product out on the field. Fans of the sport can watch European leagues, South American leagues and the Mexican league. They're going to recognize if MLS is fielding a bunch of wannabes. The league has done a decent job of adding international players to prevent an overall talent decline during the recent rounds of expansion, but there is a point of diminishing returns with this stuff. We don't want too many losses to the Arabe Unidos Joe Publics of the world when MLS teams go into international competitions. Ideally MLS should be tilting with Mexican clubs for continental dominance.

    You can't chase markets at the expense of the product. I love the sport, but I won't watch garbage.
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  16. #148
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    Re: 2013 MLS Thread

    Quote Originally Posted by M2 View Post
    You also can't grow it by putting a third-tier product out on the field. Fans of the sport can watch European leagues, South American leagues and the Mexican league. They're going to recognize if MLS is fielding a bunch of wannabes. The league has done a decent job of adding international players to prevent an overall talent decline during the recent rounds of expansion, but there is a point of diminishing returns with this stuff. We don't want too many losses to the Arabe Unidos Joe Publics of the world when MLS teams go into international competitions. Ideally MLS should be tilting with Mexican clubs for continental dominance.

    You can't chase markets at the expense of the product. I love the sport, but I won't watch garbage.
    The problem with the MLS performance in CONCACAF Champions League play is that it's taken a while for MLS teams to take the CCL and other non-MLS competitions seriously. When the league first started, the primary focus was on making the playoffs and winning the MLS Cup. Non-league play was treated like exhibitions. Since then, I think teams are finding out that fans have grown more savvy, so that trophies like the Supporters Shield, the US Open Cup, and the CCL carry more weight than they did in the past.

    The quality of play may not suffer as much from expansion as you might think. If the league is able to expand revenues along with expansion, the MLS will continue to attract quality players from South and Central America as players from those countries seek to escape the financial and personal insecurity of their domestic leagues.

    I think the bigger problem with expansion is dealing with a fair schedule with 26-30 teams in the league. The bigger the league gets, the more difficult it gets to fashion a schedule where every team plays each other more than once a season. A league with 30 teams would likely have to adopt something similar to either NFL schedules, with conferences broken into divisions and teams only playing teams from one division in the other conference, or something akin to the old MLB style where teams from other conferences meet only in the playoffs. The third option is to have the MLS split into a Premier League and a First Division with limited promotion and relegation.

    Personally, I think it would be best for MLS to slow down expansion at the first division level and encourage expansion at the lower levels. As it stands, Detroit, Baltimore, St. Louis, Cleveland, and Cincinnati have no professional soccer presence at all at MLS, NASL, or USL Pro levels. If the NASL could expand to 20 stable teams, with those teams occupying the largest MSAs not served by MLS, I'd say that US Soccer has achieved a mature soccer pyramid. As of now, there is still too much flux at the 2nd and 3rd tiers. The fact that Dayton has a USL Pro team while Cincinnati and Cleveland do not is baffling.
    Wear gaudy colors, or avoid display. Lay a million eggs or give birth to one. The fittest shall survive, yet the unfit may live. Be like your ancestors or be different. We must repeat!

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  18. #149
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    Re: 2013 MLS Thread

    Quote Originally Posted by Yachtzee View Post
    The quality of play may not suffer as much from expansion as you might think. If the league is able to expand revenues along with expansion, the MLS will continue to attract quality players from South and Central America as players from those countries seek to escape the financial and personal insecurity of their domestic leagues.
    Possibly, but then you're trying to sell an extremely foreign product into some of those laggard markets. The other thing is MLS teams have spent good money on a lot of bad Hispanic players.

    Quote Originally Posted by Yachtzee View Post
    I think the bigger problem with expansion is dealing with a fair schedule with 26-30 teams in the league.
    I suspect that's out the window, though if you have a 24-team league you could do two games against everyone inside your conference and one against everyone in the other conference for a 34-game season.

    Quote Originally Posted by Yachtzee View Post
    Personally, I think it would be best for MLS to slow down expansion at the first division level and encourage expansion at the lower levels.
    That's how I'd do it, but it looks like short-term gain is driving the train rather than long-term planning.
    I'm not a system player. I am a system.

  19. #150
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    Re: 2013 MLS Thread

    Quote Originally Posted by M2 View Post
    You also can't grow it by putting a third-tier product out on the field. Fans of the sport can watch European leagues, South American leagues and the Mexican league. They're going to recognize if MLS is fielding a bunch of wannabes. The league has done a decent job of adding international players to prevent an overall talent decline during the recent rounds of expansion, but there is a point of diminishing returns with this stuff. We don't want too many losses to the Arabe Unidos Joe Publics of the world when MLS teams go into international competitions. Ideally MLS should be tilting with Mexican clubs for continental dominance.

    You can't chase markets at the expense of the product. I love the sport, but I won't watch garbage.
    By expanding the popularity of the league and the revenue involved you can expand the domestic talent pool. You want more and more kids growing up watching MLS, supporting their local side, and dreaming of playing high school soccer instead of basketball, football or other sports. That can't happen in a league that lacks a true national footprint and leaves multiple metro areas of 2+ million people without a "home" club.

    Additionally, talent follows money -- and money follows popularity (ratings, ticket sales, sponsorship deals, wealthy people buying teams as status symbols, etc.). Focus on doing things that makes the league more popular and doing things that raise the profile of the league nationally and the money to increase the talent level will follow as well.

    FWIW, I agree with Y's points here -- the way to grow the league isn't by just dropping franchises in big markets and waiting for people to show up. They should follow the Portland / Orlando model of putting in 2nd division squads and seeing if supporters groups organize and begin to rally. You can then add sides slowly until you get to whatever your carrying-capacity is.
    Last edited by Caveat Emperor; 11-21-2013 at 04:19 PM.
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