Have at thee, varlets: Beckham wants to leave MLS

I think he was the best player last year and he is in the argument for best ever, but don't forget Marco Etcheverry.

 

I miss Preki.

What I think MLS should do is get to the point where it has 18 teams, then play as a Euro-style league where all the times play each other twice a season.

It's too much to ask to have promotion and relegation at this point, unless some sort of North American Super League was formed along with the Mexican clubs. That would be pretty awesome.

 

I think teams make a huge mistake when they specifically decide to target the Mexican audience. It just doesn't work. They never get the fan support they want.

Two examples, just from personal experience...

Back in the old NASL days the LA Aztecs were purchased by Dutch ownership, who promptly brought in Cruyff, Rinus Michels, and others from the Dutch national team. They drew huge, passionate crowds. Then they sold the team to (I believe) Telemundo, who brought in Mexican stars. They started pulling in 3k a game and folded.

Just a year or two ago they had a soccer tournament at the Cardinals' stadium in Glendale. They brought in some of the best teams in Latin America -- Boca Juniors, Deportivo Cali, Club America, Cruz Azul, and a few others. The promotion was exclusively in Spanish-language media. In fact, I only knew about it because we got a press release in the newsroom. The organizers were expecting 60,000 or more per game. Their biggest crowd was closer to 7,000.

If you bring in the Mexican national team you'll get a sellout. Anything else, forget it.

 

I noticed they targeted the Mexican audience. I was surprised at the results. Is there any way to reach them other than the National Team?

The parking lot at the Met on nights when Minnesota Kicks played was outstanding. I think one of the former players runs the huge soccer complex in Blaine, MN.

 

Here are two bloggers takes on this:
Bill Archer
Dan Loney

The league is setup fine. Promotion and relegation is a bad idea and wouldn’t work here. Hell, if the English League had just started up they wouldn’t have promotion and relegation.

 

I love promotion and relegation, the Premier League way. It's to the detriment of the U.S. that they can't make it work here.

 

I agree that promotion/relegation wouldn't work here, but I don't think it's a bad idea.

The way I explain it to people who are NBA freaks is I tell them the Oklahoma City Thunder would be in the CBA if relegation were in use in this country. For NFL fans, I'd tell them the Detroit Lions wouldn't be in the NFL. The Nats would actually be in Class AAA instead of being a Class AAA team in the majors.

The principle of promotion and relegation is a sound one. It's just that Americans aren't used to the idea and likely would balk at it.

 

It's an interesting idea. First of all, say goodbye to any type of salary cap. The fear of being relegated would be enough to send any owner into a psychotic spending spree. Sponsorship deals would be a mess.

On the flip side, it would stop deadbeat owners from simply throwing a team out there and sucking off the teet of TV contracts. (Normally I'd make a Bidwilll joke here.) Teams would have to spend to keep from being relegated and losing millions.

 

You cannot have promotion/relegation here. This isn’t even a debate. It is a simple fact that if the EPL started in the last 10-years, they wouldn’t have it either. The reason is simple: Money.

How do you ask a potential owner to shell out millions of dollars for a new team when that team can be dropped from the television cycle and lose commercial dollars? How do you justify the cost of switching to such a system?

The top English league has been around for 100-years. The system was in place since the beginning. The idea is that you can start out as some sort of middling pub team and work your way up over the course of several seasons.

Where are they going to start in the US? Are they going to start with the USL, a league owned by a completely different group? So, a new owner buys into the USL for $500k, buys a bunch of players and then takes the spot of, say, Toronto, who just bought into the league for millions.

That isn’t a business model for success. The theory is wonderful, but you can’t run a business like that. Nobody in this country is spending millions only to watch it all get flushed into relegation, where television and ad revenue will dry up.

 

and there's a bigger issue than American's not being used to it: The country's just too big for relegation. The travel is too severe for a minor league team, unless you split the lower divisions regionally.

 

The worst part of the MLS is when a top player wants to come to the U.S. they're almost always allowed to choose where they want to play. Think Beckham would have gone to Columbus? It almost always seems to be LA or NY or something like that. The league really has no choice in the matter. If they want them, they have to let them play where they want.

 

1. Pastor is right. Promotion/Relegation wouldn't work with the MLS right now due to the newness of the league.

2. Personally, I'd like to see it in NCAA football. Finish DFL in a BCS conference and you're dropped to a non-BCS conference. Sorry, Iowa State but you've been relegated down to C-USA. Tulsa will be taking your place in the Big 12 next season.