Sepp Blatter's anti-MLS comments

Never thought of it that way.

Excellent point.

There were times he wasn't the best player on his team. Which is more about Donovan's play than Beckham's.

 

What the NBA or MLB was after 16 years is as relevant to MLS' present and future as looking at the future of the electric car based on what Ford's market share was with the Model-T.

 

It's relevant to look at how slowly leagues can grow, and the forces that make them what they are.

25 years ago, the NFL was not the juggernaut it is now. Free agency, TV, labor peace, and MLB shooting itself in the foot all contributed.

Why is MLS here to stay, a decade after contracting two teams and and being a house of cards owned by three people?

Different forces affected its fortunes.

More on Becks:

http://www.mlssoccer.com/bestof/2012/news/article/2012/12/30/stories-year-no-1-bye-bye-beckham

 

Agree to a point, but I know quite a few people in Kansas City that didn't give a yahoo about MLS until Livestrong Sporting Park opened. They heard about this trendy new stadium, they took in a game, and now they have season tickets.

And speaking of big names, I saw a rumor your boy Daniele DeRossi might be interested in MLS. Skeptical, but would be a heck of a signing.

 

Would be a more thrilling Italian signing than the goalie the Galaxy just took off the scrap heap.

 

Re: Seth Blatter's anti-MLS comments

Off topic here, but I've been reading Al Jazeera articles regularly for about two years now (thanks to Twitter.) I would feel comfortable calling it, along with the N.Y. Times, the most comprehensive and consistently best-reported news outlet in the world.

The opinion pieces are often crap (so are NYT's), but from a news-gathering/reporting/journalism perspective, Al Jazeera does incredible work all the time.

If any of you still think of Al Jazeera as just that weird Arabic place where bin Laden's videos always seemed to show up a decade ago, I highly recommend checking them out again.

 

As someone who usually hops into the soccer thread during World Cups ...

It almost sounds like Blatter is trying to graft the European system on the U.S., with relegation and a winter schedule. Don't see it happening. I wonder, too, if there is a "we are No. 1 everwhere else, we must be No. 1 in America too" thinking at work? MLS management seems to know this. It's not overexpanding like NASL did, nor going after overseas stars.

 

I've written this 100 times here, but the season needs to start sooner -- perhaps Super Bowl Sunday (realizing that the first month will need to be played in warm weather sites) and end when college football starts. They need to dominate the dead time before football, because even the worst game will out draw MLS.

 

That's a good idea, because then weather won't affect the playoffs.

 

And once every four years you'll get to hold the end of the regular season and the entire postseason without the best players, or with those players severely diminished.

 

One potentially interesting side effect if they did that: it would put the start of the MLS season right in the winter transfer window in Europe, and end the regular season very close to the end of the summer window. Not a perfect sync, obviously, but a hell of a lot better than they have now.

 

The NHL tweaks its schedule every four years for the Olympics. MLS can do the same.