World Cup 2022 Thread
- Thread starter Sean Miller Fan
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Next year, sure. But the whole point would be that UEFA money + additional MLS investment + CL as a recruiting piece would enable MLS to become the #3 league in the world, possibly eventually #2 ahead of the Bundesliga. Its a long-term plan not to be defined by whether or not we don't have a team in the group stage in Year 1 or 2 or whether we miss the 2030 World Cup.
American sports fans want to be in the best leagues. Look at college sports. Fans are giddy to leave century-old rivalries for a better league. Euro soccer fans value rivalry and tradition which is why they hated the Super League idea. Americans will send their team to play in Baghdad if that's part of some elite league. They dont give AF.
You think the pinheads like the ones on the free board who are too cool for soccer are going to buy into euros every few years? Not a chance. That’ll give them even more reason to rag on the sport. Gotta change the UEFA name. Hell, even an alleged soccer guy like pitt79 won’t even buy into the US being in UEFA.
Not me, I'd rather see Pitt play WVU and Penn State every year, even Temple, Syracuse and Duquesne and CMU if need be, rather than Super SEC Nirvana that you might masturbate over
Why am I alleged? Just because I don't follow the EPL and whatever is THE BEST that American Soccer Snobs insist I must care about more than MLS or USMNT?
No because you don’t follow the sport. Per your words, you only care about being entertained while watching a match and have no interest in anything else. Fans by definition are more invested.
Not really, I'm like that with every sport, even NFL, 90% of the NFL content I follow is about the Steelers, 90% of what I watch isn't talk shows or the Combine it's GAMES. Either that's just your definition or I must not be a fan of anything. What is this "anything else" that I'm supposed to care about?
Omg. Go back and read the threads. I’m not going through this. I’m not knocking you at all. I’m just repeating what you’ve said. You said you only care about what goes on on the field. Who plays on your team and who plays for the opponent are irrelevant. You said you just want to be entertained. Fair enough.
personally, I don’t know why you would have no interest in the UEFA champions league for DC United vs Concacaf champions league. I think a David vs Goliath of a DC United match up vs a Real Madrid is naturally more entertaining than a match vs some obscure team who qualified from Costa Rica’s top flight.
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anon_4dfwm2pijbr0a
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Well that is your opinion. My opinion is the MLS would still be a middling league, maybe on the fringe of 7-10 worldwide if this were ever to happen. Still only getting 2 CL spots, still not getting an auto qualifier to group stage. And if they do, they'd never make it out of the group stage.
I do care and know about my own teams players, not necessarilly where they are from, I don't even know where every Steeler went to college, but no, seeing DC vs a Euro team, is about the same as a Costa Rican team, I have no idea about either one anyways, I couldn't name a single player on Real Madrid to be honest, which makes sense because I don't watch the Spanish league. I did watch some of RM in the UEFA CL last month and I still don't remember any of their players. I could name at least a dozen DC United or USMNT players, because those are the teams I watch the most. It's like the way I can name almost the entire Steelers roster and maybe no more than 4-5 on some other NFL teams.
If the USSF thought in 10-20 years, they'd still be behind the Belgian, Turkish, and Swiss leagues even with all the UEFA money and notoriety then I'd say why even bother. The Italian and Spanish leagues are a mess. The French league has always been just PSG. With the growth of the sport in the US, all the billionaire owners, new stadiums, new investors, UEFA money, WC 2026, etc, I feel they would be #3 very quick, like within 5 years. At least in 10. Eventually they'd be qualifying 2-3 teams in the Group stage and maybe another going through the playoff rounds. I've always said a world-class MLS would be #3 behind the NFL and NBA and not far off the NBA. Put the world's best players in major American markets, and it would be HUGE.
So with the best US players playing in UEFA champions league, you wouldn’t find a game between your United team vs Pulisic’s Chelsea, or Dest’s Barcelona, or Reyna’s Dortmund or McKennie’s Juventus more entertaining? I suppose not. And again that’s fair. But I’d guarantee that if those teams played United in the UCL, they better rent out Fed Ex Field because they’d sell 96K tickets in an hour, whereas the team from Costa Rica would draw what into DC’s beautiful little soccer stadium? 15K?
It wouldn’t happen because I don’t see the MLS owners competing in full blown transfer free agency with no cost restraints.
People over 50? No. But USA in the Euros would be very big for the younger crowd. And the US would host it in 12-16 years probably. And they'd host the CL final every 10 years or so. Would Joe NFL fan start watching? No. But the 25 year old dude who played soccer till middle school and grew up playing FIFA on Xbox, that dude is getting season tickets for the Philadelphia Union and becoming a big fan if MLS was a world-class league. That's your target audience.
I read an article the other day that if you average all soccer watched in the US (MLS, Liga MX, WC, Euros, EPL, etc), ratings are better for people under like 30 or so than MLB. MLB's average fan is 57. Soccer was like 35. No, its not overtaking the NFL but it could be big here. NBA big
And this is why you might be a fan of DC United, you’re certainly not a fan of the sport. Real Madrid is the largest club in the world and anyone who considers themselves a fan would be able to name players. I don’t watch the Spanish League at all. I’ve watched one match in my life, but because I’m a fan of the sport and I follow it, I know who most of their players are simply through osmosis.
I envision them having teams more like the German teams. Not EPL expensive but still very high quality with a few world mega stars scattered throughout the league.
Pitt 79 has very unique sports fandom. I almost believe him that he would get just as much entertainment from seeing DCU play a Costan Rican team in the CCL than Man City in the UCL. He has said he would follow Pitt football just the same if they dropped to D3 and were playing CMU. For me, my team has to be competing on a major stage. Its why I can't watch the Riverhounds. Stick them in MLS and I'm a fan
Yeah I believe I posted that a couple months ago on the free board. Soccer has passed baseball in that key demographic and baseball is now behind basketball. After the World Cup in 2026, we should see yet another boom.
soccer is already bigger in this country than I ever thought it would be. Heck I didn’t even think I would be a fan. I never thought I’d see beautiful state of the art soccer only stadiums. and see communities embrace their MLS teams, or have every single EPL match available to me, or Champions League football on network television at 3pm on a weekday. I used to laugh when soccer dork would say soccer is going to be a top 4 sport in the US. Now soccer dork is right because by some measurements it already is.
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anon_4dfwm2pijbr0a
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This federation is incompetent. Even if they put it out there, they would find a way to make it very difficult. They can't even find a simple way with all of their resources and billions to correct the pay to play crap.
I usually don't watch any game just because of one player on the team. It would be OK I guess to see the UEFA CL teams vs. MLS, on the other hand, they might blow MLS out, and I'd actually prefer beating a Costa Rican team to watching my team lose to Chelsea or Liverpool every year.
That's exactly the way I am, I've been a fan of Baltimore Blast indoor soccer for years, that's so low in the minors that these are the players that washed out of USL outdoor soccer, extreme nobodies making a few thousand a year, but I just happen to like it so the obscurity of it doesn't bother me- in the winter I watch that over NBA or NHL, but I watch Pitt basketball over that
even bad Pitt basketball.I don't know how they cant go into the top 200 or so markets and sponsor an elite academy team with no tuition starting at U8 or U9. Advertise the heck out of it. FREE US Soccer Elite Academy: tryouts Monday-Friday at some central location. They'd get several hundred kids trying out. Every day you cut a few dozen until you wind up with 20-30. Instead of paying thousands to Century, Beadling, etc, it would be free. Buses provided for road games within 4-5 hours. Bus there, bus back.
That's fine but I don't think I'd call you a "fan" of anything. For you its just 2 hours of entertainment. If they win, great, if not, oh well, you had fun watching it.That's exactly the way I am, I've been a fan of Baltimore Blast indoor soccer for years, that's so low in the minors that these are the players that washed out of USL outdoor soccer, extreme nobodies making a few thousand a year, but I just happen to like it so the obscurity of it doesn't bother me- in the winter I watch that over NBA or NHL, but I watch Pitt basketball over that
If that's all it takes, then why are the teams in the Belgian, Turkish, and Swiss leagues (to use the three countries you did) not already that good? They already have UEFA money (and have had it for a long time). They already invest a lot more in their teams than MLS teams do (and have done so for a long time). They already have Champions League as a recruiting piece (and have for a long time). So why aren't the Belgian, Turkish, and Swiss leagues like the 3rd, 4th and 5th best leagues in the world?
Oh, yeah, that's right. Because it simply isn't that easy. The notion that you've figured out what would make the billionaires that own MLS teams lots of money but they are simply too dumb to figure it out is hilarious.
Par for the course, but hilarious.
According to a story on ESPN, in the 19 years that Roman Abramovich owned Chelsea they lost more than £900,000.
No, not over the whole 19 years. No, not this year, or even in an average year. Per week. Every week for 19 years.
For those of you scoring at home, that's a loss of £46,800,000 per season, and £899,200,000 in total.
For those of you who would be scoring at home but don't know the exchange rate, at today's rate those numbers would be over $1.1 million per week, $57.4 million per year, and a grand total of just under $1.1 billion in total. But yeah, if only the Columbus Crew had a chance to make the Champions League they'd be rolling in the dough.
That’s interesting. As owner, he “loaned” the club 1.3 billion of his own money and forfeited that amount at the time of the sale. I had just assumed that money was due to player acquisitions, wages, etc. but the stadium situation is a mess and Chelsea is at a disadvantage compared to other top clubs who generate 10’s of millions more per match in stadium revenue. This new owner has his work cut out for him. The club isn’t playing with Monopoly money anymore. They’ll never be able to afford 100 million pound flops like Kepa and Lukaku anymore.
Because world stars don't put a large value on living in those countries. While its true that some world stars don't give a crap about living in the US, its very clear that living in the US, being part of that culture, and building your brand (for some) gives MLS a ginormous advantage over those leagues. Also, given the potential eyeballs in the US, the thought would be that MLS teams could pay more if in UEFA than almost all other leagues (not EPL, Bundesliga, 4-5 teams in Spain, Italy, PSG)
The only reason that world soccer stars put value on living in the US is because they can do so anonymously. When MLS becomes the second most popular league in the world that advantage disappears, and then some.
But yeah, I would imagine that lots of European soccer greats if given the choice would clearly rather live in Columbus or Kansas City or Salt Lake City or several other MLS towns rather than Geneva, Switzerland. I mean who wouldn't?
I think about that all the time. These players don’t get breaks very often. Like right now they have like a 3 week off-season. Camps start the 2nd week of July. So many of them are over here in the US. Their pics are all over social media. They usually go to Miami or California. Sometimes NYC. And a lot of them don’t have a concept as to how big this country is. So when a guy like Shakiri (who sucks by the way) goes and plays for the Chicago Fire, he probably has to be thinking WTF did I do coming here??? This isn’t LA or south Beach. Lol. I’d imagine Columbus, KC and some others are the same way.
I was a Steelers fan since before you where born, I've easily watched every minute of 99% of every game since 1969, if anything I decide what a fan is and not you! You can't be a fan of anything that isn't top world class, If Pitt went to D3 you'd stop watching, you're not a REAL fan, I'm a fan, because I'd still be there as bought in as when they are ACC Champs.
They wouldnt play in those towns. NY, Miami, Atlanta, LA, maybe Chicago if they ever decide to take soccer seriously would attract the big names. KC, Columbus etc would be your West Ham or Fulham type teams.
Chicago is a bad example. Jordan made that city famous internationally. Everyone knows it. And the Chicago they are living in isnt The Chi (Showtime show). There's nice beaches, night life, high end shopping, restaurants, etc.
Well if me dropping my Pitt fanhood once they enter D3 makes me not a real fan then I am fine with that. I will admit, I'm only watching my teams play in a high level league. Not interested in anything less. If Pitt goes FCS, D2, D3, Im out.
That's fine, but then don't turn around and tell me that I'm not a fan of anything, because I'll still be there when you abandon Pitt under those circumstances. You're not a fan of Pitt as much as you are a fan of the highest level of sports, and me, I'm more a fan of teams than I am of a level of sports. Like I've had no problem being a fan of minor league teams in my time, like I was a fan of indoor soccer or arena football and thoroughly enjoyed it, I lived in Columbus, Ohio 2 years in the 80s and was a fan of the Clippers, the Yankees AAA team at the time and went to games, and must say I liked it more than MLB, really cheap tickets, good seats. So I am a fan of individual teams and you are a fan of THE HIGHEST LEVEL as a whole, more than any team in it.
And, how will this help the MLS owners? Right now, they draw well, are on TV and have controlled salaries. The money doesn’t work. Why do you think they tried to implement FFP?
Their TV ratings and TV deal is very bad. That's where the money is made. Also, world-class soccer means increased ticket prices, jersey sponsors, corporate boxes, etc. Would you people please stop pretending like the US in UEFA would be bad for MLS? Nobody watches MLS other than the niche fans of those teams. Its like the NHL, even worse.
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