I am only the most casual of football (soccer) fans, so all I’ve ever heard about Major League Soccer was that it’s considered a joke by the rest of the world, but at least has some money (being the 10th-highest ranking sports league in the world by revenue isn’t shabby.)
When some promising young player from South America, Africa, Europe, central America or elsewhere signs a contract with Austin FC or the LA Galaxy, is the response usually “Yeah, good for you!” or “Uhhh…LOL”?
The top 4 Euro leagues are by far the most prestigious. MLS is probably a 3rd tier league. Most fans in the rest of the world probably don’t think much about MLS or have a bit of an outdated opinion of it (it’s much better than it was 10 years ago). The reaction for a player coming here is going to vary wildly. Players coming from large Euro leagues will be seen as semi-retirement, from mid Euro league will be ~lateral and maybe giving up on the big league, from central or south america it depends on the player. Top talent it would be seen as weird (opposed to going to Europe). Everyone else probably no big deal.
The sense I get is that the level of competition in MLS isn’t strong enough to develop players properly. So the reaction might be more along the lines of “Well that sucks.”
I always had the impression that it was more or less equivalent to whatever the second tier leagues were in the big European countries, and equivalent to top tier leagues in most of the rest of the world.
I mean, the MLS isn’t the equivalent of the EPL, Serie A, or 1.Bundesliga. But it would probably be more like the First Division(or whatever it’s called now), Serie B, or 2.Bundesliga. Or a top tier Mexican team- the MLS tends to compete fairly well in the CONCACAF Champions Cup with only the best Mexican teams consistently doing better.
So when a kid from say… Uruguay signs with a MLS team, I think it’s looked at similarly to if they’d signed with a top flight Mexican team, or a second-tier European team.
I watched a youtube video that tried to assess what level MLS was at. The conclusion was similar to what “bump” says above–probably second tier of English (or other big countries) football.
From what little that I’ve seen of MLS, the defenses can be laughably inept.
I’m not sure it’s third tier anymore, but second tier.
Do football fans look down on second tier leagues? I don’t think they do in a sneering manner. The football league ladder is just how it works. I don’t know any major league baseball fans who sneer at NPB or KBO play, or NFL fans who sneer at the NCAA.
One thing I’ve heard is that this is only true for men’s soccer. In women’s soccer, the United States is a major power. This is due to American laws which push schools to devote equal funding to men’s and women’s sports. In most countries, soccer programs for male students are far more heavily funded than the ones for women students. The result is that professional women’s soccer teams in America have a much larger pool of talent to recruit from.
I think there were a few raised eyebrows when Michael Jordan tried his hand at minor league baseball. More than there would have been if he had somehow been able to get signed by a major league team. Just my two cents, though.
If so, that was more about Jordan’s choice of changing careers, and that, despite his prodigious athletic ability, he wasn’t really skilled/experienced enough at baseball to succeed at it, even in the minors: he spent 1994 playing for the Birmingham Barons (a AA-level affiliate of the White Sox), where he hit only .202, and struck out more than anyone else on that team. (Though, to be fair, he hit a bit better – .252 – in the Arizona Fall League later that year).
I don’t think that was anyone looking down their noses at minor league baseball; if there was an issue, it was that a guy was taking up a roster spot who didn’t really have a serious chance of ever progressing up the ladder in the sport, and he was given the opportunity to do so solely because of his stardom in a different sport (and the loyalty that the Bulls’ owner, who also owned the White Sox, had to him).
Had Jordan been placed on an major league roster, I think that even more eyebrows would have been raised, because he clearly did not have the talent or ability in baseball to merit it.
I don’t mean 3rd tier in the sense of 3rd level in a country’s pyramid. I mean:
Tier 1 - England, Spain, Italy, Germany, France
Tier 2 - Portugal, Netherlands, Turkey, Brazil, Argentina
Tier 3 - MLS, Mexico, Greece, Scotland, etc
And really it depends if you mean average team or what because while Ajax or Benfica are way better than all MLS teams I’m not sure the middle or bottom of the table is any better.
And there’s a much clearer line between tier 1 and 2 than 2 and 3, so I don’t think it’s really worth arguing about.
IMO this is more about the rest of the world not caring. Title 9 matters but young women get worse coaching in this country than young men. It’s just that the soccer culture in the US for men is behind the world while the women’s game isn’t. Using arbitrary numbers: Euro men’s game is 95, US men’s game is 80, US women’s game is 65, and Euro women’s game is 30.
Although European teams/countries are putting a ton more money in the women’s game and we’re already seeing dividends on the field. The last WWC was much more competitive than usual.
Out of curiosity, which of these nations’ top league is outside of the Top Four Euro Leagues?
England, Spain, Italy, Germany, France
I’m guessing France.
Yes, France is a step below, but you hear “Top 5” as much as “Top 4” nowadays.
My point is that when the OP asks about the rest of the world sneering at American soccer, it’s worth noting that that only applies to half of American soccer. Nobody who knows soccer would be sneering at American women’s soccer.
Well, I’m only asking about the sneering-at-MLS thing, not sneering at the USMNT men.
The USMNT men have done pretty well; it’s qualified for most of the recent World Cups, went to the quarterfinals in 2002, advanced to the knockout round 4 times in their last 5 WC appearances. That’s already in, like, maybe the 80th-90th percentile of all national teams worldwide in the last twenty years (the vast majority of nations don’t even get into the World Cup)?
Funny, I posted an MLS sneer the other day on Twitter about the ‘Los Angeles Derby’ and got my ass ripped to shreds by the MLS zealots and calling me everything under the Sun. As I’m on vacation this week and have enough stress, I took the Tweet down in about 15 minutes.
I don’t hate MLS, I just think it’s idiotic to try so hard to be European. My general feeling about MLS is that it’s like a college kid who studied abroad for a semester and comes back home wearing European soccer jerseys and calling their college apartment a ‘flat.’
And, it seems to me like that was an intentional shift that MLS made over the past decade or so: re-naming teams “Something FC,” and the like, in an effort to appeal to American soccer fans who are interested in other, non-US soccer leagues and teams.
The ones that make me snerk the most are Inter Miami and Real Salt Lake.
I’d say the same thing about the Tim Tebow minor league baseball experiment. He only got the chance because of his name and the large fan base. Of course, Jordan was one of, if not the very best, basketball players of all time. Tebow was excellent in college football but horrible in the NFL and had no business playing minor league baseball.
Generally its considered a rather well paying retirement home. Where good players who are getting a bit long in the tooth for the top level of the European leagues can earn a bit of cash while finishing off their careers.
Possibly they may be in the process of being usurped by Saudi Arabia in that role, but a move to LA or DC is still an easier sell I imagine.