How much does the rest of the football (soccer) world sneer at MLS?

The Game Room
21

Exactly. I created a thread about that very thing a couple of years ago, wondering why MLS was trying to impose a fan culture, rather than let one develop naturally on its own. It’s 90-odd degrees here in Atlanta, so it’s ridiculous to see Atlanta United fans stream into the stadium in scarves, FFS.

The stupid names like “Real Salt Lake” and “Sporting Kansas City” - obvious attempts to evoke famous European teams - are bad enough, but, like @kenobi_65, what really annoys me is them calling themselves “football clubs”. Yes, everywhere else in the world, soccer is the dominant code and thus carries the generic term; but in this country, for whatever historical reason, gridiron is “football”, and what the MLS plays is “soccer”.

22

It’s even right there in the name of the league.

23

I will say that the new expansion team in my home town got it exactly right - St Louis City SC.

No European pretensions, no “football”, no jazzy modern-sounding name, just the name of the city and Soccer Club.

Sure, it’s cribbing on Manchester City a bit I guess, but there is a pretty good tradition of just naming your club after the city you are in.

24

Manchester City is just one of dozens of clubs that have been called “This City City.” They may have been the first (hard to say, because a lot of Something Cities started out as Something Else), but there were lots before them called Something County (Notts County was founded in 1862 and predates organized football in England) or Something Town.

I have never thought of my local club, Orlando City, having a derivative name.

Some of the things that used to make me chuckle about MLS when I got here as a European don’t so much now. For example, I thought it was goofy to have a team named “D.C. United” because in England that was a name adopted by teams to denote that they were formed by mergers. Except that sometimes it was an affectation in England, too. For example, Manchester United F.C. wasn’t formed by a merger of existing Manchester teams; it was just the name the team adopted when its predecessor Newton Heath F.C. was bought out of bankruptcy.

Real Salt Lake was and remains silly, as the team is still unblessed with regal status. I’m surprised that no MLS team has adopted the “Wanderers” appellation, as it’s one of the most obvious Euro team identifiers that doesn’t have any particular connotation. (In England it was most commonly applied to teams without a permanent playing ground, but as with United it seems to have been adopted by some teams which did have a permanent location.)

25

I’m waiting for New York City City.

26

Well that, and the fact that girls play football at school, which hasn’t been the case in Europe until relatively recently - and even now, it’s patchy. When I was at school, there was no option to play football - it was (field) hockey, netball and rounders. The US also had professional women’s football years before anywhere in Europe. If you recall the British film Bend it Like Beckham, it was all about girls who wanted to play professional football, and had to go to the States in order to do so. It’s changing, but women’s football in Europe is only really catching up now. For example, it has only started to become nationally popular in England since the England women’s team won the Euros (just last year), and even then, attendance for league games is still way behind the men’s game.

The US has long been recognised as the powerhouse in the women’s game.

27

Halifax Wanderers of the Canadian Premier League.

The CPL is a step down from MLS and seems to be doing alright. But I’m saying that as a casual fan in a city which has one of the better teams in the league.

28

Are there any ‘Rovers’ in the MLS?

29

No, nor Rangers which would be a particularly good fit in the American context.

30

Funny thing, I’ve heard exactly the opposite - that soccer fans who look down on MLS because it’s so American. Now, a lot of that was from the first decade of the league, with names like Kansas City Wiz and Dallas Burn, a countdown clock, running penalty kicks (which I love and think is a far superior way to do PKs), and some still exist: salary caps (which have been essential in promoting parity), single entity (essential for the survival of the league), and no promotion/relegation (that’s a whole thread in itself, but I think the league is far better without).

The shift in more European names also was the time period where the league actually started growing (it actually did ‘fold’ for about 24 hours in 2001 before the 3 owners left decided to give it one more go - and owned multiple teams for a while). Sporting Kansas City is one of the big success turnaround stories in all MLS - and has been a template for the originals to use to change their luck.

A lot of American European club fans seem to look down on MLS more than Europeans themselves, strangely enough. They don’t see the immense strides the league has taken even in 1 decade. They still call it a retirement league when the average age of the league is lower than any of the Big 4, and when MLS is selling players to Europe left, right, and center. MLS has become a place for the young South Americans (Miguel Almiron, Thiago Almada, Taty Castellanos,etc) to finish their development before going to Europe, or young Europeans who are out of favor at big clubs or who are at mid tier clubs or leagues to resurrect things (Jack Harrison, Riqui Puig, Hany Muktar, etc), or the development of young Americans who will go to Europe (Weston McKennie, Matt Turner, Tim Ream, Ricardo Pepi, etc).

But people only focus on the big names who are coming at the end of their careers - yet don’t listen to those players when they talk about how much more difficult the league is than most people think (Wayne Rooney just said then when talking about Messi coming over).

It’s a league that’s growing by leaps and bounds. It won’t be the Big 4 any time soon, but it’s far from what some still speak about it. I think it’s slowly turning the Americans who are fans of European clubs, which is a good start.

31

Sure but St Louis’s official name is: St. Louis CITY SC. They always capitalize CITY for whatever reason (I’ve been told it may have something to do with St Louis City vs. St Louis County, but the capitalization is silly).

32

No relegation and promotion is one of the big reasons MLS gets sneered at. The history of European football is littered with clubs who once upon a time had a golden era but now are stuck in the depths of lower divisions as well as clubs who have no historical pedigree that now are among the top teams in the top leagues of their nations. Pro Vercelli of Italy are an example. They dominated the early 20th century winning multiple Serie A titles but their last title was over a hundred years ago and they last played in Serie A in the 1930s. In England a club like Everton have won more titles than Chelsea but in the modern day Chelsea is an elite football club while Everton are fighting relegation every season (but somehow never getting relegated in the end). Conversely a club like Brentford were in the fourth division fifteen years ago but have become a very solid Premier League club since making it to the top division in 2020.

33

I agree with this. One of the thrills of the end of season is not just who comes out on top, but the relegation battle that takes place. Plus the fight for promotion for the lower league teams. Take this away, and you take away half the excitement of the league system.

34

Already twice used in North American pro sports - Texas in baseball, New York in hockey - so maybe someone thought of it but just felt it would be lost in the shuffle.

35

DOES it get sneered at, though? Do fans in Germany even care it exists?

The equivalent in other sports would be, say, the KBO in baseball, or SHL in hockey. Fans in the USA and Canada do not sneer at those leagues. Everyone knows they’re not as good as MLB/NHL play, but no one expected them to be.

36

Or, even knows about them.

On relegation, the MLS can barely field enough quality teams without half the league getting even less money and coverage. Teams that dropped out of the top league would fold up immediately.

37

The “Relegation” argument is honestly tiresome. Yes, in some places they use a relegation system and in some places they do not. Neither is better, they’re just different ways of organizing a league.

38

I can only speak from my experience but I think there is some sneering. The relegation/promotion factor is just one. But another is that in the late 2000s and through the 2010s when past-their-prime stars left Europe to go to MLS many of them didn’t take it at all seriously. While the stars of MLS performance wise included players like Kei Kamara and Bradley Wright-Phillips who were in their time in England second/third division quality players. In MLS they are goalscoring legends. Another factor is back in the 2000s the hype around Freddy Adu did lead to major European clubs buy into it but his career track means young American talents who aren’t in a European academy are treated with a sense of dubiousness. That felt like a massive marketing job looking back. Pulisic came through the development of Dortmund who are one of Germany and Europe’s biggest clubs so largely escaped that.

39

I take serious issue with the suggestion that Euro fans don’t care about promotion and relegation.

40

I’d certainly buy that they care about promotion and relegation; speaking as a casual American fan of the sport, I imagine that the fact that one bad season can lead to your favorite team drop out of the top level league is undoubtedly something to care about.

But, what I don’t know is this (and I’m asking honestly):

  • Do European football fans see the promotion/relegation system as an important factor in a league’s overall strength?
  • Do they see football leagues which do not have promotion/relegation as inferior, solely because they do not have such a system?