In somewhat-related news, Messi joining Inter Miami caused the MLS team to suddenly skyrocket in Instagram followers to the point of surpassing any NFL, NHL, MLB or NBA team. He’s doing 20x more for MLS than Beckham or Rooney ever did.
Promotion/relegation is a sign of footballs popularity and longevity. It requires the existence of 2nd tier teams who could step up to the top. And 3rd teams who could become 2nd tier. Etc etc. ad infinitum
Messi is 20x the player beckham or rooney are.
He is arguably the best player of all time.
Messi is a global superstar in the way that no players from any of those other US-centric sports is, simply because football is the global game. I think that’s hard to comprehend in the US where football is still a relatively minor sport. Beckham and Rooney are rightly lauded in England, but they don’t match Messi’s global idolisation (or skill).
I would say yes, and yes. The sport is so deeply embedded that every town has a team, from amateur teams through to semi-pro and fully professional. The support for teams other than the European Champions League teams tends to be highly localised. If you didn’t have the chance of promotion for your local team, that strong local support just wouldn’t be there to the same extent. You just wouldn’t have much to cheer for.
And the annual relegation battles almost feel like mini leagues of their own for the teams who have very little realistic change of topping their leagues. Trying to avoid the drop adds additional tension, otherwise why would any fan care if you were six points from the bottom with 3 games of the season left to play?
In terms of who competes with Messi was the greatest, Beckham and Rooney are not the comparisons. The comparisons are Beckenbauer, Pele, Ronaldo, Cryuff, Maradona. Beckham and Rooney are not on that tier. Gerd Muller scored 68 goals in 62 international games, and one of them won a World Cup. Wayne Rooney scored 36 goals in 98 international matches. Not even close.
I think you can make arguments from the likes of Pele and Maradona and Beckenbauer against Messi, but the argument for Messi is damned strong.
Good answer. Countries having fully connected, multi-tiered futbol associations make local clubs meaningful. I’m afraid that the US system of a dominant top, and unconnected, level funnels all interest into it at the cost of having no clubs in Altoona.
I would like having a club in Altoona fighting for advancement and games against hated Harrisburg.
Sports Illustrated concussion football writer Peter King related about autumn Saturdays during his college days at Ohio U which his dorm buddies would spend watching the Ohio State game instead of going to home games on campus. My wishes notwithstanding, this country may never have a feeling of community in some regards.
It’s obviously very different here in the U.S., in part, I think, because of the dominance of school-supported sports at the high school and college level, particularly for gridiron football and basketball.
It’s true we don’t generally have broad “minor leagues” for football and basketball (and the leagues/teams which do exist generally don’t have much fan support), and while the U.S. has an extensive system of minor-league baseball teams, most of those operate as developmental teams for the major leagues.
However, in many cities and towns, support for the local high school and college teams is very strong. I regularly travel to Alabama for business, and football is king in that state – but interest in the NFL is actually pretty low. However, fans are rabidly interested in their local high school team, everyone takes a side in the rivalry between the University of Alabama and Auburn University, and even the smaller college teams (UAB, Alabama A&M, etc.) have very strong support from alumni and local fans.
Does it really, though? I know there’s a theoretical possibility that some third-tier team, Podunk United, could start winning and make its way up to the top tier, but what happens then? Suppose they make it to their version of the premiere league and host a game against Metropolis FC. Do 20,000 Metropolis supporters show up and find that Podunk plays their home games in an empty field after the sheep are finished grazing?
Class mobility is great in theory, but does it ever work in practice?
I wonder if that’s part of the appeal of playing in the US, for him? He gets beaucoup bux, and stadiums full of roaring fans; but he can probably also go to the grocery store or pick up his drycleaning without being mobbed. Personally, I wouldn’t recognize him if he walked up and kicked me in the ass. That degree of anonymity has to be a bit refreshing, I would think.
Yes, it does happen. Take Brentford Football Club - a small club with a stadium capacity of just 17,000. In 1998 they were relegated to the fourth tier (EFL League 2) in the English League system - truly nowheresville. This year they’ve been promoted to the top tier, the English Premier League, where they currently sit 9th, right behind Manchester United.
Leicester City were in the third tier in 2008-9 (EFL League 1). It took them just seven years to rise up the leagues and win the Premier League in 2015-6. It’s a once in a lifetime event, but it does happen. The following year, they made it to the quarter finals of the European Champions League.
In the NFL and NBA, teams at the bottom can at least look forward to the draft. But yeah, not entirely sure what MLB teams at the bottom have to look forward to.
The draft.
Exhibit A: Your first place Baltimore Orioles, built from high draft picks.
Don’t MLB draft picks normally go into the minor leagues for a year or three?
Usually, but it’s still effective at building a winner.
The best team of the last six or seven years, the Astros? Same thing.
Doesn’t soccer have more metrics than just goals scored?
17,000 doesn’t sound all that small to me. In the U.S., baseball has leagues of different levels. I did some checking on the Boston Red Sox. Their triple-A affiliate has a stadium that seats about 9,500. Their double-A team, which plays in Portland, Maine, has a stadium that seats 7,368, and which they share with two local high schools. If they had a couple great seasons and got into the Major League, it would be a little bizarre trying to host 81 games, with all the visiting players, coaches, staffs, broadcasters, sportswriters, and fans in such a small city. It would take a few hundred million to build a stadium that’s comparable to others in the majors, with no guarantee that they’d still be in the major league when it was ready.
I think it would take a major culture shift to have relegation and promotion in American sports. The practicalities of ownership, contracts, stadiums, rules, and schedules are all based on the idea that once you’re in a league, you get to stay there.
Exactly this. American sports and European sports simply developed along very different paths.
In the U.S., for gridiron football and basketball, the “next level down” below the NFL and NBA is college sports. For baseball and hockey, the next level down below MLB and the NHL is professional minor leagues, but the teams in the highest levels of the minor leagues are at least partially controlled by teams in the top tier, and are used as developmental systems for the top teams’ prospects.
Yes, or sometimes longer. But a drafted player goes into a minor league team that is controlled by the major league team that drafted him.
I know, but even if you got rid of that relationship, and the minor league teams were fully independent, it’s hard to imagine a place like Portland having the resources to support a major league baseball team.
Big league sports have become a huge business in the U.S. Part of the reason, for good or ill, is that people (and cities) can invest in the future, knowing that they’ll stick around for a while. Teams sign stadium leases that last for decades. Take away that certainty and a lot of other things would change.
Maybe the U.S. equivalent of relegation is when a franchise moves from one city to another. In the U.S., you don’t lose your team because some other city plays better, you lose them when some other city offers more money. I heard my grandfather refer to Al Davis as “money-grubbing bastard” more than once.
Also, is no one going to comment on “Podunk United” and Metropolis FC"? I was kinda proud of those.