Soccer: MLS vs. Top-Tier European Leagues, Is The Quality Of Play Significantly Different?

The Game Room
21

Nonsense.

Let’s take Leicester City (my Foxes!) FC: Three years ago, they barely stayed up. Two years ago, they won the League in one of the all-time startling seasons ever in sport. Last year, they struggled to stay up for much of the season, before firing the manager and finishing mid-table. They are the epitome of the EPL (non-Top-Six).

In recent times, (before they sold two of them), their starting lineup contained the starting Danish national team goalkeeper, the starting Austrian left-back, a starting French mid-fielder, an English mid-fielder, a starting Algerian mid-fielder/wing, a starting Japanese striker and one of about three or four regularly used English strikers. In the last two years, they brought in another Algerian national team member and a regular for the Nigerian national team. And this is without counting the occasional caps won by others in the team from friendlies, etc.

There are damn few MLS teams which can boast such a lineup of current world soccer stars. And Leicester aren’t the only EPL team that have such a lineup; the EPL is literally littered with starting national team members from countries which routinely either qualify for the World Cup, or make strong campaigns to do so.

In short, the MLS still is weak by comparison. An MLS team would be relegated within one season, and frankly might be relegated from the League Championship division in England. And they continue to face the conundrum of trying to play top-level Americans, while everyone knows that those Americans need to go to Europe to truly develop into top-level world-class footballers. It’s no shock that America’s best efforts on the world stage came at a time when we had a number of foreign league transplants playing for us. But Americans are never comfortable accepting that we are second-best at anything, so MLS cannot afford to play the part of, say, the Dutch Eredivisie, or the top leagues in Brazil and Argentina, which act as feeders to the EPL, the Bundesliga, Serie A, and La Liga.

Note that we are not alone in this. México’s national team has suffered for years, many think, from the fact that Mexican players hate playing outside the country. Javier “Chicharito” Hernández is one of the few who has been successful in Europe. This, in the opinion of many, causes the Mexican team to underperform on the world stage. Liga MX simply isn’t as good as its Spanish counterpart.

22

DSYoungEsq tells the truth. Whether it still will be the truth a generation hence, harder to say.

23

The St. Louis Stars were a founding member of the NPSL in 1967 (which became the NASL a year later.) The first couple of years the team had decent attendance (by U.S. pro soccer standards) the first few years but was losing money. They ended up playing in a small college football stadium and moved to Anaheim in 1978.

OTOH St. Louis fans love professional indoor soccer, despite the purists calling it “pinball.”

24

In fairness to MLS, I cannot say that they are going about it “wrong.” They have raised the national attention level to their league considerably since it started. And, while purists like me continue to suggest that some things should be changed to conform to international norms (modify the schedule and introduce promotion/relegation, for two examples), it cannot be stated with certainty that doing so would be beneficial to MLS. And, if MLS doesn’t make it, we are back to square minus one.

Don’t expect anything to change in the near future, however. The recent USSF Presidency election shows that it is same ol’, same ol’ at the top of the power structure, even despite our pitiful showing in qualifying this last go around. :mad:

25

Can you explain what you mean by “modify the schedule”?

26

He means a August to May schedule that is played by the Big 4 leagues in Western Europe. However, some people mistakenly call it the “international schedule” when something like 40 leagues play a calendar year schedule (including Brazil and some of the Scandinavian leagues).

27

The goal (ha!) of MLS is to make money for the owners of MLS. To that end, they are doing pretty well although they are fairly secretive about their revenue streams beyond the TV rights. No one owns a team; they are granted rights by the league to operate a team by virtue of being an investor in MLS. While some teams do better than others, in general they all sink or swim together.

28

Historically the goal has also been to advance soccer in the US. The original owners of MLS lost hundreds of millions in the first decade of the league (it almost shut down in 2001, and by some reports it actually did for 24 hours). Nowadays they are likely making money (not really by TV rights though which are fairly small, more by gate receipts, sponsorship deals, etc) and the future looks bright, but I bet that the Anschultz family, the Hunt family, and Kraft family are never going to make enough to offset the massive losses they incurred in the 90s.

29

Yeah right. Who’s going to watch an outdoor soccer game in Chicago in January? Who’s going to play an outdoor soccer game in Chicago in January? I may be mistaken, but I think Western Europe’s climate is a bit more forgiving than the USA’s. Syncing up the schedules makes sense on paper, but in practice it would be a disaster.

30

Correct, as it stands now. Though, could you play outdoor soccer in an indoor arena? On something like Field Turf?

I’ve played soccer at the secondary/high school level, on grass obviously, and I know from experience that the ball plays a lot different on astroturf. I also know that the Houston Texans’s attempts at playing sports on interlinked trays with grass on them, doesn’t work that well. But are modern artificial surfaces good enough at mimicking grass that you could realistically play a sport like outdoor soccer indoors?

Or we could just go the Qatar route and have open-air stadiums that will still be climate controlled. Which would be something to see…

31

10 years ago as a young junior lawyer, I was part of a team which dealt with the Krafts on a transaction (not involving the Revolution or sports in general).

I cam away thinking that those guys just love sports. They’d sponsor a cricket team or Gaelic Football team in the US if they could and even if it lost them money.

32

The Bundesliga has a winter break, and the Russian and several eastern Euro and Northern leagues play in summer and autumn.

Plus Euro soccer does have retractable roof stadia as well. The US seems to perfer domes, AFAIK the Superbowl is always played in a roofed or a domed stadium since its played in Winter.

No reason why soccer cannot be played inside a domed stadium. Maybe if the US had more retractable roof stadia, it might not see as much resistance.

33

The Super Bowl has been played in outdoor stadia, always in more forgiving climates like Miami or Pasadena.

And while putting soccer in domed stadia makes sense, as things stand most MLS teams play in outdoor, soccer-specific stadia that were built specifically for the team.

34

Those tend to be pricey. And MLS teams don’t make that much money to allow for that. Minnesota is building an absolutely gorgeous 20-25k seater stadium with a slight covering (over the seating area) and it’ll cost them $250million. Between that and $300mil is kind of the limit for most MLS teams - the sweet spot between a nice stadium and making money on that kind of spending. Now you also have some that are co-owned by NFL team owners that can make use of bigger, nicer stadia (such as Atlanta United playing in Mercedes Benz Stadium, with a retractable, well eventually, roof).

35

Several seem to share an NFL stadium. Like the aforementioned Revolution. Which I think is a better idea.

36

It is only a better idea if the same owner owns both teams. Otherwise, the tenant tends to lose out on a vast amount of money (concessions, naming rights, etc.). It’s why MLS after it climbed out from almost folding was so adamant about soccer specific stadiums.

37

Not only that, but the rent is outrageous. Teams like Kansas City, that moved from 80% empty NFL stadiums to smaller venues have done wonderfully. Far far better fan experience as well. NFL stadiums can work for probably 3 teams in the league because they can draw 30k+ regularly.

38

There’s no really good way to make it work, probably. Russia is in the middle of an experiment to try and accommodate the “normal” European soccer calendar. They run their Premier League from mid-July until mid-December, then break until the first week of March. Twenty games are played prior to the break, and another ten are played after the break, for a total of 30 games.

This creates problems for teams playing in the European competitions. Those teams which qualify for the “spring” knockout phases return to competition in mid-February (the Champions League starts up play today). So Russian teams which make it through must return to European games before they are back to playing league games. Most of the teams manage this by going on holiday over the break to a warmer country (Spain, Italy, etc.) and playing friendly matches there. See, for example, the schedule of Lokomotiv Moskva. (Friendlies listed here)

South America’s leagues have always been a bit different. This is because “winter” in the southern hemisphere is during European summertime. But it is compounded by the fact that countries like Brazil lie on or close to the Equator, making play during their “summertime” problematic. During the World Cup 2014, games in Manaus, especially, were played in quite difficult conditions. However, they make it work, adjusting as needed every four years for the World Cup.

Probably, the United States has no good answer. But one can make the strong argument, based upon results to date, that status quo is not the best.

39

I can attest to this from experience. OCSC and The Pride played in Camping World Stadium, essentially a football stadium, and drew well, but huge swaths of the stadium were left open. Once they build their own stadium it turned into near capacity every game. This drove ticket prices up (more revenue) and also invited other events to happen in it as well such as US National Team games, International Friendlies and we’re currently trying to nab a World Cup game or two.

Plus the environment is totally different. It’s much louder, much rowdier and makes it more intimidating to play in for the other team.

40

Super Bowl 48 was played in an outdoor stadium in New Jersey, in 2014. It was the first time the game was held in an outdoor stadium in a cold weather area.

https://weather.com/sports-recreation/superbowl/news/5-worst-weather-super-bowls-nfl-title-games-20131014#/1

Of course, the forecast was awful and they thought they’d have to delay the game, but it turned out to be a mild, clear day.

The article linked above talks about NFL championship games that happened in bad weather. Even an outdoor game in Florida might have a really bad storm!