In the FIFA WC thread, @Maserschmidt mentions “the five major leagues plus the MLS”. I know that the MLS is well below the big Euro leagues, but England, at least, has many levels.
Where would you slot them in? I think these are the relevant levels:
Premier
Champion
League 1
League 2
National League
Below National League
I’m going to guess Champion league. MLS is not at all as bad as it used to be, but still not Premier League level by any means. Maybe one or two MLS teams, at their best, could get briefly promoted to Premier, then sent back down.
I don’t remember the source, but a soccer writer more knowledgeable than I warranted that the bottom half of MLS would probably be the top half of Championship, and the top half of MLS would be the bottom half of Premier.
As for me personally, I couldn’t say.
My guess is somewhere near the bottom of the Championship but better than League 1.
Maybe middle of the Championship for the better MLS teams. I could see the very best possible making the playoffs for promotion.
Here is one particular ranking of leagues that has MLS at 10, just below Serie A (Brazil, not Italy). With the Championship at 7.
Similarly, soccer is not the afterthought in US sports that it once was. All of these articles about it, from foreign sources, are talking about how soccer-indifferent Americans are warming up to the World Cup and then will go back to forgetting about it again. What these articles fail to mention is that, by one metric anyway*, soccer is more popular than baseball and is in third place behind (gridiron) football and basketball.
*The metric this source used was the answer to the question, “What is your favorite sport?” Some 17% answered soccer; I don’t know what the other two got. Needless to say, there are a million ways to identify the most popular sport in [place] - butts in the seats, broadcast revenue, general revenue, etc.
Thanks! This looks pretty dispositive, but I welcome more opinions.
Those club rankings have the top MLS teams (Vancouver, San Diego) around #130 globally. That puts them between Norwich (#127, finished 9th in the Championship) and Hull City (#146, finished 6th in the Championship).
So that source at least backs up my supposition that the very best MLS teams might fight to make the Championship playoffs.
It’s very very hard to trust these rankings very much, of course, since these teams basically never play each other in meaningful matches.
ETA: One more data point. My local MLS team (St Louis City SC) is quite bad and is ranked around #410. That’s on par with Blackpool who finished 13th in League 1.
Yeah, WTF is that about? I was so excited when St. Louis got a franchise. The greatest soccer city in America without a soccer team! It’s finally been rectified! They had an amazing first season and then tanked.
Well, there are a number of factors.
First, they dramatically over performed their actual level that first season. The number of flukey goals and lucky bounces was ridiculous. So they were never actually that good.
Then when the second season started poorly they dumped their coach and tried to rebuild the team. That coach (Bradley Carnell) has since gone to Philly, won coach of the year, and then got sacked this year after a horrific start. So perhaps his style is one that only works for awhile.
But also they have refused to spend all of the money the could, and their decision to use their Designed Players on a goalie, an old striker (since moved on), and a midfielder that unfortunately had a series of injuries and then missed a lot of time with a sick wife, hasn’t helped either.
They have slowly built themselves up from awful to mediocre, so I guess that’s progress.
MLS also has an unfortunate situation where due to the salary limits designated players can pretty much choose where they want to go. So the big-name foreign players are never going to come to St Louis when they can go to Miami or Vancouver or LA.
I’ve watched a lot of Championship football and some MLS games over the last 15 years. Championship on TV/streaming. Many of the MLS games in person.
Somehow it seems like the intensity of the Championship is higher. Maybe it’s just the crowd that makes it seem that way. The vast majority of the MLS crowd seems to having a nice night out, not witnessing a gladiatorial contest involving a close family member.
My gut feeling is that the best of the MLS is mid table Championship quality.
Based on my limited experience with English football, the fans have a lot more in common with Southern college football fans than they do with any US major league professional sports fans. It’s that same tribal identity/almost religious fervor that college sports engender in the US, complete with the songs, fandom being part of people’s identity, and so forth.
So the intensity level in the English system is naturally going to be higher than in the US pro sports.
It’s closest to the Championship for sure. Might be below it, but it’s not as far below it as League 1 is below MLS.
I agree that the Championship is more intense than MLS, but it’s also often pretty ugly and brutish. Not that MLS can’t be, but I find it more aesthetic on average.
I concur; about halfway between the Championship and League One.