OT: MLS Expansion

[slu06]

Average attendance stat is misleading. MLS plays 30 some games. NBA and NHL can play over 100 with playoffs. Not quite the same thing. MLS backers tout it all the time but there is no real basis to it.

Surely MLS has had some successes. Becoming a retirement league has attracted money and prestige to it. Then again some other leagues have adopted the same tactics and are stealing MLS' thunder in this regard.

I don't see the long term plan of developing young talent as feasible. What young American player wants to play in MLS unless he has to? Most of them are choosing Europe. MLS will always face this problem, they just don't have the talent to attract more talent and they never will.

European leagues are sustainable because of TV money. MLS will never get that.

MLS just jumped right in. They refused to grow their product slowly because they can't. Stadium costs, growing salaries, then exhorbitant expansion fees. American demand just isn't going to support this in the long term. Euro soccer has taken off with the added American demand for games on PPV or friendlies in the states. MLS won't get world demand of its product either because they don't play for regional cups or at least try and they aren't on the same schedule as the rest of the world. Can't play MLS during that time, it gets swallowed up by football, basketball, hockey.

There are just so many variable going against it. I just don't think they are building ultimately a sustainable league.

Clint Dempsey, apparently...

[kwyjibo]

I think you're being a bit over the top. Of course the term is a generalization and it's not so much that they like the EPL or European soccer in general it's their complete disdain for American soccer. I've been called a beer snob and the term probably fits, however, over the last 10 years there are many young professional (don't want to say yuppie) who take my beer snobbery to a whole new level ...Yes Pistol, that's you in case you weren't sure.

And if the Packer fan happened to think that all football besides the Pack was of lesser quality and beneath the Packers or beneath him to even watch ... Yes, he'd be a cheeseheadsnob. Btw ... cheeseheadsnob is all one word

The "EuroSnob" epithet is still a fiction and still a projection unless I hear EXACTLY what the alleged snobbery is. There are many ways MLS is inferior to other leagues (so what there are ways in which it is better as well) but that is why I used the Greek league as an example above. Rooting for PAOK in an American Pub and having no interest in the Revs is not snobbery--it is a choice.

So, if I drink a gueuze or drive an hour to get a case of Heady Topper (or get some Hill Farmstead Arthur) does that automatically make me a beer snob (because if you think so you are using the word wrong). I would be a snob if I thought I was better than you because I liked them (I don't, people like different things) OR if I thought you SHOULD like these things (the gueuze is a good example of something I love but I very much understand why most people do not like them or would never bother with them). This is exactly what I experience when people like different soccer teams (and watch different leagues). Your not a snob for liking something different but you are a bully (and have your own issues) if you project snobbery onto people who like different things. It is precisely THIS name calling that makes MLS fans weak--it smacks of desperation.

Yes, Cheeseheadsnob is one word; apologies.

[slufanskip]

I think you are overanalyzing the term. I'd actually never heard the word but took it as a term for people who seem to look down on American soccer.

Thanks for having the decency to admit your mistake in regards to the word cheeseheadsnob. It shows you are a class human being and not a grammersnob