All told, I’m still relatively new to this whole Association Football thing, but I like to think of myself as a quick study. I watch the Premiership games on Fox Soccer Channel, and I have a much better appreciation for this type of football than I did a couple of years ago, when a friend of mine kept getting minor injuries while playing soccer, and I kept telling her, “Why are you still playing that evil, evil sport?” (Of course, I only kept telling her this because those injuries kept her off the dance floor, and she was one of my favorite dance partners, but there you go…)
One of the things I’ve picked up on in the last six months, though, is that soccer fans in America don’t seem to pay a whole lot of attention to American soccer. Sure, it’s big news when Fulham signs another Yank (Clint Dempsey, holla!), but that’s just a sign that the European football clubs get the most attention — especially the Premiership and the UEFA Champions League, which show up on American TV the most, in no small part because those are thought to be the top levels of the game on the planet. Major League Soccer? It’s not even close to being at that level, which is the main reason the best American players go to Europe and only the old, washed-up players sign with MLS teams.
Why? Maybe because MLS is just too damn American.
Remember a couple of weeks ago when I wrote about promotion and relegation in other soccer leagues? While every other country’s league sends its crappy teams down to a lower level, MLS operates like a closed-corporation league, just like all the other American sports leagues. Bad MLS teams this season will still be MLS teams next season.
This is a flying load of horse shit. Soccer fans in America care about the Prem because there’s just as much drama at the bottom of the standings as there is at the top. We want to see which teams qualify for Europe just as much as we want to see which teams get relegated to the Championship. Why doesn’t this exist in MLS?
Simply put, MLS owners are pussies. They don’t give an actual damn about winning. They just want to turn a profit with their soccer teams with as minimal an investment as possible — just like William Clay Ford with the Detroit Lions and Donald Sterling with the L.A. Clippers. They know there’s an audience in America for this form of football, so they just throw a league out there, get the TV networks to buy into it, and that’s that.
How can you tell they’re all money-grubbing scum who don’t respect the game? Just read Soccernista’s take on Robert Kraft’s dealings with New England Revolution star Shalrie Joseph. Granted, Kraft has a history of being a cheap bastard; just ask Deion Branch. How do you explain, then, that he’ll finally open up his wallet when the Patriots finally lose an AFC title game to the Colts, but he won’t give a rising MLS star an extra $15,000 on his next contract and won’t let him transfer to a European team?
Cheap bullshit like that fueled the Black Sox Scandal in baseball nine decades ago. Who’s to say it wouldn’t breed the same thing in MLS before this decade is over? Soccer’s not immune to this. Just ask the Italians.
Then there are those international competitions organized by CONCACAF, an organization that is sucking up to MLS and U.S. Soccer in the most unfathomable ways. CONCACAF is the Confederation of North, Central American and Caribbean Association Football. That means clubs competing in the CONCACAF Champions Cup, which is going on right now, come from the U.S., Canada, Mexico, and a bunch of Central American and Caribbean countries that rarely ever field teams that get past the World Cup group stage.
Ooooooh, pinch me. Let’s watch a bunch of MLS teams attempt to beat up on crap teams from tiny countries with lousy economies. Let’s goad a Mexican goalie into going spikes-up at our American boys, because there’s just not enough animosity between the people of those two countries as it is. And people wonder why the U.S. team never seems to get any better? How about because MLS clubs are already at the level of competition they choose to play every year, and it’s not that high?
The irony here is that some people think making soccer more like other American sports will pull more American fans. Again, this is just more horse shit. American soccer fans don’t want more commercial breaks, more loud music or more cheerleaders… wait, scratch that last bit. More cheerleaders are always good. Everything else is crap.
If you want to grab American soccer fans, give them a product that soccer fans can respect. Give them an American Premier League. Relegate the worst MLS team down to USL First Division, and promote the USL champion to MLS. Every other league worth its salt does this, and it forces club owners to build winners. Why should MLS owners be all fat and happy and entitled to tax write-offs, when no one else on the planet is? You should pay the price if you fail.
Second, open up international competition with South American clubs. Let MLS teams compete in Copa Libertadores and find out just how much further they have to go to be a true world football contender. After a few years of embarrassments in Brazil and Argentina, owners might be more inclined to open up their wallets and make American soccer something more than just a game for pre-teens, college girls and foreigners.
Those two things will make MLS something a little more than a dead end. Like I said, though, MLS owners are pussies, so they probably won’t do either. Until they do, I can’t be arsed to care. I’ll be watching the Premiership. And the NFL. And the Australian Football League, if my ISP doesn’t decide to shut me down for overuse of BitTorrent.
