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.
17 responses so far ↓
1 Will // Mar 23, 2007 at 4:43 pm
I’m gonna have to take you up on a few issues here, Dave. I love the idea of promotion and relegation; hell, I even cooked up a half-baked scheme to shoehorn some semblance of it into the expected 14-team MLS of next year (see my website link in this comment). However, the American situation just doesn’t fit with pro-rel as a viable business model. The English system has 92 fully professional teams spread across about 58,000 square miles, including the entirety of Wales you need just to count Swansea, Wrexham, and my Cardiff City “Bluebirds.” The US and Canada manage 36 teams that are ostensibly professional with more than 3.8 million square miles in the US alone. Furthermore, the English system basically evolved from something akin to a bunch of your local adult soccer associations, which do typically have pro-rel. The “club” part of the name in English football clubs is historically VERY significant. The English expect pro-rel, because the clubs in the premiership have ALWAYS been subject to it. Let’s not forget either the fact that the US has four leagues of team sports, including one code of football, with more history and fan loyalty than any of the soccer leagues can hope for in the next 50 years.
The upshot is this: a relegated team in England can count on travel costs being reasonable, on the ownership & fans understanding that this is how it works, and that Association football is by far the dominant team sport in their country.
A team in America that was relegated from MLS would suddenly find that their revenues had been reduced to almost nothing while travel budgets and other expenses would stay pretty much the same. Even the promoted USL team would likely find its stadium inadequate, the costs of paying the salaries astronomical, and suddenly the small profit or bearable loss the team took last year balloons into something crippling, and there is no pot of the gold at the end of the rainbow where the owners can make back all the operating losses by selling the team for a profit.
Good call on the Copa Libertadores, though, and I hope the concafcaf tie in with copa america will be a good first step.
2 Dave // Mar 23, 2007 at 5:08 pm
Will,
I see your point, and I understand that travel costs are a huge reason why “pro-rel” seems unlikely to happen in America. The original closed-corp franchise model was created by American baseball owners in large part because they feared travel costs would eat into the budgets of relegated teams. Perhaps the pure economics of the situation just makes the whole idea unfeasible.
On the other hand, that doesn’t mean I have to like it, and it certainly doesn’t make MLS any less a dead-end league for footballers, from what I can see. The entire system could use an overhaul. Until it gets one, I’ll stick with the Prem, thanks.
3 Georgina Best // Mar 24, 2007 at 5:05 pm
Fascinating to read about how differently ‘soccer’ is viewed in the US compared to the UK where as I am sure you know it is as big as it gets
4 joejoejoe // Mar 24, 2007 at 5:07 pm
USL First Division teams play from Puerto Rico to Vancouver, Miami from Minnesota, and from Atlanta to San Francisco. I don’t think travel costs are what prevent relegation/promotion from happening.
http://www.uslsoccer.com/schedules/2007/6187380.html
I’m rooting for the USL to take off and the MLS to either accept relegation/promotion as the Premiere Division in North America or to fail. Closed leagues are about franchise profits, not competition. You can have both with relegation/promotion.
5 randjamal // Mar 24, 2007 at 5:21 pm
You’re dead on when you say that american soccer fans dont like MLS because its to americanized. I also would agree, however, with Will that relegation would not be sustainable in the US. I the answer is contraction. The US doesn’t have the talent base to field 14 quality teams (you could argue we don’t have the talent for one team). If you reduce the league to 10 (or fewer) teams and open up to competition with central and south america, I think you would see a marked improvement in quality of play.
6 Doug // Mar 24, 2007 at 5:35 pm
In all fairness I don’t think American soccer fans care about the drama at the bottom of the EPL or other top leagues. That’s even the case in England where the top teams draw the biggest revenues and crowds; the disparity isn’t even close. That said I’m all in favor of relegation whether it be MLS, NFL, MLB, or NBA. I don’t know if it will work in the MLS where there aren’t a lot of teams to swap with, and more importantly in a league that is trying to establish brand recognition. It’s hard to get fans interested in a team when the league is changing every year.
7 joejoejoe // Mar 24, 2007 at 7:18 pm
The beauty of relegation/promotion isn’t that the teams change – the teams stay the same. It’s the level of competition and degree of challenge that changes.
USL First Division average 4,600 fans a game and has 13 teams. There are 10 Second Division teams and 63 Premier Development League teams. That’s 86 communties with soccer to follow tranfers, promotion, relegation. A PDL team might sell a player to First Division – a mid-table First Division team put a player on loan to a PDL team trying to get promoted.
There is a lot to follow but it’s FUN to follow this stuff if you are soccer fan. If you are a soccer fan in Atlanta it’s easier to support your local side even if they are First Division than to get excited about the Kansas City Wizards vs. Real Salt Lake on TV?
Read Yanks Abroad – there are 50+ Americans playing in the various leagues in Europe. You can root for American soccer success without rooting for MLS.
8 Colin // Mar 24, 2007 at 11:13 pm
American soccer fans…
*sigh*
“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…”
I think at some point, the goal is not to attract more American soccer fans, but to CREATE more. Appealing to a broader range of soccer fans in the US is just chasing rapidly diminishing returns.
9 joejoejoe // Mar 25, 2007 at 10:23 am
There is a difference between marketing soccer to new fans and marketing to a larger market. Relegation/promotion, transfers, and ties to your local club are all part of soccer around the world. Why wouldn’t you want to duplicate these elements instead of relying on spectacle and marketing to grow? MLS is about growing the MLS revenues. USL is about growing the sport.
The USL Rochester team averages 10,000 fans a game. That’s better than 2 MLS franchises. I didn’t even know the USL existed as it’s presently constructed until a few weeks ago. There is a lot of organic support for soccer in the US that goes untapped because of the MLS business model – sell for the sake of selling – instead of building the game.
10 Rick // Mar 26, 2007 at 1:52 pm
Dave,
When was relegation ever a consideration of professional baseball?
11 Dave // Mar 26, 2007 at 2:06 pm
Rick: It was a consideration back in the mid-1870s when the National League was first being formed, but it was quickly voted down out of fear that travel costs and big city dominance would sink the sport. The original NL owners insisted on a closed-corporation model as a means of building the sport’s infrastructure.
Given the land mass of America and the limited travel options at the time, it probably wasn’t a bad idea. A lot of those same limitations don’t exist in this century, though.
12 Will // Mar 26, 2007 at 3:55 pm
I still have to confess that I’m not optimistic for the prospects of pro/rel in American Soccer, at least not without another decade like the late 80′s to early 90s when there is no outdoor league that is a compelling career path to the better players in America.
joejoejoe: I won’t take you up the USL-1 and -2 teams, but to put the PDL teams in any way on the same level as the professional teams seems a bit off base to me. The PDL teams are made up of college kids playing in their off-season and they have to toe the line on NCAA amateurism rules. I don’t think they’re adding an awful lot to the demand for high-level soccer in the States.
Dave: I only even give a darn about soccer because I went to a live game, after giving up more than once trying to watch soccer on TV. I think the difference may even even more than the legendary difference between seeing ice hockey live versus on TV. Having been bitten by the bug, I can appreciate the game on TV much more than before, but I don’t think we should let Soccer be a TV-only experience. I will try to support the highest level of outdoor soccer in the US, whatever its shortcomings, and I just happen to believe that more progress can be made by supporting MLS and encouraging the league’s evolution than from yet another cycle of tearing it down, waiting half a generation, and starting again from (almost) scratch.
That said, I do hope something happenes to prove me wrong about pro-rel, because I think it’s a wonderful system when revenue is shared properly. Also, we have GOT to do something to fix the MLS playoffs: 8 of 13 teams into a simple, three round tournament! It’s a joke, and I hate it, but I will keep watching for all the reasons I explained above.
13 Mike // Apr 4, 2007 at 11:53 pm
Everyone remarks how European states are smaller and that’s why pro/rel works over there.
Yet, y’all seem to forget that the US and Canada are federations of hypothetically independent states/provinces. The political reason for the creation of European-sized states/provinces was that they were manageable to govern.
So, here’s a novel idea…
What if states/provinces with large association football communities (like New York, Washington, Ontario, California, etc) each had their own governing bodies and domestic league systems (with pro/rel). The winners of each state Premier League would get a berth in the CONCACAF Champions Cup, where Amero-Canadians would have a chance to see their greatest clubs face one another while facing the greatest clubs from the rest of CONCACAF.
Don’t say there isn’t enough support for this system, and England is about the size of three US states and has thousands of clubs. True athletic clubs can only form where the emphasis is on amateur play and local play FIRST, and professional play LATER.
The real stumbling block is getting FIFA to grant governing bodies to states it doesn’t consider ‘sovereign.’ It did for the constituent countries of the UK, but it probably wouldn’t here. I would love to root for a New York national team if that ever happened, but oh well. A possible way around said block is if the USSF/CSA delegates its powers to states/provinces. It’s not like their really ‘governing’ anything now anyway—just kissing MLS butt.
Viva decentralizacion. Viva futbol!
14 JOE HEFFERNAN // Jul 29, 2007 at 12:33 pm
Do you know of any other countries/leagues that don’t have relegation?
15 Dave // Jul 29, 2007 at 7:30 pm
The Australian A-League doesn’t have a corresponding B-League where teams get relegated.
The Canadian Soccer League doesn’t have a pro-rel system, either, but it’s mostly a semipro league, and there are MLS and USL teams in Canada.
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