The Soccer Thread (Version 15) — I Got 115 Problems But a Pep Ain’t One

Not this time.

 

Captain America!

Pulisic: 'Olimpico' goal for Milan 'a bit of luck'

 

Not going to go in the GK’s highlight reel.

 

Nice start for Clevs, but the last couple of fixtures have been meh, especially getting crushed by those twats from Luton.

 

Saw very brief highlights on the EFL's Youtube channel, but it didn't really give any insight into the match overall.

My Leeds sources said it was ropey for Leeds after they scored the two early goals. Watford is big and it gave Leeds problems. The one goal Watford scored didn't reflect well on Leeds' defense.

I'm relatively pleased with Leeds so far. They've played a brutal schedule (they've played every club in the top eight in the Championship and they play No. 9 on Saturday) and are still near the top. Schedule finally gets kinder in November.

Championship also doesn't have three clubs setting a stupid points pace like last season when Leeds would have gone up automatically in almost any other season.

 

MLS to fall-spring? Are they going to avoid playing on football Saturdays or Sundays?

MLS is considering changing to a fall-spring calendar after the 2026 World Cup

 

The Europoseurs still won't watch. MLS isn't "authentic", they'll say, and the level of play is still beneath their exacting standards. It doesn't even have pro/rel!

I'm sure the people at MLS and SUM -- as well as some highly compensated consultants -- know what they're doing in considering this shift. The J-League is doing the same for the 2026-27 season, so MLS will have a close cousin to consult and/or steal ideas from if it makes the switch.

 

They know there are teams that play in outdoor stadiums, right? Chicago? New York? Minnesota? Sounds like a good way to kill a league.

 

Europoseurs? C’mon man.

I have nothing against MLS at all, it seems to be doing just fine, I’ve been to matches in several cities and would go again, but the subset of fans who think you should follow MLS at the exclusion of anything else are weird. Me personally? I was into English soccer before MLS existed so I’m not about to just walk away from that just because ‘Merica.

And the fact that the MLS-or-die crew cry about alleged snobbery when what they want is unquestioned provincialism is rich.

And yes, MLS has flaws. Their current TV deal is shit. I watched matches and their weekly highlight show when they were on ESPN, but I’m not getting AppleTV for MLS.

Their regular season has a form, I guess, but the ever-changing schedule structure, due partly to seemingly never-ending expansion, makes it incoherent. What do I care if FC Cincinnati is playing Houston Dynamo? It’s just random. At least a random match in a European league has theoretical table ramifications.

Which does bring me to pro/rel. Yeah, it’s a problem. I would never expect a start-up league to adopt pro/rel in the same way it works in Europe with a deep and vast ladder system, but what MLS could do is get to whatever the hell its desired number is, be it 32, 40, 48, whatever and have a limited pro/rel with two divisions. MLS Premier and MLS Championship. You could even still keep the playoff where the top six in each conference from Premier make it and the top two in the Championship do too. Or something similar.

Relegation is just as much a part of a soccer season as contending for a championship is. It’s necessary to create passion, and yeah, fear of failure which generates some of that passion. Otherwise, you get clubs like Chicago Fire, who just exist without jeopardy. They’re basically the 1980s/1990s Tampa Bay Bucs or L.A. Clippers. They suck without much motivation to get their shit together.

I don’t really care about quality of play in MLS, honestly. That’s all relative. So long as matches are competitive and the league isn’t totally unbalanced with have’s and have not’s, it’s all good.

I just think it’s a big ole soccer world out there. To rip fans for watching or not watching one league or another just seems silly to me. It also reeks of little brother syndrome. MLS is doing fine for what it has chosen to be.

 

Thinking about this a bit more, MLS has recognizable rivalries, but they get lost in the big conference tables. So against the traditional norms of soccer, maybe the league would be better served with NFL-style divisions?

It would add more context to the regular season. You play your divisional teams home-and-away for certain. Maybe twice each depending on division size.

I know I’d have a better handle on MLS regular season if they went this route. It would also foster more distinct rivalries.

Hell, if MLS got to 32 clubs, you could get rid of conferences entirely and just have eight divisions stand alone with 12 intra-divisional matches and 24 out-of-division matches. You’d skip one division each season.

 

It's idiotic, but I wonder if the cold-weather cities would have enough votes to be a blocking minority. The article mentions this but the real bonanza for these clubs at least in terms of player development is training talented players from central and south America up to the point where they can be sold to European audiences. Aston Villa super sub Jhon Duran, who Chicago Fire signed for $2M as a 17-year-old before flipping him to AVFC for $18M plus add-ons. Between that and Gaga Slonina to Chelsea, the Fire made more money on those two transfers combined than they did on all their commercial revenue in 2021.

How Jhon Duran’s Aston Villa transfer impacts Chicago Fire, MLS’s U-22 initiative

 

Ten Hag out