Wynalda tell hime Rome to suck his ****!

Comedy is my real career. This journalism stuff is just a hobby.

 

Hopefully you're better at the hobby.

 

It is NEVER "the" MLS. MLS is short for "Major League Soccer," just as MLB is short for "Major League Baseball." Do you say "the Major League Baseball"?

No, unless you are doing a Latka Gravas impersonation. So please, MLS, never "the" MLS.

As for the endless blathering about how "soccer will never catch on here!!!!!!!!" Perhaps. But what do you mean by "catch on"? People playing it? People watching it on TV? Seems both are a reality.

Now, if you refer to attendance for MLS . . . . I'm not sure what you guys think MLS' attendance goals are. They're not stupid, they're realistic. They know that, for instance, the NBA took a lot of time to truly "catch on!" And they're aware of how many options American sports fans have. They don't expect to sell out every game, they don't expect to even reach 15,000 in attendance per game in every market. They just wanted to gain a foothold, and strengthen it by getting more investors interested in it. Maybe 10,000 a game, considering that some markets kill the average.

A league which started with a million problems (and which still retains hundreds of thousands of them), which many gave zero chance of surviving, is now in its 12th season. I personally felt it wouldn't reach Year 10 after the 1998 World Cup debacle and the 2001 contraction of the Florida teams. But it's still around, with the most recognizable soccer player in the world (and one of the more well-known athletes - yes, even moreso than Michelle Wie) having agreed to play for the marquee franchise. Three years ago, MLS was a House of Cards, with Phil Anschutz, Robert Kraft and Lamar Hunt owning just about every team between the three of them. Now, there are more owners, with new investors buying Kansas City, Chivas USA being born, Toronto FC, Houston has new owners, etc. So survival is no longer a question, esepcially with footholds in the fanbases in Mexico and Canada.

Next, hopefully they concentrate on building the product that is there, and don't expand too quickly. If they're smart - which they are, those horrible ESPN ads notwithstanding - then they won't shoot too much higher as far as trying to break into the sports pantheon. Because as far as this lifelong soccer wonk is concerned, my expectations for MLS' "catching on!!!" have been exceeded. As has been said on this thread, all the new stadiums, in which teams can make money instead of paying rent to an NFL team, will help it survive.

Now I just wouldn't mind if people could just shut the fuck up and let me and other fans and journalists enjoy the damn sport. Ignore it, and perhaps we can consign to memory the loudmouth protests of Dick Young at the Pele-to-Cosmos press conference in the 1970s, and Frank Deford's sad "You can't use your feet! It's bizarre! There's no scoring! It's un-American!!!" complaints of just last summer.

Live and let live. Change the fucking channel.

Pretty please. With sugar on top.

 

Piotr, since you're on an editing frenzy, Bob Kraft has only owned the Revolution, as far as I know.

 

Kraft took over the San Jose Earthquakes for about a year (around 2000). It was not, as Bay Area soccer fans will surely tell you, the franchise's shining hour.

 

Wow, yeah, I was way off. Nevermind.

 

Too often, I re-read my posts and realize I should have been nicer. Sorry for the "editing frenzy;" I'll endeavr to be more dilligent in my pre-editing in the future.

Kraft has been a major figure for the league regardless of how many teams he owns, because he's a major NFL owner who threw his support behind soccer. Hunt has been a soccer guy for decades. So Kraft is worth men tioning, since he's the name most non-soccer fans have definitely heard of.

 

I was just busting on you, because as soon as there's a "new" icon on this thread I jump on it.

 

Which is why I'd say MLS can overtake the NHL (but not the NBA) in the next generation or two. Soccer has no geographic limitations, unlike hockey, which is a cold-weather sport and isn't part of the fabric (in terms of participation and tradition) of most U.S. NHL cities.

MLS' potential American audience is huge (the World Cup final pulled more viewers -- combining Univision and ABC -- in the U.S. than any NBA Finals game), more than big enough to sustain a highly profitable league.

However, MLS hasn't won over the overwhelming majority of that audience (especially the Latino portion); MLS is maybe the third or fourth most popular soccer league in America (behind the Mexican League and English Premiership, for certain). MLS' marketing wing set up a tournament in which MLS clubs will play Mexican powers this year; success in that tourney would be a good step in convincing Mexican-Americans and other Latino fans that the quality of play is better than they might think.

Then there's the matter of convincing more of the casual fans who love the World Cup and Champions League, but can't be bothered with MLS. That'll take a while, just as it'll take a while to develop the kind of stadium atmosphere that's one of the sport's greatest allures in other countries. The first step, however, is getting out of 60,000-to-100,000 seat stadiums, and MLS has done that in most cases.

 

The incoherent thread title is driving me nuts.

So, good job with that, I guess.

 

It made as much sense as the soccer takes of he who started the thread.

 

This is a pretty original thread.

"Soccer sucks!"

Really? Americans hate soccer? I had no fucking clue!

"Soccer will never catch on in America! It'll never be big as the NFL, MLB, college basketball, Tiger Woods ..."

Holy fuck! Forget covering the war in Iraq! THAT'S the news story we need to cover!

Geeeeeeeeee-zus. Pastor makes some great points, but the one someone else made is there is some person in Brazil or Japan or somewhere channel surfing, seeing poker on and wondering, "What the fuck?"

America, home of 'round-the-clock poker tournaments, and we're making fun of soccer? Anyone sense the irony? I've seen more drama mowing my lawn than I do in televised poker.