Also silly and in many instances false. I've been all over Scotland - spent several weeks there for work many years ago. There are loads of people there who support EPL clubs and many who support a local club and an EPL team. Why? Bc the Scottish league is not a real competition and they know it. In 51 of the last 55 years only two teams have won the league. And the last time a third team won was 38 years ago.
I've been to plenty of games too and have family with professional appearances as high as Championship level in England and more recently the First Division in Belgium. Two siblings with underage Irish national team caps and current or former division 1 players. Other than calling it dumb you have given nothing to refute any of my points, whereas I laid out a logical argument using examples to demonstrate why I believe fans in this country often don't watch or support MLS, and fans in those other countries you listed do support their own clubs regardless of the perceived level of play.
Pity Martinez was the South American footballer of the year. He won the Copa Libertadores. He sucked in MLS. Anyone can come up with cute annecdotes.
An argument about these two leagues, both of which I enjoy for different reasons, is so far from my point that we need to treat soccer as a community sport and not a collection of "franchises" if we want to grow the MLS. The FAI (Football Association of Ireland) is dealing with a league a level or two below MLS, and it's still seeing success winning over fans that would otherwise be watching EPL on TV by emphasizing the "support your local" angle. It's actually a pretty comparable situation given the fact that soccer is the third or fourth most popular sport in Ireland as it is here.
Nope
Interestingly, the 22 arg tails in to the Nate Silver methodology, given that the 538 rankings use Transfermarkt valuation of clubs as a metric.
It's only a 12-team league, so any argument saying "if you take out the Old Firm" is kind of bs imo, and is the same as saying "if you take out the Big 6" in England. Believe it or not, over the last few years the rest of the pack has been closer to the Old Firm in Scotland than the rest of the pack has been to the Big 6 in England, so it's not like the entire rest of the league is garbage, though there is obviously a steep drop-off from Celtic to a club like Motherwell just as there is from United and Arsenal to Brentford. The MLS naturally has way more parity than the EPL or SPL because unlike almost all other leagues in the world, the MLS has a draft and salary cap to keep teams relatively even.another way to look at it: Premiership is incredibly top-heavy and 538 rates the top two in the top 100 globally, but the fourth best team is at 348
22 MLS teams rank higher than the 4th highest Premiership team
Global Club Soccer Rankings
FiveThirtyEight's global club soccer rankings compare hundreds of men's soccer teams across dozens of leaguesprojects.fivethirtyeight.com
I still would like to confirm that this is the argument you are going with
hmmmmmmmm
No. They aren't comparable on top to bottom quality. It really isn't even close. It's a two team league (and frankly a one team league of late). There are just three teams with a positive goal difference in the league. Guys like Alamada, Reynoso, Ruidiaz, Driussi, Velasco, Castellanos, Barco, Vela, Zelarayan, Insigne, etc. wouldn't sign for the likes of Hearts (one of the three teams with a positive goal difference) in a million years. There is zero comparison in terms of the depth of talent and how it is spread across MLS compared to the SPL. The Western Hemisphere produces a ton of high quality players and many of them are choosing to play in MLS (not surprising given the financial straights many clubs in our Hemisphere have been in for years). Toss in guys who come from other leagues in Europe and all the US and Canadian players. Get real, the SPL as a whole has zero chance of drawing the type of depth MLS now has across the board.
The draft? As a means to promote parity? This isn't even a real discussion.
Yes, the draft and salary cap promote parity in American sports including MLS. Is that not obvious? When you are bad, you receive a good draft pick. That promotes parity by giving the worst teams the best available picks to select draft eligible players. The salary cap obviously promotes parity by ensuring each team has roughly the same amount of money to spend on rosters outside of designated players.
In that case 10 of the 12 SPL clubs are below the MLS average squad in value and 9 of the 12 are below the lowest MLS squad in value (which is an expansion club). Many of them are doubled up in value by the lowest MLS club's value.
lol dude