• Welcome to OGBoards 10.0, keep in mind that we will be making LOTS of changes to smooth out the experience here and make it as close as possible functionally to the old software, but feel free to drop suggestions or requests in the Tech Support subforum!

Charlotte FC / MLS Thread

NJDeac’22 said:
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.
Click to expand...
The draft is not an important level setter in any way in MLS. It's like buying a lottery ticket for any large contributor to the team who is not easily replaced. It offers a bit of depth, little else. It does nothing to promote parity. Hell, some clubs don't even use all their picks.

And the utter lack of parity is a big part of what makes Scottish football a joke. 9 of the 12 clubs have market values below the poorest valued MLS team (a team that hasn't even played a regular season game yet in their history). And the top one of those nine clubs is 20% below the value of that worst valued MLS club.
 
JuiceCrewAllStar said:
nonetheless, I don't understand how intra-league parity affects the argument that -- on the balance -- MLS is better
Click to expand...
Bc it doesn't. And he conveniently forgets that MLS teams move TAM money and also can sign designated players. Those designated players wouldn't sign for the likes of St. Mirren in a million years (nor could St. Mirren remotely afford to compete to sign them).
 
DeacMan said:
Bc it doesn't. And he conveniently forgets that MLS teams move TAM money and also can sign designated players. Those designated players wouldn't sign for the likes of St. Mirren in a million years (nor could St. Mirren remotely afford to compete to sign them).
Click to expand...
I'm not arguing that St. Mirren is better than the average MLS team lol. I think depending on the year probably 4 SPL sides would even be in the top half of MLS, usually being the two Glasgow giants and 1 or 2 of Hibs, Hearts, or Aberdeen. I argue that the league overall is better because it has two (of 12) teams that are generally very competitive in European competition and the league as a whole produces young talent far, far and away better than MLS.

Another key part I forgot to add is the amount of high quality players that play on loan from English or other European clubs in the SPL, which is much less common in MLS. That wouldn't impact market value of the club but is a huge benefit to the strength of the teams in the league. Interestingly, Connor Ronan who played on loan from Wolves at St. Mirren this year and had a decent season, playing in about half of their games, was just signed by Colorado Rapids. Will be interesting to see how he gets on.

Now, back to my core argument: you would have a very, very hard time arguing that MLS is as closely followed or supported by soccer fans in this country as SPL is in that country. I believe that is because there, fans are connected to their clubs, and here, we have the "franchise" model of sports. I want MLS to grow by embracing the "club" aspect, because it's frankly never going to become more popular by being a better league than the EPL. Celtic or Motherwell or Raith Rovers supporters support those clubs not because it's a superior product to the EPL, but because those are their clubs and that means something to them. We have people in this country convinced Liverpool is their club despite living five miles from an MLS ground, and that's the issue to me! The way you described Minnesota United going about things sounds like an excellent start, and the example I used of Red Bulls is an example of exactly what not to do.
 
Last edited:
when your argument is that in its best years that 1/3 of one league would finish in the top 1/2 of another then you've conceded

good talk
 
NJDeac’22 said:
I'm not arguing that St. Mirren is better than the average MLS team lol. I think depending on the year probably 4 SPL sides would even be in the top half of MLS, usually being the two Glasgow giants and 1 or 2 of Hibs, Hearts, or Aberdeen. I argue that the league overall is better because it has two (of 12) teams that are generally very competitive in European competition and the league as a whole produces young talent far, far and away better than MLS.

Another key part I forgot to add is the amount of high quality players that play on loan from English or other European clubs in the SPL, which is much less common in MLS. That wouldn't impact market value of the club but is a huge benefit to the strength of the teams in the league. Interestingly, Connor Ronan who played on loan from Wolves at St. Mirren this year and had a decent season, playing in about half of their games, was just signed by Colorado Rapids. Will be interesting to see how he gets on.

Now, back to my core argument: you would have a very, very hard time arguing that MLS is as closely followed or supported by soccer fans in this country as SPL is in that country. I believe that is because there, fans are connected to their clubs, and here, we have the "franchise" model of sports. I want MLS to grow by embracing the "club" aspect, because it's frankly never going to become more popular by being a better league than the EPL. Celtic or Motherwell or Raith Rovers supporters support those clubs not because it's a superior product to the EPL, but because those are their clubs and that means something to them. We have people in this country convinced Liverpool is their club despite living five miles from an MLS ground, and that's the issue to me! The way you described Minnesota United going about things sounds like an excellent start, and the example I used of Red Bulls is an example of exactly what not to do.
Click to expand...
IOW, MLS is obviously a better league.

You're literally grasping at straws when you are arguing, not proving but just arguing, that just 1/3rd of one league is good enough to be in the top half of another league.

And then this whole loyalty to club bullshit. It's abject garbage. You've wrapped yourself around the axle on this notion that bc MLS owners are part of a league franchise structure and Scottish clubs aren't that somehow the teams still don't have fucking owners. Fans don't care. MLS fans are already better on the whole than what the SPL can pull. Last season statistics -
  • Half the SPL averaged less than 6,000 home fans per game. Obviously no MLS team was this awful. OK, so let's adjust for the fact some of these SPL teams play in smaller shit venues. We'll use % of stadium capacity stats.
  • Not a single SPL club played to 100% capacity on average at home. Not one. Six MLS clubs did this last year.
  • The league average attendance to stadium capacity In the SPL was 78%. Only seven MLS teams played to a lower average capacity percentage last season and one of those is playing in a temporary stadium far from where they are building a permanent stadium.
  • Only four teams in the SPL played to 85% or better stadium capacity on average. That's 25% of the league. 18 of the 28 MLS teams played to 85% or better stadium capacity on average. That's 64% of the league.
  • The same four SPL teams were the only ones to play to 75% or better stadium capacity on average. 22 of the 28 MLS teams played to 75% or better stadidum capacity on average. That's 79% of the league.
To be clear you keep coming back to the Red Bulls. They played to 68% of stadium capacity on average last season. That's God awful for MLS and would place them 25th out of 28 MLS teams. It would place them 7th out of 13 teams if they were in the SPL. So spare me the noble concept about the superiorirty of fans in Scotland.

As for producing young talent better than MLS, that is comical as well. I mean for fucks sake McKennie, Davies, Pepi, Scally, Aaronson, Adams, Reyna, Richards, etc. all got their start in MLS academies. And that is going to be just a small flow compared to what is coming. Fuck, John Tolkin was just named by one scouting service as the best left back under the age of 20 on the entire planet. MLS has better players, a much broader base of foreign players, a much deeper league and is already dwarfing what Scottish clubs can produce from their youth systems. And that capacity is only enhanced when the league brings in young players from South America like Almada, etc.

I feel like I'm talking to someone stuck in 2002.
 
Last edited:
DeacMan said:
IOW, MLS is obviously a better league.

You're literally grasping at straws when you are arguing, not proving but just arguing, that just 1/3rd of one league is good enough to be in the top half of another league.

And then this whole loyalty to club bullshit. It's abject garbage. You've wrapped yourself around the axle on this notion that bc MLS owners are part of a league franchise structure and Scottish clubs aren't that somehow the teams still don't have fucking owners. Fans don't care. MLS fans are already better on the whole than what the SPL can pull. Last season statistics -
  • Half the SPL averaged less than 6,000 home fans per game. Obviously no MLS team was this awful. OK, so let's adjust for the fact some of these SPL teams play in smaller shit venues. We'll use % of stadium capacity stats.
  • Not a single SPL club played to 100% capacity on average at home. Not one. Six MLS clubs did this last year.
  • The league average attendance to stadium capacity In the SPL was 78%. Only seven MLS teams played to a lower average capacity percentage last season and one of those is playing in a temporary stadium far from where they are building a permanent stadium.
  • Only four teams in the SPL played to 85% or better stadium capacity on average. That's 25% of the league. 18 of the 28 MLS teams played to 85% or better stadium capacity on average. That's 64% of the league.
  • The same four SPL teams were the only ones to play to 75% or better stadium capacity on average. 22 of the 28 MLS teams played to 75% or better stadidum capacity on average. That's 79% of the league.
To be clear you keep coming back to the Red Bulls. They played to 68% of stadium capacity on average last season. That's God awful for MLS and would place them 25th out of 28 MLS teams. It would place them 7th out of 13 teams if they were in the SPL. So spare me the noble concept about the superiorirty of fans in Scotland.

As for producing young talent better than MLS, that is comical as well. I mean for fucks sake McKennie, Davies, Pepi, Scally, Aaronson, Adams, Reyna, Richards, etc. all got their start in MLS academies. And that is going to be just a small flow compared to what is coming. Fuck, John Tolkin was just named by one scouting service as the best left back under the age of 20 on the entire planet. MLS has better players, a much broader base of foreign players, a much deeper league and is already dwarfing what Scottish clubs can produce from their youth systems. And that capacity is only enhanced when the league brings in young players from South America like Almada, etc.

I feel like I'm talking to someone stuck in 2002.
Click to expand...
Our goal is (or at least seems to be) winning over American fans for MLS instead of having couch potato EPL fans. For a country of 5 million people, that country, and almost every small nation in Europe, supports their league better than we support our own. So, let's take lessons from that and ask why it's the case!
 
NJDeac’22 said:
Our goal is (or at least seems to be) winning over American fans for MLS instead of having couch potato EPL fans. For a country of 5 million people, that country, and almost every small nation in Europe, supports their league better than we support our own. So, let's take lessons from that and ask why it's the case!
Click to expand...
Only they don't support their teams better. Even as the only competition they have for viewing local sports is rugby, they don't attend games as well as we do. And that's been demonstrated to you with data across a league with 28 markets spanning over 3,4000 miles in distance from one another. Peace out.
 
DeacMan said:
Only they don't support their teams better. Even as the only competition they have for viewing local sports is rugby, they don't attend games as well as we do. And that's been demonstrated to you with data across a league with 28 markets spanning over 3,4000 miles in distance from one another. Peace out.
Click to expand...
In a country with 70x the population and less senior football clubs lol. In this country, EPL is better supported than MLS. In Europe it would be blasphemous to support another country's league more than your own. Only major countries I can think of that do that are Ireland and obviously Wales. MLS won't grow by being better than EPL, so it must grow in another way. If you disagree with putting an emphasis on "clubs" and community connection as a means to grow, what ways would you recommend we grow MLS and win over this country's couch potato soccer fans? There's got to be some thinking beyond slowly increasing the level of play.
 
NJDeac’22 said:
In a country with 70x the population and less senior football clubs lol. In this country, EPL is better supported than MLS. In Europe it would be blasphemous to support another country's league more than your own. Only major countries I can think of that do that are Ireland and obviously Wales. MLS won't grow by being better than EPL, so it must grow in another way. If you disagree with putting an emphasis on "clubs" and community connection as a means to grow, what ways would you recommend we grow MLS and win over this country's couch potato soccer fans? There's got to be some thinking beyond slowly increasing the level of play.
Click to expand...
I never wanted to engage in this discussion to begin with. And after reading how a league that fills a 10,000 seat stadium to 41% capacity game after game is somehow better than MLS bc "Scotland" I'm definitely not any better off mentally. Soccer in the US is doing fine.

Less "senior football clubs"? What does that even mean? Is Ross County really a "senior football club" or just cannon fodder?
 
NJDeac’22 said:
Our goal is (or at least seems to be) winning over American fans for MLS instead of having couch potato EPL fans. For a country of 5 million people, that country, and almost every small nation in Europe, supports their league better than we support our own. So, let's take lessons from that and ask why it's the case!
Click to expand...
Because their fandom has passed down over generations and is engrained into the very fabric of their communities (take Wrexham for example). That will likely never be the case here. In addition, US fans are accustomed to watching the best leagues in the world for the biggest 3 sports. It's an adjustment to watch a league that doesn't feature the very best players in the world.
 
Big Mick! Not even a West Ham fan, but I got in the habit of singing "Big Mick Antonio, Big Mick Antonio, big Mick Antonio, big Mick Antonioooo" to the tune of "La donna e mobile" from Rigoletto. It just came to me, like a bolt from the sky. Must be how the hitmakers feel. It's not even a real chant, but it should be. I don't even know if they call him Mick. I just made it all up and it fits.
 
DeacMan said:
Thie production quality of these games on AppleTV seems high. MNUFC announcers from last year have been split up. Play by play is doing FCC and color commentary is doing Atlanta game.
Click to expand...
Agree. Very good so far.
 
I like Krakauer and Sam announcing the CLT - NE match. Good insight but not overdoing it.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top