MLS tonight! Screw you soccer haters!

[Randy Cresap]

In honor of MLS opening night, it's the annual "soccer is unamerican" article from a conservative periodical, written by a laughably unathletic egghead:

 

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123680101041299201.html

 

Now we know it's MLS season!

 

I saw a great motto for this season going around the web, and if they make a t-shirt I'm getting one:  "MLS Season 14.  Bite Us."

 

That's right, Expansion team Seattle Sounders moving up from USL to become club #15, with 22,000 season tickets sold -- or more season tickets than a lot of NBA teams average in total attendance. The last expansion team -- Toronto -- has similar numbers.  LA averaged 27,000.  The worst team average just under 15,000.  This year, Seattle; next year, Philadelphia comes online; the year after that, Vancouver and Portland, and then in 2012 the 19th and 20th before a pause in expansion to assess the impact on the player pool.  And expansion teams require the franchise fee -- which is rising steadily each round -- AND a stadium deal for a soccer-specific stadium in place, along with a demonstrated fan base, before approval.  Yet even in a deep recession, there is still heavy competition to enter the league.

 

As far as quality of play, MLS is now roughly on par with the English Coca-Cola Championship League -- i.e., the league just below the Premier league.  Roughly on par with the MExican league except when they play in Mexico.  Completely respectable and their possession game is more skilled and better to watch than the ultra-fast and tactically barren long-ball English.

 

But back to the creepy polo-shirted, whiny conservative's article, I can not believe that someone with any kind of academic credentials wrote that article.  Soccer was as big as baseball in attendance along the eastern seaboard until the 1930's, when baseball owners got frightened of the competition and consciously attempted to kill off professional soccer by squeezing teams out of stadiums and rearranging their games to directly compete with soccer games.  Since it was the game most played by immigrants, that's when it got the rap as a game for "greasy headed wops."  So it's not some recent foreign import.  Not moreso than any other sport in this country.  Golf?  Scotland.  Basketball?  Canada.  Hockey?  Canada.  Tennis?  Henry VIII.  Hell, even baseball and football are derived from English sports, and football has not been in this country any longer than soccer has (late 19th century).

 

And the whole thing about "we've been hearing about how soccer is the next big thing for decades" is also ignorant.  After the folding of the leagues in the 1930's, the US had no professional or grassroots soccer for about 40 years, late 30's to 1970's.  There were simply no soccer players here at any level.  Then came the NASL in the 1970's, Pele, etc.  Now there is a higher participation in soccer than in any other sport. 

 

The NASL went bust in the early 80's because of poor management and imprudent NHL-type expansion.  And then you have about 15 years in the US with heavy grassroots participation, but no professional league (The A-League and later USL were effectively semi-pro for most of the rosters).  It was right at the time that ESPN became important -- and so b/c the league had folded right at the time that Sportscenter started up, soccer missed out on the televised sports boom in which a lot of people grew up believing that there were a "big 4" of sports -- MLB, basketball, football, NHL.

 

But MLS started in 1996 after that decade or two hiatus, and now there are stadiums built specifically for soccer (real $100 million + stadiums, not the ones in the USL that hold only 10,000 or so) in LA (Galaxy & Chivas), Columbus (Crew), Toronto (Toronto FC), Salt Lake City (RSL), Denver (The Big Dick in Colorado), Chicago (Fire), Dallas (FC Dallas), stadiums under construction in New York / NJ (Red Bulls), KC (Wizards), and stadium plans in DC (United), Houston (Dynamo), San Jose (Quakes), along with all the expansion teams.  Every team will have its own soccer stadium, aside from New England, whose owner also owns the PAtriots and their football stadium.  Doing better in its 14th year than the NFL or NBA were doing in their 14th years.  It took the NFL decades to reach the point past "are we going to fold this year?"  Now there are 3 channels that show nothing but soccer.

 

The US is now among the top 15-20 teams in the world after being a complete laughingstock of semipro players just 20 years ago, the top team in North and Central America surpassing Mexico, and can field multiple teams of players from the "big 5" leagues (England, Spain, France, Germany, Italy) after having none a couple of decades ago.  The big difference between the US and the next level of teams is the fact that aside from world class goalkeepers -- of which the US is arguably the best nation in the world at producing, because there are tons of 6'4" guys who grow up playing sports with the hands -- the US hasn't found "special" players yet.  However, there are several at the 16-17 age level (Renken, Gyau, Jerome) -- the U-17s schooled the Brazilian team that featured Alexandre Pato and Jo, and by playing skillfully, not by bunkering and counterattacking.  Even the full men's team now plays a more attractive and skilled possession game than they did in 1998 - 2002, when they were a counterattacking team.

 

So the difference between, say, 1980 and 2009 is astronomical.  The US went from having no soccer at any level to being a soccer nation with an inferior developmental structure for young players, but one that is slowly improving.  The youth development from ages 12 -17 must improve before the US approaches the level of, say, France or Italy. But all those pro teams are setting up academies to develop talent, so maybe in a few years ...

 

Now on to the rest of this douchebag's article -- he's basing his views of soccer on the game played in America at the 7 year old level.  Just like every other jackass who doesn't take the time to learn anything about how the game is played -- tactics, etc.  Brilliant.  Not a demanding sport?   That's like basing your views of baseball on your son playing left field for a T-ball team.  You're out there with a uniform, and no one can hit the ball out of the infield off of a tee.  You have one kid who can catch and he's the shortstop or the pitcher, and either he catches 3 popouts, three kids strikeout off of the tee, or there's a 10 run rule.  It's a nonsensical slapstick comedy.  Yet MLB is a different game.  The same for soccer on some youth field vs. pro soccer.

 

So, to those 2 groups of haters:

 

1) The polo-shirt wearing, classic rock station listening, Rush Limbaugh / Jim Rome 40something white males with deep insecurity issues, who resent not being given a gold medal for making a living like every other person in this country, and whose only way of expressing manhood is to mow the lawn on Saturdays and obsess over the "big 3 sports," and get threatened whenever there's a sport that comes along that they haven't memorized 50 years of stats for and so feel less like a man;

 

and 2) Eurosnobs -- condescending soccer fans who choose to cheer for a team from a foreign country 5,000 miles away and attempt to use soccer fandom as a sign of sophistication -- think hipster who "discovered" some indie band before anyone else -- and tries to prove it by telling everyone that MLS isn't "real" soccer,

 

Bite us.  Year 14.  Close to 40,000 at the opening game.  The Sounders even have a band that plays LSU-style in the stands. 

 

 

[Louis Jeansonne]

Randy,  I'm not convinced.  Could you provide more facts?

Sent from my iPhone

[rtcr...@gmail.com]

Sorry, all the hatin' over the years has given the USA soccer fan a 200 pound chip on the shoulder, but then again, that's part of the fun really

Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

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From: Louis Jeansonne
Date: Thu, 19 Mar 2009 19:43:39 -0500
To: Holiday's<hol...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: [Holiday's] Re: MLS tonight! Screw you soccer haters!