UK and US football
By: DJ Cuts | April 23rd, 2007
With Randy Lerner, the owner of Villa, the likely takeover of Arsenal by American interests, the recent news of Beckham’s move to the LA Galaxy and Angels move to NYRB it looks like the Trans-Atlantic football is big business.
Coupled with the coverage MLS has in UK press and no doubt the profile and popularity of football (soccer) in the states rising I believe there are big plans on the horizon.
Is it only a matter of time before an Anglo-American cup will materialise? Even if no other European teams are involved. There will be a lot of money to be made from such a venture and I’d find it hard to believe that I am the first to think of such an idea?
With a lot of teams already doing tours of countries off season then maybe a club competition in the same format as the world cup or such like wouldn’t be out the realms of possibility?
The EPL season runs from August to May and I think the MLS season runs from April to October (am I right?) and this would pose a problem as the EPL off season would be the MLS “on” Season. Also would teams want to risk injury to their players in such a tournament?
These things aside, I think it would be great to see teams from these 2 leagues slog it out in a competition and it would also be interesting to actually see what difference in standards there are between these leagues and put all the speculation to bed.
Category: Misc
Comments
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After this weekend’s games, the competition would appear to be best suited for the lower Championship league teams and MLS. And to be honest, even then I can’t see an MLS team winning a competitive match. Even with one ex-great per team, MLS play is far too slow and sloppy to imagine them doing well against major European teams.
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Hi Clint. I’m sure that MLS aren’t teams can’t be that bad. Football is a wonderful game, Manchester united can win 7-0 agains Roma one day, the lose to Portsmouth the next. In the F.A cup non league teams dump premiership teams out of the cup. That is the beauty of the game where the underdog can be the favourite. I’m sure MLS will get faster and better then one day in the future they can compete against Europes best. Maybe.
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MLS teams right now would struggle badly against Premiership teams. I think they’d have a good chance against Championship teams, the question is if anyone would be interested in a competition without the likes of Man Utd, Chelsea etc (remember the Anglo-Italian Cup?).
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I agree with Clint. I know it’s early in the season and, admittedly, I’ve only caught a little bit of the MLS action thus far, but what I have seen has not looked good. I saw the Dynamo the other night against NYRB. You never would have known Houston had a man advantage. The play was sloppy, slow, and, boring. In 15 minutes, Houston did not even manage to come close to getting a look at the goal – again, with a man advantage, and NYRB not appearing to do anything particularly special to thwart the Dynamo attack (and I use that word begrudgingly).
As somebody who has really only come to watch soccer over the past 4 years, I really, really want the MLS to grow in popularity, but the games have simply got to get better or the TV base – which is absolutely crucial – will never grow. Doesn’t mean there have to be tons of goals scored, but the pace and overally quality has to improve so that at least there are multiple – and thus potentially exciting – opportunities to score.
I’m going to keep watching when I can, but it has not been good entertainment thus far.
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Most of English football outside of the elite is also pretty dreadful (believe me, I’ve seen enough of it), yet much, much smaller towns than Chicago or New York draw larger crowds than the Fire or Red Bulls. So I’m not convinced the future of MLS depends on the quality of play.
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Football has such a rich history in England, its steeped in tradition and alwasy has been about going to the match, standing in the freezing cold rain, eating a pie and then going to the pub after to discuss the game.
On every park around the country on a Saturday and Sunday you will find pub teams, small league teams, 5 a side teams on astroturf losing the skin off their knees and children with “jumpers for goal posts”.
America does not have this culture so I can imagine it is hard for most Americans to get excited about football, the same way I would find it hard to get excited about American football and baseball.
To English football fans its high drama, toward the end of the season the battle for the top spot in the league, the European cup places, the relagation dogfights, its hard not to get excited by it. I think it is this sort of thing that the MLS is missing and if it can build that sort of structure and the youth grow up playing and following more and more football and cary that passion into Adulthood then it will. What do you think?
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DJ, you have convinced me to move to England! Seriously, between many visits/stays with friends in big cities and small towns, I’m convinced that it is the societal tie-in with football that makes it succeed in countries like England. Small towns used to be villages, and those villages fought with other villages. Small cities used to be towns, and they fought with other towns. 100s of years pass and the character of these places don’t change completely – families that grew up 20 miles from each other still have the communal bond with their neighbors that unites them against ‘the common enemy’, whether that is Hull City or Fulham. Between that and the smallish size of most countries (in comparison with a place like the U.S. where the interests of the middle of the country are WILDLY different from those of the big cities on each coast) that are football-crazy, well, and the fact that America has strongly established ‘homegrown’ alternatives like baseball and football, as well as a very strong NCAA set of sports, I don’t see soccer ever catching on with the public the way it has throughout the world.
Not that anyone’s asking for that. But, it would be nice to see about a 30% permanent increase in interest to boost team incomes and, hopefully, attract better players and managers.
Man! Now I want to move to England again. Look what you’ve done, DJ!
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Clint, save your pennies. Sadly going even to a League One game can now cost almost triple that of MLS. Of course, being the sucker I am, I still go to Brighton games whenever I’m home and pay through the nose to watch another stinking performance.
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Oofa! That’s a spicy ameataball! Even Brighton is costly? Dang! I’ll spend that money on a ton of Brighton Rock.
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Yup, football is expensive, but then everything in the UK costs so much more than in America especially with the exchange rates at the moment, £1 = $2 practically, so a Villa ticket at around £30 = $60. Thats a lot of moollah, especially when your supporting a missus a child a house and a car on one income.
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