Depends on who you're watching. The Montreal v New England game wasn't so great. This game has been much closer to what we see over here in Blighty.
Brazilian football is the most polarising in terms of standard. I've been watching quite a bit of it recently, some of it is as you'd expect, beautiful fast movements, proper Brazilian flair, but then half the matches are ****ing borefests. It's weird.
Well I never thought I'd say this, but Barry Robson has had David Beckham in his back pocket for most of this game.
I have no idea, scrolled through first team and reserves and can't see any ex-Saints unless we secretly signed Jay DeMerit at some point
Since I've started playing this MLS game, I've always wonder if a draft system would work over here...
It wouldn't. Culture is different. When I first started getting into American sports a few years back I thought the same thing but the more you learn, the more you realise it just wouldn't work. There, when a player is drafted he doesn't care where, he's just happy to be given a chance at becoming a professional, but sportspeople in the rest of the world are so arrogant they'll just throw a massive sulk. Imagine if the next big thing came into the league over here and was drafted to Macclesfield?
I really like the Generation Adidas concept though. If you look at the players that came through with it (and it's predecessor, Project-40 with Nike), you can see how far some of the players have come. You can't fault the MLS for trying to take soccer to the people and getting more people into the game. And from last night, I could see that it definitely seems to be working.
I can't help but feel there's a limit on how far it will go. They've got enough sports over there, I don't think they'll so readily accept another one, especially considering it's not an American sport. If you look at football, baseball, basketball and hockey, they're American sports. I'm not talking about whether they're played world over or where they originated or anything, but to make it in football you can't play CFL or BAFL or anything, you have to be in the NFL. Same for MLB, NBA and NHL - there are other leagues in the world but everyone knows by far the biggest place to play is the American league. MLS, however, is trying to be a global competitor, something the US market isn't familiar with in terms of sport.
Considering it only started in 1996, which puts it about a hundred year behind the Football League, it's done a very good job. When the World Cup came to the USA in 1994, they played every game at NFL/College football fields. Now of the 19 franchises that currently play in the MLS, only 5 play at non-soccer-specific stadiums (6 if you count Chivas and LA Galaxy's ground-share), and one of those will be gone when San Jose moves into its new stadium. Then look at the cities who are looking into getting a franchise into the MLS. Cities like Baltimore, Atlanta, Minneapolis who all have franchises in other sports. It may not be the biggest sport out there, but then NFL isn't the biggest sport here, yet we manage to fill Wembley when the NFL comes to town. MLS definitely seems to be there for the long term. In 10 years, I'm gonna look back at this post and think "How wrong was I", aren't I...
It's growing, sure, but I'd be shocked if the MLS could ever compete with top European leagues. Look at the Brazilian league, for example, big grounds, huge historic clubs but still doesn't compete in the international market. And, to be fair, we only fill Wembley because it's only one game a year. If we had a franchise here (as god forbid, some are suggesting) it'd be a disaster because it'd never sell out every game.
