Major League Soccer

PS Fire 1, United 0 at the half.

We've all totally lost interest because our glorious hero David Beckham is no longer involved. Sorry.

Yeah, that's right, my team kicked his broke ass out on Sunday.

Any excuse to watch this again.

is blanco playing? soccernet isn't working for me right now

Golaso de De Rosario

Blanco started, but he hasn't had much of a game thus far.

i'm marginally interested. when my town, seattle, gets a team in '09 i'm sure i'll be way more into it

Some friends of mine saw (the US) Chivas this last weekend. Said it was straight bollocks.

Welcome, shit-talking British people.

The game ended 1-0. DC put in their goal-scorers in the second half but they didn't do much of anything either. Leg 2 is in a week in DC.

Also, it occured to me that Brits ought to know "bollocks" football when they see it, considering their national team.

Yeah, the British National Football Team has a long and varied history.

"Brits" = the English. No Scots would call themselves "Brits".

Sorry, you're right.

First round:

Chivas over KC
Revs over NY
Houston over Dallas
Fire over DC

After that, I don't know.

Any excuse to watch this again.

Great free kick, not sure about this "upper 90" term instead of the traditional "postage stamp" or even "top corner".

Is that Tim Lovejoy MLS show still on?

Conference finals are set:

✧✧✧@✧.✧.
K.C.@Houston

NE looked assy in their 1-0 win over New York. Aside from the fact that the Fire have to play in their huge, empty stadium, on turf, I think they have a great shot of breaking the playoff curse vs. the Revs. Houston should roll over KC.

Stupid ILX, those aren't email addresses

Chi AT N.E.

So the season starts tomorrow, does anyone care?

Yes, I'm going to New Jersey to watch like 7 hours of MLS tomorrow, since our first game isn't until Apr 5.

http://soccernet.espn.go.com/powerranking?cc=5901

lol: Riquelme to MLS?

http://www.latimes.com/sports/la-spw-soccer9apr09,1,6870991.story

Similarly, if Riquelme plays for Argentina in its June 8 friendly against the U.S. at Giants Stadium, all it will take for him to reject any move is one look at the dreadful, patched-up, threadbare, NFL-logoed carpet that passes for a soccer field at the Meadowlands.

ahahahahaha

Seattle Alliance, Seattle Republic and Seattle FC beaten out by popular opinion. New Team:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/ABPub/2008/04/07/2004333628.jpg

meet the new team
same as the old team

with an FC!

Dan kind of sold me on Emerald City FC, I don't think it got a fair chance...but good for them, anyway. Nice work chucking the proverbial monkey wrench in the league's plans.

Although I did read a decent rejoinder from a Seattle fan somewhere who said they were happy that E.C.F.C. didn't get picked b/c they'd be spared all the teasing and the stupid jokes (especially when KC came to town).

even though i voted for just seattle fc, i'm happy with the name.

pretty uncringeworthy as far as u.s. professional soccer team names go, historically speaking, anyhow

Didn't Chicago almost get called something really lame?

Oh god, I'm not sure since I haven't followed the team for that long, but I remember reading a reference somewhere online to calling the team the "Rhythm"? GAG

YES, that's what I was thinking of. Can you imagine? SO MANY JOEKS, I CANNOT DECIDE

The K.C. Wiz has to be stupidest ever, even taking the NASL into account.

Dallas Burn & Tampa Bay Mutiny pretty close behind

still, i don't sneeze at their rhythm method-inspired offsides trap

all football strategies should take cues from dodgy birth control methods

like the d.c. united 7-up douche corner kick formation

worst logo
http://web.mlsnet.com/imgs/logos/t102_md.gif
it looks like the label on some weird 90s era mirco brewed soda.

DC are douches, that is for sure.

i first read that as "micc10 brewed soda"

step away from computer, dell

but yeah, that's a fitting description

either that, or the failed irish-amer hip hop band that lost it to house of pain

best NASL team logo

ESPN talking heads going off on streamers being tossed at games:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8pgexephJM&eurl=http://theoffsiderules.blogspot.com/

i was watching that game on the telly. i thought the streamers fiasco was pretty funny. Actually it was a pretty decent game, although I'm perfectly aware that the "open" style of play was down to no defending on either side whatsoever.

Whoever the guy in that video was ranting is a total fuckwit.

My girlfriend and I were thinking about going to a Revolution match this season. Any suggestions on which? Neither of us follow the MLS closely. LA is out as its sold out.

HAI GUISE I M GOING TO DC TOMORROW. Wish ush luck.

LOL:

In a pair of sweeping changes brought about by a Major League Soccer season in meltdown, the Los Angeles Galaxy today removed Alexi Lalas as team president and general manager and Ruud Gullit as coach.

In its official statement on the changes, AEG, which owns the team, said that Gullit had resigned "for personal reasons" and that Lalas' contract was up at the end of the year and that the team decided to part company now rather than wait.

that's what you get for spending all your salary cap (plus some lol) on three players

I'm so happy, really. They deserved the boot.

WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
LOVE YOU
WE LOVE YOU
WE LOVE YOU
AND WHERE YOU PLAY WE'LL FOLLOW
WE'LL FOLLOW
WE'LL FOLLOW

Congrats to NY for completely stuffing DC yesterday and making a lot of people very happy.

Lalas is such a tool, really. I remember hearing him say, in all earnestness, that the Gals would be the first MLS "superclub".

Peter makes a good point here, and he would know.

And @ussoccer, please remove MLS sanctioning as they are in clear violation of one of the first points for sanctioning which clearly states that all “U.S.‐based teams must participate in all representative U.S. Soccer and CONCACAF competitions for which they are eligible.”

— peter wilt (@PeterWilt1) December 15, 2023

They're doing this because they want MLS to have total dominion over all levels of the game in this country, from beer leagues to the top pros. If they can't have that they're going to try to kill any other outlets.

i have never hated mls more than i do now and i hope this backfires like crazy

I feel like it's going to generate a lot of noise from fans of the various leagues

lol US Soccer denied their request to enter MLS Next teams

lmaoooooo fuckers

Once again, Peter Wilt comes thru:

https://www.chicagohouseac.com/news/open-cup-bombshell-wakes-up-american-soccer

Aspirational of course, but you can't say he hasn't been around the block plenty of times to arrive at these conclusions.

well-written. I don't even see the argument for this that would make fans happy. including the history of the tournament, which is no small thing, what's the argument against playing it?

congested schedule? well, that's largely MLS's fault for creating a superfluous, stupid League's Cup tournament, and having an extremely restrictive salary cap and roster rules which makes it next to impossible to do a proper squad rotation without sacrificing the ability to win.

European squads play way more games than MLS teams each year! EFL teams play 46 *regular season* matches a year, MLS already plays 4 less regular season matches than most other leagues, and most other leagues have several teams playing in 3-4 tournaments. and most other leagues don't have playoffs to worry about, either!

like literally you all caused the congestion problem.

would love if mls dug their heels in and a usl team ends up going to concacaf champions cup next year

If you wanna know why the Blackburn Rovers are a shit-assed football team, let's recount:

1) Agree to a deal for Duncan McGuire for four million dollar transfer fee

2) Immediately begin trying to outbid us for David Brekalo, the CB we've been pursuing for over a month

3) While Duncan McGuire is STILL ON AN AIRPLANE TO THE UK, back out of the deal, potentially leaving other suitors in England with too little time to finish a deal for him by the deadline, meaning he flew overseas for nothing

You'll be back in Premier League in no time boys

https://x.com/ChrisWheatley/status/1752836474100228281?s=20

Luis Muriel to OCSC!

Hugo Cuypers to da Fire!

I'm not actually that excited, been hurt too many times

Still an impressive acquisition though

lmfao

On Inter Miami: Sources across the league say the club desperately need to shed salary/add GAM.

Sources say that Gregore, Jean Mota, DeAndre Yedlin, Robert Taylor & Sergii Kryvtsov are available.

"They are screwed," said one rival exec. "Trust me."https://t.co/MByC7dV5y3

— Tom Bogert (@tombogert) February 14, 2024

i feel like on the one hand you dont pass up on a chance to sign messi but on the other hand inter miami is one of the worst places he couldve gone.

also kinda dont know how mls can thread the needle between 'we want intl superstars to come here sometimes' with 'we need to imitate other u.s. sports leagues with arcane salary cap rules'

the way they choose to do it basically ensures that the superstars coming to ride out their twilight years in the US will often get eye-popping results, since most of the opponents they will play against will have shaky backlines at best since almost everyone signs attacking players as their DPs.

They also do it by letting selected teams break the rules.

LOL yes that as well.

which is why I'm taking this all w/ a grain of salt. though it wouldn't surprise me to see MLS let them break the rules last year, then get annoyed at all of the death threats they get every time Messi is held out of an Inter Miami game, so decided to ratfuck them instead

btw I sold my Orlando City-Inter Miami ticket for $275. it normally goes for...$25

lol thats wild

i renewed my safc season tickets and im stoked for the upcoming season. also monitoring the usl super league allegedly starting in august. kinda weird to have two d1 womens leagues but theres a marginally better chance my city will get one in usl before they splurge on nwsl.

yeah, that's going to be wild, esp since you actually have a fighting chance to see some of the best women's soccer talent in the world play in top-flight leagues in the US in their primes, as opposed to in their late 30s on a retirement tour.

I wonder if the Super League is going to succeed in peeling away some top players from NWSL...or if they'll ever try and merge.

or maybe they could loan them to a squad in the other league when season ends, year-round football!

good article: https://worldsoccertalk.com/news/nwsl-vs-usl-super-league-on-a-collision-course-in-us-soccer-20231231-WST-479910.html

i dont think uslsl is going to necessarily poach the best players from nwsl, at least not right away. it's going to be more of a chance for the players in the cusp of making a roster getting real playing opportunities + players who arent quite ready for starting positions getting offers to lead a team. theres no salary cap or draft for uslsl

* +so there is some theoretical possibility that players may prefer to sign with a team of their choosing coming out of college or whatnot

anyone following the ongoing us open cup shit ml$ is pulling?

Yep. It should be noted most of it is perpetrated by former Fire exec Nelson Rodriguez, who seems only able to fail upwards in his professional life.

I love the Fire as a club but I can't stand the shit the league pulls. It's a stupid place to be. I want to see some Chicago House games this summer.

MLS just covering itself in glory. i guess the compromise is that some MLS teams in CONCACAF Champions Cup this year can opt out?

bleh

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2024/mar/08/apple-tv-mls-deal-soccer-referees-us-open-cup

excellent wrap up of the Apple TV situation this year

good shit

i’ve got season opener for san antonio fc tomorrow, ready 2 raise hell babyyy

xpost it sucks that MLS is so dramatically stepping in it this year, like it's completely turned the season into a sideshow. I'm still going to and enjoying my Orlando City matches because frankly, this team is the most important thing to me in this city, and they've grown almost as close to my heart as the Miami Dolphins, not to mention how many friends I've made through going to games. But the ability to enjoy the matches is being directly impeded by the Garber administration.

MLS Pass I have mixed feelings on. Because I'm a season-ticket holder, I get it for free. prior to it being around, it was a lot harder to watch Orlando City road matches. the subscription service prior to ESPN+ was too pricey, whereas ESPN+ was awful because it blacked out so many games (including ones that it wasn't supposed to). I didn't have cable, so I essentially kept creating fake email accounts to do endless free trials on Youtube TV just to watch games. so in a sense, that's helped me.

otoh, the broadcasting teams are indeed bad and they are rotated, so you wind up having broadcasters that don't know the teams they're announcing as well, and if you find a pairing you like, it might be three or more matches before you get it again. and they were basically just doing free PR for the league and Messi right after he joined - it was a farce. the MLS section of the Apple app is 25% Messi. It would have been better had they not reduced live TV airings as much as they did, whereas now you essentially have to be match of the Week to be shown on cable TV. and, of course, those local broadcasts wouldn't be cheerleading for MLS or at the very least, suppression of critical voice against MLS decisions like MLS Pass has been. so it's hard to argue with the article above. essentially 'state-run media' for MLS.

prior to Messi, the league still was not run well, what with the overexpansion, the ever-shifting playoff format, the much-too-large playoff field, and the reluctance to ease up on some of the roster restrictions to at least increase roster sizes or make it easier to have depth so that these periods where fixture congestion does happen, it doesn't essentially force you to give up on trying to win one of the matches to compete in the others. but it was definitely improving, eye test wise, better caliber players were coming over here younger, retirement league reputation still present but fading a bit.

watching Miami matches, I mean, I'm not a 'OMG FIXED' conspiracy theorist, but because of what a sideshow he is here, you start to wonder. obviously superstar calls aren't exactly unique to MLS, and Messi's only ever had 3 red cards called on him in his career, Busquets only 2, but there have multiple matches where one or both of them should have been sent off, and weren't. In the LA Galaxy match, not only was Busquets not sent off as he should have been, a Galaxy player was sent off for a second yellow that was such a horrendously bad call it was rescinded on appeal, and said send-off allowed Miami to equalize. Last night, Nashville went up 3-1, only for the goal to be chalked off due to offside. they don't have the same quality offside tech in VAR in CONCACAF as they do in like Premier League, so it was more manual line drawing and eye test than than automated system, and it did not appear clear and obvious he was offside, nor was it clear that he was involved in the play. of course, Miami equalizes minutes later, so it goes from a 2-legged match with Nashville ahead 3-2 with Miami essentially ahead due to away goals rule, 2-2. and let's face it, what ref is going to send off Messi knowing the death threats he's going to get from fans who are supposed to attend the next match, upset that they wasted their money on tickets?

keeping the same playoff format, like...the best of 3 format was terrible last year, and they kept it for no good reason. the team that won Game 1 pretty much won every series, and it dragged out the round so damn long.

the referee strike, although not entirely MLS's involvement (since it's a PRSA/PRO lockout with MLS partnering with PRO) has also been bad, though not as bad as feared, but naturally I never like union busting. and they've had to go to VAR to reverse decisions about twice as much because they're just not used to this league and its speed, or refereeing in general. they almost assigned a Messi/Inter Miami fan to officiate Orlando's game before a Twitter account called it out and the ref was reassigned.

meh. Guardian otm about Apple.

good shit

i’ve got season opener for san antonio fc tomorrow, ready 2 raise hell babyyy

― polyamerie "it's more than this 1 thing" (m bison), Friday, March 8, 2024 12:59 PM bookmarkflaglink

fuck yeah! give em hell, bring home 3!

the broadcasting teams are indeed bad and they are rotated, so you wind up having broadcasters that don't know the teams they're announcing as well, and if you find a pairing you like, it might be three or more matches before you get it again.

I'm nearly certain they're calling the games remotely, at least some of the time if not all.

In completely ideal conditions it's at least an hour drive for me to go to Fire games now, and though I made that kind of drive all the time when I lived in the city and the stadium was in the suburbs, with the games happening at Solider Field it's an absolute shitshow getting in and out. The fact that it's an NFL stadium right in the middle of downtown makes it a target, so security is nuts. Despite being right in the middle of everything, public transit, especially the train, doesn't stop at the stadium, you're looking at a 20-30 minute walk to get to the nearest stop. It's also huge, mostly empty, expensive (parking is ridiculous) and did I mention security is nuts? Like, big-dudes-with-guns-roid-raging-at-tailgaters nuts? The fun, quasi-DIY atmosphere of their old stadium is pretty much gone.

A lot of my friends have stopped going for these reasons, if not the fact that the team has been mostly garbage for more than a decade. Also I guess we got old, can't day drink at the tailgate and sing the whole game before riding a bar-sponsored bus back to the city any more, lolz.

The other way I know I'm old is all the newjack supporters are annoying as hell.

I'm nearly certain they're calling the games remotely, at least some of the time if not all.

― underminer of twenty years of excellent contribution to this borad (dan m), Friday, March 8, 2024 1:48 PM bookmarkflaglink

wouldn't surprise me, given how often I scream at the screen for something inaccurate they said that someone at the game couldn't possibly have been stupid enough to say.

my friend J0e can't go to the games as he lives too far away and he'll be in our group chat when we're at games, telling us what the broadcasters are saying, and we'll usually react - 'are they high?'

https://www.thenutmegnews.com/current/2024/3/14/after-successfully-running-two-mls-franchises-into-the-ground-nelson-hatchet-man-rodriguez-finds-his-zen-destroying-us-open-cup

So good. The man is a snake.

Excellent thread by my pal Karl, click through for the rest:

Love #cf97 and always will but, man, MLS is really making it hard to do so right now.

Part of what drew me to the Fire was the participatory nature of it. The DIY ethos I learned in punk/HC translated easily to soccer support. Be cool, learn songs, sing along.

— Area Man (@WB05Karl) March 15, 2024

Day-One, Done 😤 | #USOC2024 pic.twitter.com/ScEEKRPebB

— U.S. Open Cup (@opencup) March 20, 2024

lmao all the mls next pro teams lost to amateurs yesterday

i watched austin fc II (fuck austin btw) go up a goal in extra time after being up a man, only to allow the equalizer in stoppage time and then lose in pk's, incredible scenes

Yeah that Vermont win was something else

my friend went to an Open Cup match last night between Brave SC and the Savannah Clovers, had a good time.

really fucked what MLS tried to/is trying to do to this tournament

I'm really hoping that at Leagues Cup, Miami somehow gets eliminated in the group stage, that Mexico sends b-squads that still manage to beat several MLS teams, and that viewership is terrible.

San Francisco amateur soccer club El Farolito, which takes its name from a Mexican restaurant and has a fan group called Burrito Brava, defeated MLS Next Pro side Portland Timbers II in the US Open Cup first round! pic.twitter.com/444eFAjFvl

— James Nalton (@JDNalton) March 20, 2024

the beauty of the fuckin cup

Excellent insider account of the nonsense surrounding the Open Cup this season. (Archive.is version to subvert subscription requirements.)

https://archive.ph/7d2ny

Ah, the full post didn't seem to come through, sorry. I do have a PDF version if anyone really wants it.