T-Minus 1 Month Until MLS Starts

In honor of a wicked First Kick, which unfortunately saw my Crew lose, but did see Red Bull and Galaxy lose (good things both), I'd like to celebrate by offering a couple of links.

The first is a manifesto of sorts on soccer in this country:

In Defense of Soccer in the United States « It's a Black and Gold World

And the second is a Real Salt Lake link to one of their supporter's anthems. Don't like the team, but love the vid:

Believe RSL - YouTube


Enjoy! Go Crew!
 
Yeah, next year would be the time to buy season tickets. New stadium should be sweet. This year, I honestly can't see SJ making too much noise. The West is just so tough. They'll be battling Dallas, Colorado, Portland and Vancouver for the last playoff spot. Hope they do well, though, I've always liked Wondolowski, and Lenhart is an old Columbus favorite. Plus, they have a good supporters' section.

So, you went to MLS cup back when Crew stadium was the class of the league, huh? My, how times have changed. It looks like a high school football stadium in comparison to some of the places MLS is putting up nowadays....
 
wundergrape said:
The first is a manifesto of sorts on soccer in this country:

In Defense of Soccer in the United States « It's a Black and Gold World
Click to expand...

Minor gripe - I'm not a big soccer fan but I do like to follow it, I have some friends that are really into it. I hate when they compare the average attendance of NBA games and MLS games. There are several MLS teams that play in stadiums 2 to 3 times as large as NBA stadiums. Of COURSE they average more attendance. It's like saying football is twice as popular as baseball because they average twice as many fans. Well football is more popular than baseball, but the home attendance in stadiums about twice as big has nothing to do with it.
 
wundergrape said:
Yeah, next year would be the time to buy season tickets. New stadium should be sweet. This year, I honestly can't see SJ making too much noise. The West is just so tough. They'll be battling Dallas, Colorado, Portland and Vancouver for the last playoff spot. Hope they do well, though, I've always liked Wondolowski, and Lenhart is an old Columbus favorite. Plus, they have a good supporters' section.

So, you went to MLS cup back when Crew stadium was the class of the league, huh? My, how times have changed. It looks like a high school football stadium in comparison to some of the places MLS is putting up nowadays....
Click to expand...

yes, the stadium was pretty new then and the best thing was....I got free tickets.

I think they had 10k fans at the opening game. This weekends game is being played at AT&T park here in San Fran. I'm taking my daughter. Its a doubleheader with Mexico Vs Senegal afterwards.
 
BryceC said:
Minor gripe - I'm not a big soccer fan but I do like to follow it, I have some friends that are really into it. I hate when they compare the average attendance of NBA games and MLS games. There are several MLS teams that play in stadiums 2 to 3 times as large as NBA stadiums. Of COURSE they average more attendance. It's like saying football is twice as popular as baseball because they average twice as many fans. Well football is more popular than baseball, but the home attendance in stadiums about twice as big has nothing to do with it.
Click to expand...


You have some good points. First, let me say that the article did address your concerns - the numbers are prorated to reflect the fewer games played by MLS and it states that it doesn't mean that MLS is more popular.

To your second point, actually most of the MLS stadiums are comparable in size to an NBA stadium. (The typical MLS stadium holds about 20,000 - 25,000 people) Of course, there are some outliers - San Jose holds 9,000, and Seattle holds 38,000 for soccer - but by and large the stadium size is comparable to NBA stadiums, if only a tad larger.

But I think you're missing the point. I think people cite MLS' attendance numbers not to emphasize that it's more popular than the NBA - it obviously isn't, and to assert otherwise is silly. But they do reflect how far the sport has come. What was soccer averaging in attendance in 1994? A couple hundred thousand per year, nationwide? 5.5 million people went to MLS games last year. That's a huge increase, and it deserves mentioning. Which is why, in my opinion, people make such a big deal about passing the NBA/game mark.
 
hawkfan1319 said:
I'm gonna give MLS a try this year. What's a good team follow besides LA Galaxy?
Click to expand...


Real Salt Lake, New York (I say grudgingly), Kansas City, Vancouver, Seattle, Portland.

The consensus powers this year are LA, RSL, Seattle and Kansas City. I think that Vancouver and Portland have the capacity to surprise, and both of them have excellent home atmospheres, which makes them fun to watch. Dark horse teams: Houston, Dallas, Colorado. And of course Columbus.

My recommendation is to follow the team closest in proximity. MLS is a very regional league. Where are you at? If you're in Iowa, it will be Chicago or Kansas City. Good choices both. Try to get to a game...
 
I live in Seattle during the summer - Sun Bird. Being able to make the three stadium swing from Portland to Seattle is awesome. The soccer still leads a little to be desired, but the fan atmosphere in each stadium is not far off what I experienced in British stadiums in the 80's. But the stadiums are much better.

If I understand correctly, Seattle draws as many fans as all but five British premier teams.

The league is doing a much better job of being more financially responsible than any other previous attempts at developing pro soccer here.
 
Just a heads up to those are getting their feet wet with the league. Darlington Nagbe is becoming bona fide out in Portland. Check out his two goals from last week:

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SafxQmpqwsM]Nagbe's World Class Brace - YouTube[/ame]


...and this one from last year:

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2naoSiNRQ1w]Darlington Nagbe wondergoal rocks JELD-WEN - YouTube[/ame]
 
wundergrape said:
Just a heads up to those are getting their feet wet with the league. Darlington Nagbe is becoming bona fide out in Portland. Check out his two goals from last week:

Nagbe's World Class Brace - YouTube


...and this one from last year:

Darlington Nagbe wondergoal rocks JELD-WEN - YouTube
Click to expand...
Yeah, but with MLS that usually means he'll be bolting for EPL next year. It might change on the left coast as players begin being able to make major sponsor money and some of the African continent players get used to not hearing Monkey calls and such like they hear on the continent.
 
In all honesty, I enjoy watching the game during the world cup. The lack of coverage in Iowa makes the MLS hard to get into. Especially as a casual fan of soccer aka futball.
 
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