Men's Soccer (Football) Thread [Archived] Soccer • Page 49

Our national team is in trouble. Mainstays like Tim Howard, Clint Dempsey, Jermaine Jones, Kyle Beckerman are all nearing the end of their careers and there's not much depth behind them.

A lot of the talent we do have is still and inexperienced. And our U23 team just got eaten alive by Colombia in the last chance to make the Olympics.

 

What are your feelings towards Klinsmann?

 

He's a bad coach who puts together wacky lineups with little to no strategy. Players are constantly asked to play out of position and revert to tactics like "kick it really far and hope our guy runs faster".

HOWEVER Klinsmann's not just the manager for USMNT. He's also the Technical Director for US Soccer and he excels at that job just like he did for Bayern and the German national side. He's increased US Soccer's budget through sponsorships. He's added more youth teams, and helped convert pay-to-play academies to tuition-free and added more scholarships for players. He's done well recruiting dual nationals like John Brooks & Mix Diskerud to fill immediate roster needs and Matt Miazga, & Christian Pulisic with potential to contribute to the senior team in the future. He's developed training and certification programs for coaches.

The problem is that the duties of a Technical Director in the US are immense and any time he spends trying to manage the national team he is spending away from the job he can actually do effectively. There's no way he would accept if asked to step down as manager and continue in the other role. The best we can hope for is that he either hires competent assistants to run the national team for him (like he had in Germany). At the very least, we can expect that when he finally does get fired for losing another embarrassing World Cup qualifier he will leave the system in a much better state than how he found it.

 

Well said. Pretty much agree with everything. Used to like the "think out of the box" tactics, but boy does it get frustrating to watch. The Guatemala WC qualifiers were such night and day.

 

Not qualifying for the Olympics two Olympiads in a row is highly embarrassing


On the plus side, I'm looking forward to Olympic rugby sevens

 

The German team qualified for the first time since 1988. So we missed out 6 times in a row. Now thats embarrassing.

 

This about sums it up.

 

Smooth self promotion.

 

These are animated soccer gifs are awesome:







The Joy of Tekkers

 

fun match. lovren and sakho were tremendous. bit unfortunate to not get more.

 

Kinda disapointing match. Don't know if Dortmund was so bad or Liverpool so good. Best thing was when both fan groups sang YNWA before the match.

 

radical take: maybe dortmund didnt look good because liverpool played well

 

nah no nope no way not a chance

not a serious post

 

Maybe. Or maybe Dortmund looked average because they had a bad day. It didnt seem like it was all Liverpool, that caused them to underperform. My comment wasnt meant to downplay Liverpools performance at all.

 

You know what's discouraging? Reading about when ESPN used to have MLS games on Thursday nights.....and they averaged 250,000-300,000 viewers. Ten years later, essentially, and the ratings are actually worse. I know Nielsen ratings are meaningless estimates, viewership is down across most fronts, and obviously the sponsorship dollars are higher now, but man....

 

Think FS1/2 gaining rights had anything to do with this? I didn't get FS1 until a few months ago.

 

I was saying that ratings are down for most programming just in general. But yeah, the FS1 ratings ARE atrocious. But the NBCSN were actually worse, so yay?

MLS is just not popular, and it sucks.

 

The most important thing is that the league is having set times for games (for the most part). A bunch of games on Saturdays that are locally broadcasted, but the one, two, or three games that take place on Sunday are just getting to the point where they're on at the same times every week. The same can be said about the Friday night UniMas game. I know that the effect of having the same timing every week is hard to see now but I think that's a huge factor in getting decent ratings. Cord cutting is becoming more popular as well so that could be another factor in lower ratings. Really, I'm not worried about the tv ratings yet. This is such a long term thing to look at that even viewership 3-5 years apart are hard to dissect in any meaningful way.

I'm not making excuses for MLS because ultimately, Jeff is right, it's just not that popular. But it's not like the league is going anywhere. It's all about letting time pass at this point. I'm growing up watching MLS, my children watch it with me, and that's where they get their fandom from. The same can be said when the MLS fans in this thread have children. That's how all of the other sports got as popular as they are, by simply supporting a team through the generations. I could go on for days talking about tv ratings/attendance figures, and I will if anyone wants to continue this. It's definitely frustrating at times but I'm not worried about it yet.

 

I honestly think that the eventual endgame will be closer to baseball, where local broadcasts are the bread and butter. I don't really have evidence to support this, but my convoluted, rambling rationale is as follows:

People are starting to kinda like soccer. They just don't care about MLS.
But I have noticed around Houston, people do actually care about the Dynamo, because we're a sports town who supports our teams. I'm not so convinced they like watching the games yet, but they CAN be convinced to watch them in the first place. (Coincidentally, I'm the same way with the Astros: I really do care about them, it makes me happy when they do well, I just really don't like watching them.)

However, I'm not convincing ANYBODY to watch Timbers-Crew. Most people will never like the sport enough to care about MLS. But I do think we're close to people caring about THEIR teams enough to like watching THEM play. If that makes any sense at all.

 

Basically, my family members will watch the Astros when they're on. But most don't know shit about or care about the teams we play or the MLB as a whole.....they just like rooting for their team.

I think MLS can definitely reach that point.

 

Didn't MLS pass baseball in average attendance last year? Am I making that up?

 

Go Stros!

 

I would imagine that's true. Hopefully. 15-20 home games on Saturdays vs. 80 home games 7 days a week.

But MLB on ESPN Sunday nights averages about a million viewers. And the local markets are HUGE.

 

Attendance figures should only really need to be looked at up against previous years of that same league, and even then there are caveats.

To compare MLS attendances to NBA, NHL, MLB, or any other major sport here doesn't work, even if it paints MLS in a good light. There are just too many variables. Indoor vs. outdoor, size of stadiums, number of home games, season in which the sport is played, price of tickets, etc. Does MLS outdraw NHL per game? Yes. However, the tickets are cheaper, there are less home games per year, the stadiums can fit more people, etc.

Even when we compare current MLS attendances to previous MLS attendances, things like stadium construction, tarped off sections, ticket prices, expansion teams, weather, etc. all play huge roles in how many people show up.

And yeah Jeff, I totally know what you mean because I am that way with the Twins. I watch the Wild, Vikes, and Timberwolves religiously, but I can't get into baseball as a whole. I do care about the Twins, but I will never sit down and watch a game start to finish unless I am at the game itself. I will have it on as background noise if nothing else is on, but I'm just not interested enough. It really just boils down to "do I like this sport enough to care about (insert MLS team here)?" For most people, that answer is no. Over time, I think it will change for reasons I mentioned above, but it will take a while. I think a lot of MLS fans are growing impatient because for whatever reason, they were led to believe that there is going to be this point in time where soccer will simply blow up and be the next big thing. It doesn't work like that. It will be slowly and gradually over time, with many ups and many downs, just like we've been doing for the last 20 years.

 

No, not even close. MLB averages over 30.5k per game whereas MLS averages 21.5k per game. MLS does, however, outdraw NBA and NHL who draw 17.8k and 17.5k per game respectively.

Source: Major US pro sports leagues attendance 2014-2015 | Statistic

Edit: Keep in mind that attendance figures from all over the world are almost always recorded through the "tickets sold" method and not the "turnstyle" method. That's why we often see a "sold out" game with empty seats.