Last time I watched USL-C was when Ottawa Fury was around and TFC barely bothered to put their B team against them while the Whitecaps were being kicked out by Cavalry over 2 legs. Forge runs in Concacaf helped legitimize the league earning even the respect of Guadalajara fans when they lost to Chivas last February. (Guessing you didn't watched those) I'd say Ottawa was right up there in the 1st half but fizzled out at the end of the season while York United played good football in the second half - happens in every leagues, Montreal's inconsistent seasons is a reflection of that including the beating they got from Forge over 2 legs. The rest, I don't disagree with, something I could say about lots of leagues out there, I would know since TFC keeps reminding us that terrible and un-eentertaining clubs is also a thing in MLS. USL league 1, I have no idea - don't watch it but being close to York Lions, I've seen MLS Next Pro TFC play twice which is also D3, right? Nope not the same ballpark my friend, I'd say somewhat comparable to League 1 Ontario Premier League and top Ligue 1 Quebec (our D3)...but you wouldn't know since you haven't seen League 1 Canada. Agree to disagree on the details. CPL is a good league for what it is and trending upwards, that's all that was said.
Overall a positive new addition for the game to grow the sport in a part of the world with untapped potential since more Canadians are performing in Europe. It's ability to find and developed domestic players is gaining recognition with European clubs scouting and signing players. In term of support and potential, La Liga is the biggest supporter with helping set up the league, get a media deal and add Atletico Madrid as owners while providing ongoing advices. I know you want an answer about quality of play. No we're very far from being impactful globally but the league has earned regional recognition due to its concacaf runs notably getting results in away games against established Central American clubs. After 6 years, we're in the tier with Honduras and Costa Rica with Forge demonstrating that it could compete against their top clubs. CPL short term goal is to become the 3rd strongest league in the region by 2030, it's a realistic goal 5 years from now
CPL final was presented on CBC and we have numbers. 609,000 saw the CPL final on cable* *Excluding Telus, Onesoccer, CBC Gem streaming and FuboTV 2019 average viewership over 10 games was 422,000 2024 CFL average was 454,000 on TSN As I said above, the league has lots of potential domestically and the demand for an all Canadian football league is real as their goal to become as big as the CFL being realistic The Canadian Premier League Final drew 609,000 viewers on CBC Sports @northtribune reports. Those numbers don't include those that tuned in on OneSoccer, fuboTV, and Telus Optik. https://t.co/l6k8R9KeHd— Ben Steiner (@BenSteiner00) November 13, 2024
So overall it’s glowing potential for the CPL, compared to the majority of the “football world” just seeing MLS in a negative light based on quality of play. Interesting.
I said plenty of time MLS is a good league and clearly, the football world thinks so too since there's more players being transferred to Europe and better quality of internationals opting to join it. FIFA believes in its potential too obviously. It's not negative to say that MLS isn't a top 15 league (quality-wise), realistically it's still a young league compared to the giants that have been around for decades more. I actually added that should MLS rid themselves of those gimmicky roster rules, they could move up there, something that most out there would still challenge nonetheless
It is when no one actually agrees with you. Like all those sporting directors. Or analysts. Or objective data. Your information is long dated. But like a lot of people, you lack the ability to incorporate new information into an opinion, simply filtering out what you don't like.
You mean "some" disagrees with me but saying "no one" is quite the stretch. Strictly quality of play on the pitch, you'd be in the minority in global opinion on the matter. We could revisit this when the league start winning multiple consecutive Champions Cup, that'd be a good start don't you think?
21 years old Pacific FC goalkeeper Emil Gazdov might be moving next year. The winner of the 2024 CPL Golden Gloves has interests from all 3 Canadian MLS clubs and Europe. Pacific FC goalkeeper Emil Gazdov has interest from the 3 Canadian MLS clubs as well as several European sides, including one from Portugal, according to @ManuelVeth of @Transfermarkt 👀The 21-year-old goalkeeper recently won the 2024 #CanPL Golden Glove 🧤⭐️📸… pic.twitter.com/YWItbg2xHi— TrueNorthFoot ⚽️🇨🇦 (@truenorthfoot) November 13, 2024
Again, you don't really provide back up here as to who you mean; you just profess to know the mindset of the entire world. But I'll take all those sporting directors and scouts and analysts over Charlie in Liverpool.
Agree to disagree, you're free to think that MLS is a top 15 league in the world on the pitch. I'm looking forward to multiple Champions Cups and getting past the preliminary round of the Club World Cup. I think it was an Egyptian club that eliminated Seattle...where would you rank them on your list?
We'll have multiple Champions Cups soon enough. I'm not worried about that. As for an "Egyptian" Club, you've kind of proved my point in how you evaluate. MLS has actual parity; that Egyptian club is Al Ahly, currently ranked by Opta as 94th in the World. Al Ahly has won 44 League Titles. That would put them 2nd if you superimpose MLS and the Egyptian League, so they'd be a title contender (and before Seattle). The rest of the Top 15 are all MLS teams. The second best Egyptian team is 16th. The third best is 23rd; the 4th, 30th and the 5th would be 33rd. The remaining 13 are all considered to be worse than the Quakes. Now Opta isn't a definitive source at all. But even if you don't buy the Egyptian League relative to MLS, the rankings within the leagues are very good, and what that says is that while Al Ahly is a very good team, the rest of the league is shit. Like I said, you judge leagues like a casual fan, as if only the top couple of teams matter. That's not a league. That's a team with an exhibition season. That's why something like Leagues Cup is so interesting. Everyone plays. You can't hide your shitty teams. It's not perfect because of the home/away situation, but it's also not just your top 4 competing. The reality is that MLS is doing quite well at holding its own despite basically dipping into the second division in most countries -- we can look at the lower end as the Quakes but if we're comparing leagues, it's worth noting that MLS adds basically 11 would be second division clubs to their average and still competes. Yes, we could win more Champions League titles if we just let Miami buy a ton more players. But that'd make the league far less interesting to watch. Miami, the league winners, just went out in the first round! I wouldn't ever want a situation like in the Bundesliga, where Bayern probably has 20 of the leagues best 30 or 35 players. How is that interesting? But we'd do much, much better in Champions League!
'Situation like in Bundesliga' is very exaggerated view. Bayern bug is due to problems of almost all truly big clubs (Nurnberg, HSV, Hertha, Koln, Kaiserslautern, 1860 & Schalke and never-ending hope of Dresden, Rostock, Bremen and St. Pauli). Actually, league is very nicely balanced (top 4, next 4, next 3, next some 1-3 teams), but teams don't want to be champions - rather progress normally in span of ten years.
No offense, but that's not nicely balanced. Having teams that don't want to be champions is simply accepting a broken ass economic system that they know won't change. That's an awful way to have a league. It's not just the Bundesliga. The whole system is terrible. There's no reason to have a league where every team can win a title. Not every season, but a well run team should have a shot. Most American/North American leagues are like that. It exists. It's possible. European fans simply accept the permanent inequality as some kind of fact of life. But it don't have to be that way.
Everyone else on the globe got it wrong but MLS because it has parity...ok. All I'm saying is they got to prove they are top 15 on the pitch starting by at least be in the ballpark where Liga MX is and I'm not talking League Cup that they hardly take seriously with games all played in the US. I mean home an away and winning some consecutive trophies and advancing in Club World Cup as well. That's more convincing than some data based on clubs playing one another in a parity league where you can make number says whatever you want them to say. Not knocking on the league, just saying they need to start consistently do it on the pitch regionally. Also stop complaining about the Champions cup being a waste of their time or inconvenient and prove they have the depth to go the entire way with a full season plus a full Champions "league" calendar like everyone else. I think it was you talking that only Brazil was better than MLS in Conmebol? Are you serious, those leagues plays full schedule continental football, plus season plus domestic cups unlike Garber who's trying to throw the US cup under the bus because again...waste of their time or too many games? Please...get real. The league needs to do it on the pitch. Can a top MLS squad rival the best out there? My friend, I'm with you YES. Can that same clubdo it down there with their schedule with those gimmicky roster rules hurting the balance and depth of the squad over a grueling long season. Nope, they aren't there yet but it's within reach and that's a compliment
Yes. I can tell you've completely abdicated critical thinking because you sneer at things like data or evidence. Leagues where one team wins 10 years in a row do suck. No one wants that. But yet, there's a ton of them where one or a couple teams are the only ones that win. It's always hilarious watching someone so obsessed with defending their side they say things like "THE BEST SYSTEM IS ONE WHERE 90% OF TEAMS HAVE ZERO CHANCES OF WINNING. SEE ITS BEST BECAUSE EUROPE!" That's literally all the systems like Opta consider. Only shit on the pitch. So they have. But you, you're a weird ass dude who spends all his time as an unpaid PR guy for the CPL on a website with like six users, so we should listen to you. Every single one of your posts is basically claiming every one agrees with you but you haven't provided a single piece of evidence. And yet you still trumpet. I'm just amazed at how proud some of you are at defying things like facts and logic. This is why we're all screwed.
They haven't proved anything on the pitch until they win more regional trophies. Isn't that the same thing that's being said about Canada being good but haven't proved anything until they start winning hardware? Also, you're screaming in your own bubble of the universe that somehow MLS figured out a system that's superior than whatever being done out there. You're funny... Oh right...Data somehow told you so. OK, agree to disagree then
Is there only one match that matters? Again, all those matches are played on the pitch, and they've absolutely proved it. I've never used the hardware comment with Canada, so you can take that elsewhere. Completely bizarre statement. So you prefer a league in which only one or two teams can ever win? Why don't you just say an actual opinion instead of acting like everything that is done is always better? I'm not shocked by your disdain of facts that you appeal to a weird authority. The idea that no one ever has a better system than the current is idiotic. Literally nothing would progress if people followed that logic. It's especially funny since CPL copied major parts of MLS' structure because it works. Yes, it's called facts and evidence.
Yep, prefer top 5 league football over MLS. Oh, now you're going to say that something wrong with us...is being the majority. Again...You're funny. CPL learned from MLS about what worked and what didn't. For instance, it's not a single entity structure but they borrowed element from it that works...it's a compliment. MLS works but it isn't fully mature yet but within reach. You're the one being triggered by this when you should take the compliment
That's clearly not what I'm saying and you know that, but you're backing out now. Top 5 football is better because the players are better, but the structure itself is broken. Plenty of Europeans, btw, lament the fact that their leagues have been hijacked by legions of foreign fans and that the local team has no real shot. I'm not triggered by this at all. I just think it's amusing that you reject things like evidence, data, expert opinion. It's an amazing level of arrogance.
Nicely balanced in compare to Others T5. Germany need you permanent UEFA participations to progress (Frankfurt, Berlin, Freiburg) and it's easier. Italy and England need you to be Brighton with 500 mio. sells to end gap within top 6-8 teams. Spain itself battles with their basketball league and over-slowly healths. France is actually nice and 18-team helps. I hate something in German T4. But don't have to forget that Leipzig is just since 2016, Leverkusen is trending upwards and Dortmund has everything to battle next season.
I will just tell you that are leagues in this world where the champions can come from anywhere, where small cities can have dynasties, where teams who have been hopeless for 50 years get new management and win. One of the great ironies to me is that while I am very impressed with Germans' insistence on 50+1 and other ways to keep money from completely ruining their sport, and they despise the "new" money of Leipzig ... they have no issues letting Bayern old money make their league about a quarter as interesting as it should be year after year. Honestly, the Super League would have sucked, but one upside would suddenly have been a league where no one was simply going to wildly outspend everyone else in some of these league. I'm a fan of a basketball team that had a 40+ year run of incompetence with only a year or two or being okay in there, and then they just had an amazing dynasty. I didn't have to bandwagon on a top team. And if it had happened in soccer, we'd have had one good year and then half the team would have been poached. I'm a fan of a baseball team that has been hopeless more or less since they came into existence, in a small market and supposedly doomed. Baseball doesn't even have good parity mechanisms, but my team is a contender without being a big team. I wouldn't trade that for any success for another team in a champions league, personally. I don't know that this is particularly fixable, but there absolutely is something better for fans than "richest wins."
That same club eliminated Monterrey a year prior too in the CWC. Would you say that the Egyptian league is better than Liga MX?
I gotta agree with this. MLS is already spending like mid table Ligue 1 clubs but due to their "forced parity", lame ass rules and restrictions it is hurting itself where it matters the most; the field. A simple salary cap ceiling without any of the added xAM, U22, U23, DP etc will take MLS to the level it should be on the world stage based on how much they are spending. And that would be without the need to spend more than what they already are. Until then, I agree that an MLS team in Libertadores, as much as I want to see it, doesn't have the depth required to compete in several tournaments in a year. That's on them.