with league expansion being inevitable to get a footprint on our massive country with so many worthy markets....expansion on foreign players is going to be a must. But how do you go about it? do you want to say there are no rules for the amount of foreign players at all? Or do you just change the rules? What i would like to see MLS do is first allow all CONCACAF players free access to the league. MLS should be the premier league in North America, and i want to see MLS swallow up all the talent that can play in MLS that are currently playing in the Jamaican League, for instance. Second, any player with a green card doesn't count (i think that's the rule now, but i'm not sure). and third, any player that graduates from the team's youth academy should not count as a foreign player (but would count if they played for another team). Other than that, the club can only have 8 foreign players. Now as far as that last one about graduating foreing players...i'd say the rules for that is the player must spend one full year in the academy to receive a certificate of graduation and receive a waiver on the team's foreign players limit. One crazy suggestion that i'm just kicking around (so just tell me if you think it's a good idea or not...i'm not sold with it either) is that each team can select one continent outside of North America to where players from that region will only count as half of a foreign player if they wave their DP spot. For example, DC United select South America to be it's continent so two south americans would only constitute as one foreign player if they had no DP's. Just an idea... The last thing i want to ask...is should there be a reward for playing more americans or expense for having more foreigners? Say if you add up all the minutes that American players played and it's a certain amount the club will get X amount of dollars or access to certain tournaments??? just an idea...
other than the fact your idea is complicated, remember the downside of having foreign players in mls: the growth of the american player slows, and you'd be left with what england has dealt with and thats a talent problem on the national level, keeping the current 7 internationals per team is a bit too much right now, considering only 4 american players would get a start, how does that help our national team? also, consider sepp blatter's proposal of 6+5, a rule that may come into play b/c england didn't qualify for the euro championship b/c of a foreign talent congestion in england, adding more foreign players means you'd have less of the 5 american starters to choose from it was a sad day in english football when arsenal fielded a team with no englishmen, and it showed on their national team
the great positive with expansion is the increase in possible talent that goes unnoticed in this country, and believe me, there's a lot of talent that goes to waste (in soccer terms) in this country as great college players become doctors, lawyers, businessmen, and drop soccer all together, the expansion of mls will get these players to think soccer as a long term viable career since inevitably, the salary cap will go up
not only that, but there are a portion of american players that play for teams over seas in lower level leagues, purely for financial reasons. if the cap goes up to a reasonable level, we'll be able to bring a good portion of this talent home. also, the USSF academy system is just in its first year, and the MLS academies are really just ramping up. give them time to start really pushing out the talent, and i don't think we'll have any need to import talent to fill rosters.
One thing I don't get about the people who argue that MLS should have USL level players who are in their mid twenties "developing" is that they forget there actually IS a place for these players. In the USL! MLS should be about putting out the best product on the pitch, regardless of nationality. American players right now are being given a sort of boost over foreign players that was once needed at the beginning of the league but now is archaic since there are other places for these type of players. MLS should care about its bottom line first and foremost and that bottom line is dependent on a rise in the quality of play which has come about as a result of this foreign influx. If that means fewer american players on rosters so be it. The standard of MLS and USL will benefit as a result.
We changed the rules before this season for just that reason. And I think what was done will probably come pretty close to covering it, as now 8 of your starting lineup can be foreign. Of greater significance was dropping the distinction between youth and senior internationals, because the youth international system wasn't, by and large, working (that is, the vast majority of the youth internationals were not legit prospects, but just guys you carried on the roster because they were cheap). Now that the distinction is gone, you can have additional guys who are useful today. This year's Rookie of the Year competition has been pretty flat because of that. A lot of young American players, like (to pick the first example that comes to mind) TFC's Julius James, who would have gotten a lot of first year PT under the old foreigner rules, haven't gotten as much under the new ones. (To use another example, Eric Brunner would still be with the Red Bulls under the old rules, because Andrew Boyens, as a foreign (NZ) player, would never have been worth picking up). What you'll see as we expand, I expect, is that a lot of these players will get into starting lineups again and prove that they aren't bad players.
Is he ? I don't know. He was just the first guy to come to mind that's not getting a lot of PT that probably would had there not been a foreign influx this year. If you look at last year's first round: http://web.mlsnet.com/mls/events/superdraft/2008/search.jsp There are a lot of guys not getting that much PT, and I don't think it's because they're all busts.
We've already doubled the number of foreigners per team in the last couple of years to 8! You only start 11 guys. How about we expand to about 24 teams before we even think about raising it anymore.
24 teams is probably going to happen pretty rapidly over the next ten years. (not counting Seattle & Philly since they're already in) I'm sure you will see Atlanta, Miami, Saint Louis, Montreal, Vancouver, Portland, Detroit, and Phoenix in the league (with Cleveland, NY2, Tampa Bay, Orlando, San Antonio, San Diego, Las Vegas, Oklahoma, Milwaukee, Minnesota, Sacramento, San Francisco, Carolina, Nashville, Rochester, Indianapolis, Pittsburgh, Austin, and possibly a few others giving those cities some stiff competiton). Point being...we need to make sure the league is ready to handle this much expansion. And the fact is i doubt we'll see our national team hurt by allowing more foreign players. if anything, i think it'd help bc it would raise the quality of the league.
1. We already have enough foreigners. Aren't there 7-8 slots for foreigners? 2. MLS shouldn't go past 16 teams for a while. Until they raise the cap a shit ton and improve the quality.
If they want to improve the league and the product on the field they need to: 1. Raise the salary cap. The cap is ridiculously low. Triple it and some of the talent playing in leagues overseas (the lower leagues, not the Premiere League or the other top flight leagues) will come home and that would immediately improve the product on the pitch. 2. Get rid of the conference/division crap. Football is best with a single table. It would make every game mean more. 3. Invest some money in incentives for clubs to do better in the cups. Allowing more foreign talent in the league isn't a bad idea. Someone mentioned the 6+5 Rule, but that rule will NEVER happen, as it's against the law in Europe (right to work laws). I know there is the argument that it would hurt the development of American players... the place for them to develop is the second division, not the top flight.
Slow down! We won't see all of those teams in the league within 10 years. I heard Tampa is going to form a team called the Rowdies who will play in the USL. This isn't the NASL.
How is single table better for "every game"? I'll take your team as an example, Liverpool. Everyone informed about football knew before the year started that Liverpool and all teams below it had no chance at winning the premiership. Liverpools a champions league contender and their games are nearly irrelevant in the EPL. You were always going to finish either 3rd or 4th along with Arsenal. ManU Chelsea were always going to come in 1 or 2. Then you have the group from Everton to Tottenham who are fighting for a UEFA spot. It's the same exact thing as fighting for playoff positioning. Except as soon as you realize you can't get the UEFA spot there's no point in trying anymore. Playoff races last right till the end of the season for this class of squads Then you have relegation battlers, a complete and utter **** of a system that we're thankfully never going to have. this is the only place in the single table system where you get more interest. So instead of watching the best teams go at it, you watch the worst. Brilliant system.
I think the matter of salary cap and single-table is related more than being mentioned. So long as you have a salary cap, there doesn't seem to be much reason to not go single-table to me, unless you just prefer tournament style at all times. Salary cap already prevents the boring situation of EPL, et. al. Personally I like having a champion played out through the length of the season coupled with a tournament (cup). On the subject of US players developing... sorry, but most people believe that is one of the purposes of MLS. When its closer to competing with EPL/serie A/La Liga in any sense of the imagination, perhaps not. Also, if the country was content with the development of US Players occuring in the USL, the MLS probably wouldn't exist.
How many teams are using all of their foreign spots. And by "using" I mean, all of those guys are normal first 11 players. All this proposal would end up doing is replacing American bench players with cheaper foreign imports (who will mostly play in the reserve matches). Woop-de-doo.
Cheaper than developmental wages or 30k minimum full roster? That's the vast majority of players on the bench or reserves.
yep. the american system is way better than the euro system. i mean seriously what you want to watch to see which team we can bankrupt next? that's all relegation is. And what's the deal with all the single-table fans? England is what the size of California? yeah, i'm sure if we were that small of a country we'd have single table too. These ppl need to get in their heads the problems that our clubs face with all the travel and such.
The Crew are using 7 of their 8 international slots. If everyone is healthy, only three of those guys would be starters. The Crew have 5 other players born outside of the US who count as domestic players due to citizenship or green card status. Exactly one of those guys is a normal starter. So yeah - the only reason those guys are on the roster over American guys is they are cheaper than an equivalently skilled American. The Crew are hardly the only team who are "fully using" the international roster slots. So I'm not sure why anybody would think that allowing more foreign players (absent any othe rules changes) would accomplish anything.
The longer a thread goes on, the probability of it turning into a "MLS should do this stupid idea" approaches 1. Usually those ideas are old and tiresome and have been discussed to death as well. Lastly, am I the only one who has heard of the "search button"?
Russia has a single table and the cost of travel of a single table MLS vs the current system is not really higher. Some guy even went out and put up a page about that but i forget where it is.
Of course the travel costs aren't higher in Russia - 90% of the teams are in Europe. There are only 2 in Asia. We have a much bigger "spread" here.
The amount of travel in a single table MLS is not much higher than it is now with the current schedule. http://www.settingthetable.info/simpleblog/default.asp?view=archives&month=4&year=2008 Air travel: Single table vs. unbalanced schedule 24 April 2008 One of the many reasons given for there not being a single table in MLS is that if they went to single table, the amount of air travel and expense would increase by a wide margin due to the home and home with each club, versus playing unbalanced schedules against supposedly closer conference rivals. So using the Web and my trusty calculator, I calculated the miles to be traveled round-trip for five sample MLS clubs for the 2008 away league schedule (no internationals or friendlies included). Then I calculated the air travel for a mythical single table schedule (15 away games) including the two newest teams, Philadelphia and Seattle, in 2010. I used San Jose, Colorado, Chivas USA, DC United and Chicago as my sample teams. San Jose's current away schedule has them traveling an estimated 43,000 miles in 2008. If they went single table in 2010 with the same number of games, they would fly just 3,000 more miles than they do now — roughly a trip to Houston and back. The same held true for Chicago (27,200 vs 29,600), Chivas (40,150 vs. 43,800 — and that includes two "away" games currently against LA) and Colorado (29,220 vs. 31,400). Even DC United — in that northeast corridor with close neighbors New York, New England and Philly — would only have 3,000 more miles traveled in a single table (32,700 vs. 35,600). Yes, going single table would be more travel, but not by as much as was to have been believed.
That's fine - I never really said I bought the idea that conferences save dramatically on travel. I was just pointing out that Russia isn't really a comparable situation due to the distribution of their teams around the country. "Russia uses a single table" is kinda meaningless.
so 2nd division players from Argentina like Peralta and average players in Central America like Castro should come here and take up a spot that could used for maybe a young American CB or a Manzonelli in New England. i rather watch up and coming American prospects than Average players fron Cental America. Only the best of the best like Angel,Beckham,Blanco, etc. should be allowed to take up young American spots.