Major League Soccer

I could rant and rave for hours and hours about SG politics and behavior, esp in Chicago. I spent a long time in that world, still intersect with it occasionally, but mostly stick w/ my aging punk friends when I go to games these days. Feeling a bit wistful I won't be at the last home match today tbh.

xp ooooh thats the inside scoop i needed re: det's ngs

to me the essence of a lower league sg OUGHT to be in solidarity with players and team support staff to ensure they get a living wage.

I am sure plenty of their fans are/were, but some were definitely making bucks off of scarves and such. Trying to be the St Pauli of the Midwest or some shit. Frankly any big SG that isn't a 503 nonprofit gets a jaundiced eye from me. NGS may be one now, idk.

thats interesting and kinda confirms some of my worries about mls support long term. new team get nice honeymoon phases wrt to attendance, but lots of the older established teams are at the bottom of the pile even as soccer has grown in popularity. mls' rapid expansion i think is fig-leafing this problem.

― oatly carmichael (m bison), Saturday, October 7, 2023 12:57 PM bookmarkflaglink

the rapid expansion has been awful. my team's only been in MLS since 2015 and since then, fucking NINE teams have been added.

haha i mean where does it stop? 32? 36? 40? those expansion fees have got to be a major source of income absent a more lucrative tv contract.

there will be an MLS North, MLS South, MLS East, and MLS West, all will have their own MLS Cups, and then they'll play each other in the MLS Super Cup

i would actually like that tbh

altho 4 would be overkill, east and west would be fine

thats interesting and kinda confirms some of my worries about mls support long term. new team get nice honeymoon phases wrt to attendance, but lots of the older established teams are at the bottom of the pile even as soccer has grown in popularity. mls' rapid expansion i think is fig-leafing this problem.

― oatly carmichael (m bison), Saturday, October 7, 2023 12:57 PM bookmarkflaglink

Hi dere! Chicago is one of those older teams for sure. Most of the problems were do to speculation by the second owner, iirc he bought the club for a (relative) song in the late 00s, did the absolute minimum to keep it running (lots of stories about this) and then sold it for massive profit to a real billionaire just before the pandemic began. There are other owners like this (Colorado immediately comes to mind) who basically use the single table, no relegation system as a way to park money and reap expansion $. I hate it but I also love the Fire for some reason.

I should name the offending owner: Andrew Hauptman. One time after a particularly embarrassing loss some fans heckled him in his box. The next week the club website published a story about how this was dangerous, how he had done so much for the team, and how hard it was running a pro sports team. In a town like Chicago, you can imagine how this went over. A lot of people I knew stopped coming after that season.

At Orlandos regular season finale

https://i.ibb.co/fx50Lxq/IMG-20231007-190937.jpg
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Sold my season ticket and got this seat cos my life is falling apart so why not. Only $80 plus free beer and food

Have fun!

Meanwhile, this is awesome:

https://x.com/MnufcUnion/status/1710702256696316322?s=20

Ah fuck that shit

🧵 Today we strike. For 7 months, we have bargained with @MNUFC for our first contract. The team has repeatedly stalled and shown no interest in bargaining a fair deal. We feel we have not been take seriously.

— Minnesota United In-House Union ON STRIKE (@MnufcUnion) October 7, 2023

This has impacted the broadcast of the match, I wonder how many supporters will refuse to cross the picket line

Yeah that's fuckin how you protest

Big ups to that union

It was really fucked up how the organization spun it

Fire played like they didn't want to cross a picket line tonight too

Atlanta gets solid attendance despite fielding a consistently mid-table team.

atlanta gets better than solid attendance, theyd have one of the top 10 attendance marks in the english premier league this year

Yeah as much as I hate Five Stripes, they have been rabidly passionate from the first season and wilderness years haven't impacted it at all

Cannot believe Orlando City clinched #2 in the table. I was screaming to fire our coach this April! (Based on degradation across multiple seasons, not just our slow start)

love this rook. hate that they cut the video where they did. dude receives the ball on a bounce from the goalie, flicks it OVER Bradley's head, then shoots the fucker on the run into the top left corner.

https://www.mlssoccer.com/news/orlando-city-s-duncan-mcguire-wins-goal-of-the-matchday

I'm so glad this season is over for the Fire. If they had qualified for the playoffs it would have been even more pathetic, somehow.

Hearing lots of rumors: Shaqiri to be shipped off to Lugano, Bruce Arena (!?!?) in line for coach, and yet somehow the GM (Heitz) who has built 4-5 years of consistently shitty teams and wildly overpriced contracts gets to keep his job.

do you think selling off Shaqiri would be a boon to you? I know he's been disappointing to many fans. maybe could be used to bring in a younger, hungrier DP?

I think Shaqiri could be a useful piece but he can't be the main piece, he's shown that in the past two seasons. The Lugano thing is because Joe Mansueto, the Fire owner, also owns Lugano and has already used it as a dumping ground for excess salaries (which is ironic because Lugano has had much more success of late than the Fire have.)

I think the Fire needs a DP in the vein of Mukhtar at Nashville or Diego Valeri at Portland during their recent successes. A player that can score and lead and put the team on his back. Not necessarily a big name, though that does not hurt in a city like Chicago. More than anything they need a GM and coach who have a real plan to win. Of course that's what basically every sports team needs…

One of the best Fire beat writers has a different opinion

https://www.dailyherald.com/sports/20231026/mls-should-do-for-chicago-what-it-did-for-la-fold-the-fire-start-over

Lalas being a Heritage Foundation supporting mega-conservative somehow eluded me all this time but now everything re: Lalas makes sense

hearing stats like "Atlanta has one win on grass all season" makes me hate every artificial turf team even more

apparently Matt Miazga entered the referee's locker room after the last Cincy-NYRB match, belligerent, and had to be forcibly removed.

I think...his season might be over.

fuck that guy anyway

it's funny, shortly after that broke, another source approached FC Cincy's beat reporter to push back on the story, not disputing he was in the locker room, but stating that it was an FC Cincy staffer and not security that took him out, and FCC fans are screaming exoneration. it's almost like you can tell who voted Trump by their reactions.

also yes fuck him and I hope he's suspended for a year.

Best of 3 first round as bad as expected.

Most Game 2s were boring. Only 3 of 8 series going to Game 3 so lots of days of no matches leading up to a two week break.

Clown show of a league but at least my boys still alive

Houston and Real Salt Lake series decided by PKs.

Real Salt Lake did not lead once in the entire series, with both of the last two matches going to PKs, with them winning Game 2, losing Game 3.

Houston won Game 1 outright within full time.

in a World Cup group stage (removing PKs), Houston would have had 5 points, RSL 2.

and yet they almost advanced to the next round.

terrible, but glad it didn't happen

Clown

https://queencitypress.net/2023/11/29/mls-disciplinary-committee-hammers-miazga/

apparently someone leaked the presale code for MLS Cup and tons of Columbus season ticket holders couldn't get tickets to the final, lots went to bots and are already flooding the resale market. presale was supposed to be reserved for STMs but since it was done via an easy to guess code, it didn't.

utter joke of a league.

more like major dweeb soccer

otm

Couldn't happen to a nicer team imo

Frank Klopas returns as Fire manager, his second fulltime gig with the team (in addition to three caretaker gigs.) I love Frank. A lot of fans are really mad about this, but I love it.

I have been telling friends that if the Fire organization is going to be an unserious soccer concern on the field, then I want all their moves to make the Fire fans I dislike as unhappy as possible.

welp

https://www.mlssoccer.com/news/mls-statement-on-los-angeles-football-club

more deets

https://www.espn.com/soccer/story/_/id/39060400/lafc-fined-100k-fan-group-suspended-illegal-flares

don't relaly have a strong opinion one way or the other on flares because lol nobody at our games does anything like that and I've never been to a European match.

but MLS going to come out of this looking like pathetic old out of touch doofuses who will probably use the pics in promo materials anyway, so...hard for me to cheer on Garber and company

more like don garbage

who will probably use the pics in promo materials anyway

If history is any indicator, they will. They've used pics of flares from Portland, Toronto, and Chicago in the past, all while handing out bans and fines.

"dong arber" is still my favorite Garber nickname

Garber is so fucking stupid

https://www.espn.com/soccer/story/_/id/39120689/mls-pulls-first-teams-us-open-cup-play-reserves

Joke league