Major League Soccer

yeah getting a lil barca reunion (jordia alba too!) while theyre still effective is just (theoretically) unfair for everyone else

Cincy were one minute away from dispatching Inter Miami in the Open Cup.

and then conceded.

an assist from Messi.

how does this keep happening.

that being said, a few observations:

*technically speaking, they've drawn three of their last five matches. people haven't noticed as much as they were all tournament matches and won two of them in PKs, but draws aren't going to get them to the playoffs.

*their defense is really fucking weak and they get pretty easily beat on the counter when playing good attacking teams. Cincy should have added a third on two occasions, and couldn't convert 3 v 1 and 2 v 1 due to poor passing.

One plus of Inter Messi winning the usoc is that USSF and MLS might decide to care about the usoc.

i wouldn't mind that. I get really tired of 4th and 5th round matches between MLS teams where the stands are 20% full and Reserve team players are in the starting lineup.

*i* care about the usoc, but yeah mls clearly wants it to die

but then i again i want mls to die, so i guess it evens out

the tournament is a great thing and would be an amazing thing that actually got mega support from fans and players alike if MLS's own commissioner didn't shit on it all the time.

also Cincy just tied it

Fire fans are pretty ride or die for the usoc, though the federation being based in Chicago and the club's early successes are a huge part of it. I would like to see the federation promote it more internationally, especially from a historical angle.

I have been to two usoc finals for the Fire, my record is 1-1.

Well, I traveled for one, and one was in Chicago. Guess which one they won!

Miami wins in PKs. Kann got frozen in place three out of five times so he wasn't gonna save shit.

Xpost the home one?

Big potential that Messi gets rested against NYRB tonight, and yet fans have been paying as much as $400 for shitty seats to see him as recently as yesterday.

I hope security is beefed up because I have a feeling it will not go over well if he's scratched.

(This is one reason I sold my ticket to the Orlando game weeks ago...lol)

lmao he's not playing tomorrow. thankfully I already unloaded my ticket.

now, do I reacquire tickets and go tomorrow after all? lol.

yes, for the culture

Still elevated above normal pricing though not insanely so but too much to justify

I'll wait for them to come down. It's an important game and I'd like to be there

Seems crazy to buy Messi and then not play him in a cup final, but I guess he's really broken. Anyway, lol

Messi out again. Seems like this must be fairly serious

mls sucks ass, they killed messi

RIP

Hasnt been seen since Arg played Ecuador iirc

He played 36 minutes against Toronto and left due to injury

wow killed by a team that should not even be in the mls? thats mls for you (i am a canadian premier league truther)

Both Fire and Inter are kinda shitty but that was v entertaining

Thanking u

Can't believe Orlando's run this year

So La Familia (the collective name for all Inter Miami Supporter groups) planned a massive boycott of tomorrow's game to protest the ticket price hikes.

Then cancelled it hours later, replacing it with a toothless protest involving not bringing banners or musical instruments but still attending.

Why? Because ownership promised them a photo op with the Leagues Cup if they showed up.

Lol... pathetic. This league, my God, the ultras need training.

(Orlando's are no better, to be clear)

the only good supporters groups in america is the detroit northern guard

Lol no

i enjoy them damnit

just read about them - what's our point of contention w/ them dan?

They have a superiority/purity complex about their club as if it somehow exists like a DIY punk/art space instead of a commercial sporting concern. Being massive internet loudmouths about this doesn't help their case.

iiiiiinteresting. m bison, the rebuttal?

(never mind me, I'm not a judge, I have no power to mediate)

a feature, not a bug imo!!!!!

american sports needs more DIY punk/art spaces and less commercial concerns

I really wish football culture was better in Orlando. it always seems to be close, but Orlando is an awful sports market. After Shaq left, the Magic fanbase crumbled - I remember going to a game in 2004 where the PA announcer almost scolded the crowd for not making enough noise at a game because it was deathly silent during introductions. Yeah, they weren't a great team then but it was almost sad.

The supporter groups are a little offputting to me, I wouldn't have the energy to be one anyway, I can't watch sports standing for 2 hours. but they've come under fire for brawls at matches with opposing teams (pre-MLS), offensive lyrics to chants, etc. the latter hasn't been a going concern in a while but it was for a few years. and pretty sure they ran Justin Meram out of town - fans still hate him and claim he was an asshole but I feel like our fanbase was a shit to him since Day 1 and I supported him leaving.

I'm not an OG OCSC fan from the USL days. I wanted to go to matches back then as I was just getting into futbol but I never wound up doing it. a lot of those OGs are pretty passionate, including two good friends of mine who wound up on an OCSC billboard, but the problem is so many of them expected the dominance they had in USL right away and peaced out quickly when they struggled the first several years. "it's not the same team" - no shit, you're in a different league now! and a lot of the USL players made the transition to MLS and ....just weren't cut out to play at that level. that being said, they were actually pretty competitive the first two years, only barely missed the playoffs both years.

Idk I feel like in a town that really appreciates the sport, downtown every sports bar would have the game on, but here even pre-Apple TV MLS All Access you had to basically ask them turn it on and they never knew what channel it was on. The one dedicated OCSC/Orlando Pride bar closed in like a year, because it did so poorly (lol).

The Official Watch Parties for road matches they hold are fucking horrible, always held at places that are ill-suited to host them, often due to being too small. I've attended two and left shortly into game time both times.

I mean, I'm not saying it's dire here, think we're like 12th in attendance this year which isn't bad, but is emblematic of the fairweather nature of the fanbase. Inaugural season in MLS, we averaged 34,500 a match, which was definitely not sustainable since this was the Citrus Bowl, and our soccer-specific stadium only holds 25,500. It was actually originally only going to hold like 19,200 and then they quickly realized that would be too little. But fans were even saying "omg 25,500 is too small too, look at how many people are going NOW" but I knew it wouldn't last. Lots of that attendance were Brazilian Kaka fans, as Orlando has a fairly sizable Brazilian population, and the people like me who only started going once they joined MLS, I knew they'd tuck tail as soon as things got ugly.

But it was really sad earlier this year when the team was struggling and attendance outright plummeted, like sometimes to only 60% full. it's back up to the 20ks again now that we're winning (shocker) but it's like mediocre as they were playing your team had made the playoffs three years in a row, this wasn't the dire Kreis/O'Connor years.

tl;dr Orlando should be destroyed

I love going to matches though, none of this affects MY fandom.

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.

american sports needs more DIY punk/art spaces and less commercial concerns

― oatly carmichael (m bison), Saturday, October 7, 2023 10:22 AM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Totally agree with this. The Northern Guard was selling a lot of merch when their team's players weren't getting paid and that was shitty, to me. Things have changed since then but Royal Oak taproom dad's cosplaying as hoolies is still laughable.

And for full transparency, my SG is a bunch of dads and moms being punk nerds but not trying to capitalize on it. Our Twitter account has been fallow since El0n took over but it is here if you still use the hellsite and want to follow us: https://twitter.com/whiskeybrothers

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.