Major League Soccer

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

Peter makes a good point here, and he would know.

And @ussoccer, please remove MLS sanctioning as they are in clear violation of one of the first points for sanctioning which clearly states that all “U.S.‐based teams must participate in all representative U.S. Soccer and CONCACAF competitions for which they are eligible.”

— peter wilt (@PeterWilt1) December 15, 2023

They're doing this because they want MLS to have total dominion over all levels of the game in this country, from beer leagues to the top pros. If they can't have that they're going to try to kill any other outlets.

i have never hated mls more than i do now and i hope this backfires like crazy

I feel like it's going to generate a lot of noise from fans of the various leagues

lol US Soccer denied their request to enter MLS Next teams

lmaoooooo fuckers

Once again, Peter Wilt comes thru:

https://www.chicagohouseac.com/news/open-cup-bombshell-wakes-up-american-soccer

Aspirational of course, but you can't say he hasn't been around the block plenty of times to arrive at these conclusions.

well-written. I don't even see the argument for this that would make fans happy. including the history of the tournament, which is no small thing, what's the argument against playing it?

congested schedule? well, that's largely MLS's fault for creating a superfluous, stupid League's Cup tournament, and having an extremely restrictive salary cap and roster rules which makes it next to impossible to do a proper squad rotation without sacrificing the ability to win.

European squads play way more games than MLS teams each year! EFL teams play 46 *regular season* matches a year, MLS already plays 4 less regular season matches than most other leagues, and most other leagues have several teams playing in 3-4 tournaments. and most other leagues don't have playoffs to worry about, either!

like literally you all caused the congestion problem.

would love if mls dug their heels in and a usl team ends up going to concacaf champions cup next year

If you wanna know why the Blackburn Rovers are a shit-assed football team, let's recount:

1) Agree to a deal for Duncan McGuire for four million dollar transfer fee

2) Immediately begin trying to outbid us for David Brekalo, the CB we've been pursuing for over a month

3) While Duncan McGuire is STILL ON AN AIRPLANE TO THE UK, back out of the deal, potentially leaving other suitors in England with too little time to finish a deal for him by the deadline, meaning he flew overseas for nothing

You'll be back in Premier League in no time boys

https://x.com/ChrisWheatley/status/1752836474100228281?s=20

Luis Muriel to OCSC!

Hugo Cuypers to da Fire!

I'm not actually that excited, been hurt too many times

Still an impressive acquisition though

lmfao

On Inter Miami: Sources across the league say the club desperately need to shed salary/add GAM.

Sources say that Gregore, Jean Mota, DeAndre Yedlin, Robert Taylor & Sergii Kryvtsov are available.

"They are screwed," said one rival exec. "Trust me."https://t.co/MByC7dV5y3

— Tom Bogert (@tombogert) February 14, 2024

i feel like on the one hand you dont pass up on a chance to sign messi but on the other hand inter miami is one of the worst places he couldve gone.

also kinda dont know how mls can thread the needle between 'we want intl superstars to come here sometimes' with 'we need to imitate other u.s. sports leagues with arcane salary cap rules'

the way they choose to do it basically ensures that the superstars coming to ride out their twilight years in the US will often get eye-popping results, since most of the opponents they will play against will have shaky backlines at best since almost everyone signs attacking players as their DPs.