The Sweeper: The Mediocrity of MLS?
Big Story
DC United’s club president Kevin Payne has never lacked for chutzpah, and after a season in which the team launched a website called “We Win Trophies” but have failed to make the playoffs for the second year in a row, arguing that DC had at least earned some kind of a moral victory for their style of play is quite something. “We don’t want to play like Colorado or New England, which most of the season sat with eight or nine guys behind the ball. How many people go to watch Colorado or New England play? That’s a problem for our league,” Payne told Soccer Insider.
“We can’t play like we’re a team desperately trying to remain in 14th place in the Premiership. Our market isn’t there yet. They want to see something that is entertaining, and D.C. United has always had a way of playing. Given a choice, we would rather attack than cynically defend. You look at the way Real Salt Lake played when they came here [a 0-0 tie in May] and sat 10 guys behind the ball. You don’t have to do that. Sometimes that is the best way to get a result — if you don’t care about the product, if you don’t care about advertising your league. Long term, who wants to watch that?”
Payne’s comment might have more to do with the fact he’s feeling the pressure of living up to the standard himself and DC set in the early years of the league, as the club has won just two trophies since 2000 (the MLS Cup in 2004 and the US Open Cup last year), after dominating in MLS’ first four seasons, winning a remarkable five major championships (three league titles, one US Open Cup and one CONCACAF Champions Cup). While the cynical play of many teams in MLS is a concern marketing-wise, there is actually no bar to playing good football and winning, as Columbus has showed two years in a row. DC simply aren’t good enough these days and that has much more to do with the personnel decisions Payne’s leadership has made than whether or not they’re trying to play pretty football.
Worldwide News
- Speaking of failure, Toronto FC supporters “won’t stand” for continued ineptness on the field, writes Paul James in the Globe and Mail, warning owners MLSE face a backlash and “should prepare themselves for an onslaught”. Despite the club’s profitability and packed stadium, TFC have yet to make the playoffs in three seasons in MLS, quite an achievement in a league that still manages to reward mediocrity (New England and Real Salt Lake are both entering the playoffs with a negative goal difference). This issue has been bubbling under the surface for a while in Toronto, as everyone there knows MLSE have been happy to see their hockey team, the Maple Leafs, achieve little while selling plenty of tickets. Is James right, and will TFC fans force MLSE to act, unlike the Maple Leafs soporific suits who pack the stands come what may?
- Who is running Rangers? The financial crisis in Glasgow continues to deepen, and impact further on the playing side. Rangers are $50m in debt and haven’t bought a player since the summer of 2008, with manager Walter Smith questioning who was running affairs, with Lloyds Bank’s “business transformation specialist” on the board.
- Meanwhile, Twohundredpercent updates us on the crisis at Liverpool (yes, we should have a moratorium on the use of the word ‘crisis’ here on PI), looking at the battle between the growing protesting group led by the Spirit of Shankly and the club’s ownership, asking as we did last week if Liverpool are the next Leeds. “SOS, the acronym surely no accident, have combined with ‘Share Liverpool FC’ in providing more detailed analysis of Liverpool’s finances than they are given credit for, certainly by the club, who accuse them of un-necessary ‘scaremongering’.”
- Alex Ferguson is facing the music in his ongoing war of words with referees, charged by the Football Association and now being accused by senior referees of not understanding the laws of the game.
- Blogistuta comments on an interesting hire by Roma, who have given the brilliantly named job of Coordinator and optimizer of human resources in the sporting area to a higly successful volleyball coach. I always find this sort of cross-sport recruiting interesting, so let’s see if he can reinvigorate a struggling club.
- Jamie Carragher is back to his best according to Rafa Benitez, who apparently didn’t notice the rapidly aging centre-back practically running backwards in his effort to keep up with Michael Owen’s zimmerframe run to goal on Sunday.
The Sweeper appears daily. For more rambling and links throughout the day every day, follow your editor Tom Dunmore @pitchinvasion on Twitter.
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What I find the funniest is that Colorado had more wins than DC and scored just one fewer goal. They had the second-leading goalscorer, a guy tied for the lead in assists and two guys in the top 10 of shots and shots on goal.
DC had no one in those categories. DC also had fewer shots and fewer corner kicks than Colorado. I don’t see how that translates into a defensive team. But if Kevin thinks the Rapids just employed a defensive strategy, at least he’s admitting that they had a strategy, something I did not see from United all year.
He, Kaspar and Soehn are making it harder and harder to remain a fan of the team.
Here’s a question…does Payne’s complaint maybe speak more to the type of coaching in MLS? Take, for example, our poor unfortunate Chicago Fire. On paper, a team built to attack. Mexico’s greatest midfielder, USA’s greatest forward, fast wingers, long-range midfielders, even the rare attacking fullback. And yet I don’t recall any 5 goal thrashings this season. Or even any thrilling 4-3 nailbiters (the closest was a 3-3 come-back draw). I seem to recall bucketloads of low-scoring draws and one goal losses, instead.
It is my opinion that the coaching staff simply does not know how to make use of a front-loaded team like that. That players were misused or misguided and the team’s huge goal-scoring capabilities were squandered in favor of conservative defensive oriented tactics. And that, since the team was stacked so far in the other direction, ended up costing the Fire several games, and the league, and a lot of fans.
I don’t know how DC’s team is constructed, but it does make me wonder if something similar is going on. The current crop of American coaches all seem to come from the hard-knocks defensive school that generally dominates the American style or play throughout. Which isn’t to say we need foreign coaching – Osorio and Ruud Gullit anyone? – but as the league imports more dynamic Latin players, a change in coaching style must also come about.
Brian Payne sounds like every manager of a Spanish team that has ever lost to Chelsea.
*Kevin (whoops)
I think there’s probably a lot to the question of coaching and MLS, and whether we have a breed of coaches who can take players to the next level, but is it a matter of American coaches having a problem? I mean, after all, Denis Hamlett is Costa Rican.
I think the problem is that the league does reward mediocrity for too long with the still-generous playoff system and of course, the infamous lack of relegation, meaning the pressure just isn’t on the players or coaches to perform as much as it is in some (but far from all) other places. There’s an awful lot of recycling.
I’m not sure Payne’s general point about attacking football holds very well in terms of the appeal of the league, though it might hold a little for DC due to their early history. I’m sure Toronto fans would take a playoff run however it was achieved, and if the Fire had won more home games, attendance would have been better even if the many draws had just been squeaked into wins. Sure, great football helps, but everywhere in the world, it’s winning that fills the stands and not the quality of play, isn’t it?
Though I suppose the fact Columbus still aren’t selling out after two dominant seasons suggests the issue is much larger than either that or Payne’s answer.
Come on, Carragher had a great game on Sunday, why the need to hate? Pepe Reina should probably be forced to return part of his paycheck as he had so little to do.
And to the anti-Yank protests by so-called Liverpool supporters? As my boy Diego Armando might say: “They can suck it, and they can keep on sucking it.” Now that we’re in an age where costs and payouts in the game have exploded, are Gillette and Hicks doing worse by the club than before? If this were 2005, would Liverpool have shelled out the equivalent for what G&H shelled out for Torres? It’s barely five years ago that Steven Gerrard was about to leave for another *English* club. What progress was being made toward expanding the brand internationally, or crucially toward a new stadium?
It sucks that the global economy came crashing down and really put them in a money bind, but hey, a lot of people in the real world have been hit harder by the downturn and struggle with weightier issues than where their favorite club will play football. If worst comes to worst, there’s not going to be a Leeds situation, or a sell-off of all their good players, they’ll end up selling out to an arab family flush with oil money and the quest for number 19 will continue. (Personally if they end up having to sell, I wish someone like American Bob Kraft would step in. If only Dallas Cowboy owner Jerry Jones was interested in soccer….ahhh, a man can dream, right?)
I allow myself one cheap shot at a random target per week and Carragher has to take it. He did play fine, but “back to his best” is a bit much.
As for “so-called Liverpool supporters”….The answer is yes, the club is worse off because of the leveraged buy-out they did that has loaded the entire enterprise with debt and they haven’t fulfilled their promises. Tottenham’s stadium looks set to go ahead despite the global economy and without new ownership or the kind of income Liverpool have had in the past few years.
Please, we all saw neat artist renderings of a new Anfield, too. Spuds should be able to afford it — they charge their fans a lot more than Liverpool do, while their lack of ambition means that they basically only have to spend enough to stay out of relegation each season and 5th or 6th is considered a great year.
someone should write a “barbarians at the gates: sports edition” about the use of leveraged buy outs and junk bonds to buy sports teams. the icelandic “investment banks” (if you want to call them that) also did a lot of this using fake monopoly money to buy teams in the run up to the depression.
if your only duty is to the shareholder (the team ownership group), then it’s fine because they make a profit. but if you have a duty to the club/fans/organization, then it’s bad because it saddles it with a ton of debt.
I’m a long term Chicago Fire season ticket holder, and I think Payne is correct. The league is justified for fining him for taking that point of view to the press but that doesn’t make it untrue. IMO, Payne is foreshadowing his desire to replace Soehn and bring in another south american/flair oriented dp. And DC draws better than virtually any of the long term franchises, so I think he’s correct in sticking to those guns as he plans for DCs future.
MLS absolutely needs to put out an “attractive product”. If I want to see decent players working really hard, I can ride my bike with my kids to a Northwestern game in Evanston and have an entertaining time and spend less than it costs just to park at Toyota Park. My kids get invited to be ball boys for the high school team which will drag me along for live soccer. For the cost of one family outing to a Fire game, I can also get a season’s worth of FSW, Setanta and Gol TV.
I don’t have to go to MLS games to enjoy watching soccer. I’ve done it for years, because the Fire have generally had good teams and some inventive players. But the prospects of the Fire replacing skilled and proven players like Rolfe, Blanco, McBride, Conde and Segares with Nyarko, Lowry, Banner, Woollard and Husidic has my season ticket renewal form buried in my desk drawer well past the renewal date.
Birmingham City might be able to fill their stadium with fans ecstatic over their 0-0 draw with Man City, but that’s not going to get the job done in cities like Chicago or DC.