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.

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.

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.

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 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.