The ol' data viz for the end of year salary info dump from the MLSPA.
View: https://twitter.com/stathunting/status/1849543103952171467
View: https://twitter.com/stathunting/status/1849543103952171467
MLS 2024: It’s Leo’s league, we’re all just playing in it
- Thread starter 67YAZ
- Start date
Austin FC hiring Nico Estévez as head coach.
https://www.austinfc.com/news/austin-fc-announces-nico-estevez-as-clubs-new-head-coach
How would SoSH grade the hire? Austin FC reddit is unhappy.
https://www.austinfc.com/news/austin-fc-announces-nico-estevez-as-clubs-new-head-coach
How would SoSH grade the hire? Austin FC reddit is unhappy.
Austin FC loves that Gregg Berhalter coaching tree.
It's definitely not an overly exciting hire, but Estévez was decently regarded before the FC Dallas job, and it's hard to truly assess his performance there because he had an okay-ish roster that became much worse due to significant injuries to key players.
Chris Armas was the ultimate bad vibes hire but has done quite well with the Rapids, for example. It can be hard to tell.
I read the Tenorio article about MLS moving to a winter schedule. After pillorying the plan several times in this forum, it actually sounds like not a terrible idea in its current iteration. I'm still against it, but I've also just watched MLS and the WNBA (and even sometimes MLB) play its most important games of the year and get lost among our nation's apparent insatiable demand for American football.
The framing of the argument is definitely a lot different than I've heard before. As the league has drawn a larger share of its revenue from players sales, it has been tough to reconcile being a selling league while the most important matches are played immediately after the summer window closes. A club with a talented player always has the potential of a Godfather offer hanging over it, much like how Columbus lost a former MVP unexpectedly, though obviously things have worked out for them.
The framing of the argument is definitely a lot different than I've heard before. As the league has drawn a larger share of its revenue from players sales, it has been tough to reconcile being a selling league while the most important matches are played immediately after the summer window closes. A club with a talented player always has the potential of a Godfather offer hanging over it, much like how Columbus lost a former MVP unexpectedly, though obviously things have worked out for them.
I have not read the article, because I refuse to subscribe to the New York Times for ... reasons ... but one of the arguments against it that I saw on Twitter this morning that I thought was interesting was basically that casual fans don't care about the league's product getting incrementally better. Casual fans want something to do on a warm, summer evening, not on a cold winter afternoon/evening.
So, the league has to figure out what they care about more ... in game attendance, eyeballs on streaming devices and/or making the league better.
That's a good way of framing it. A winter schedule would have been impossible during the league's first thirty years of existence, because the box office was where teams made most of their money. MLS still depends on ticket sales, much more so than its more-established peers, but that piece of the pie is shrinking and I think everyone expects that trend to continue. We've already seen ticket sales take a back seat television with the Apple TV deal and fixed start times, instead of times determined by the local markets. As someone who still consumes MLS in-person, this sucks, but I get why it's happening.
With climate change, the Chicago winters aren't as bad anymore (I understand how jinxes work, thank you). They may be fine playing afternoon matches most of the winter, but field conditions in northern sites will be a real issue, especially for teams that share their stadiums with an NFL team.
And it will definitely hurt attendance. Each of the past 2 seasons I've made day-of decisions to catch a match because the weather was perfect, both times went with friends and we all brought our kids. That's not happening in the winter.
I guess I wonder why if there are sold out games in London, Newcastle and Glasgow all winter (all further north than Chicago is) why we have to suddenly worry about teams, fields and fans going to see games in the US in the winter. Also I love the idea of having the winter break like Germany but mostly because I think all leagues should have that kind of stoppage before the run in.
The Gulf Stream makes the British Isles much more temperate than the upper Midwest. We have much higher summer temps and lower winter temps plus a lot more snow.
Also, Bruce deep into talks with San Jose.
View: https://twitter.com/tombogert/status/1849948506137530573?s=46&t=GfuLFvTYcOxcFiCZjyIYZw
View: https://twitter.com/tombogert/status/1849948506137530573?s=46&t=GfuLFvTYcOxcFiCZjyIYZw
Boston is the same latitude as Rome, which is why we have our famous Mediterranean climate.
As an aside, I hate the total rigidity of the kickoff times. I get why MLS wants to cluster games to support some additional pregame/whip-around/postgame programming on AppleTV, but one of the benefits of having a zillion teams in the league is that there are a ton of games per matchday. So schedule 1-2 games to fill up Saturday afternoon, please! I watch the Revs, but I also like to see some other games and it's much harder to do that with all the games clustered. I am probably not going to have the energy to watch Vancouver-San Jose at a 10:30 ET kickoff. Give me a toddler naptime 1pm kickoff, for the love of god.
I was never a huge Guzan fan, but he put in a heroic performance worthy of song against Inter Miami. Should have been 6-1. He kept it closer than it had any right to be
Columbus losing to NYRB would possibly be the biggest upset in MLS playoffs history.
And also hilarious.
And also hilarious.
With the high potential for some stadium news, this could be an all time bad day on the #NERevs hashtag.
View: https://twitter.com/SJEarthquakes/status/1854555095557607470
(Quakes officially hire Bruce Arena)
View: https://twitter.com/SJEarthquakes/status/1854555095557607470
(Quakes officially hire Bruce Arena)
Woah, Curtin out in Philly. It was a down season, but I figured he’d be empowered to see through a rebuild.
In another timeline, Curtin says yes to Chicago last fall and has just finished his first season here instead of getting ousted 1 year into a new deal with Philly. Things change fast.
In another timeline, Curtin says yes to Chicago last fall and has just finished his first season here instead of getting ousted 1 year into a new deal with Philly. Things change fast.
Sugarman is the problem in Philly but guess you can’t fire the owner (we can’t, can we?). This is a silly decision when you give the guy limited players or zero depth. He’ll go somewhere else and excel.
The Athletic article implied that Curtin has previously fielded interest from abroad. I wonder if he’ll take that plunge at this juncture in his career.
I kind of hope he does so that he doesn’t end up in StL. Thats purely for rivalry reasons, even though I think it’s in likely that an organization that appears to have a very clear philosophy would bring in a manager that has earned privilege of bringing a vision and a team along with him.
This seems like a good time to propose a suggestion I've made in the past (thought probably not here) that MLS adopt a balanced schedule, supporter's shield be renamed MLS Champion, and lower divisions have play-in process to join 'MLS Playoffs', which now becomes new US Open Cup. Also, once the teams are identified that qualify for the US Open Cup, they are grouped and the process follows the WC Finals format with group play, followed by knock out rounds up to the finals. I know it's un-American to suggest the MLS champion should be the best team throughout the season and not the team that got hot at the end of the year, but I'm feeling un-American at the moment.
100% yes to this aspect. It’s such an easy re-framing that makes the on-field results line up with the accolades the teams receive. (This goes for any sport that could theoretically have all teams play a balanced schedule during a single season, but it’s uniquely perfect for soccer - one home and one away match per season against all other opponents is about as balanced as you can get.)
It'd be wild if this was the year the Red Bulls finally won a title.
The Sounders are inexplicably alive still, but they've lost like six in a row to LAFC and it's hard to see that changing tonight.
The Sounders are inexplicably alive still, but they've lost like six in a row to LAFC and it's hard to see that changing tonight.
Well, RBNY pulled out a 2-0 win on the “road” at Citi Field in a game in which they decidedly lost the xG battle.
Given that all the good teams in the East are out already, it’s just one more achievable win to get to MLS Cup for them…
The upsets keep coming in these playoffs as the Sounders end a five-game slide against LAFC with a 2-1 extra time win.
Jordan Morris had an incredible goal to win it.
Jordan Morris had an incredible goal to win it.
My take is balance the schedule (probably at this point needs more expansion and then either a hard east/west split or J League style closed pro/rel), keep some real US style playoffs because this is America dammit and then have league versus playoff champion be an awesome sports fan type debate
I'd love to see a home-and-home schedule or at least something where there is rotation, so every few years I get to see every team in the league come to Seattle.
What is the point of having exciting players in the league like Messi if Miami doesn't even visit every single other team over the span of a certain amount of years?
Last edited:
Wow, Vancouver fired coach Vanni Sartini. This is coming off easily the best season in franchise history. Either he did something bad that we don't know about or this is like Philly and the club decided to scapegoat the coach. Bizarre.
https://www.givemesport.com/vancouver-whitecaps-vanni-sartini-sources/
https://www.givemesport.com/vancouver-whitecaps-vanni-sartini-sources/
NYCFC fired Nick Cushing, which honestly feels a bit overdue.
Inter Miami announced the hire of Javier Mascherano to replace Tata. Big name, not necessarily a big track record — he managed to not qualify for the U20 WC with Argentina U20. But he's a Messi Guy. We'll see how it goes.
St. Louis is hiring Olof Mellberg, who most recently took Brommapojkarna to a 10th place finish in Sweden.
FC Dallas hired Eric Quill to replace Nico Estévez; Quill used to be their reserve team coach but left for stints as an assistant in Columbus and as head coach for New Mexico United in USL.
So the open jobs are in Atlanta, NYCFC, Philly, and Vancouver. Atlanta is a big one, given Blank's financial backing of the team and assuming Lagerwey will get the roster sorted out soon.
Caleb Porter still manages the Revs.
And speaking of the Revs, they announced their roster decisions and the big one is that they declined Dylan Borrero's option. I understand the logic — he was due to be quite expensive and he's really struggled to stay healthy. But it sure is a shame to see what once looked like a cornerstone piece of the team just walk away for nothing. Andrew Farrell re-signed and was announced as a player-coach, interestingly.
Inter Miami announced the hire of Javier Mascherano to replace Tata. Big name, not necessarily a big track record — he managed to not qualify for the U20 WC with Argentina U20. But he's a Messi Guy. We'll see how it goes.
St. Louis is hiring Olof Mellberg, who most recently took Brommapojkarna to a 10th place finish in Sweden.
FC Dallas hired Eric Quill to replace Nico Estévez; Quill used to be their reserve team coach but left for stints as an assistant in Columbus and as head coach for New Mexico United in USL.
So the open jobs are in Atlanta, NYCFC, Philly, and Vancouver. Atlanta is a big one, given Blank's financial backing of the team and assuming Lagerwey will get the roster sorted out soon.
Caleb Porter still manages the Revs.
And speaking of the Revs, they announced their roster decisions and the big one is that they declined Dylan Borrero's option. I understand the logic — he was due to be quite expensive and he's really struggled to stay healthy. But it sure is a shame to see what once looked like a cornerstone piece of the team just walk away for nothing. Andrew Farrell re-signed and was announced as a player-coach, interestingly.
Richie Williams still coaches Revs II.Caleb Porter still manages the Revs.
Wow, turns out there was some more MLS arcana that I wasn't yet aware of. Apparently starting in 2022 clubs can name a single player to a player professional development role, provided that he is paid no more than $75k and "commensurate with salaries for similar roles when taking into account the expected number of hours of such duties," so it seems like another fun method to get around the salary budget.
Add Toronto to the mix. Herdman has resigned.
https://bsky.app/profile/torontofc.ca/post/3lc4hzb43mk2q
The conference finals are tonight, Orlando vs. RBNY at 7:30 and LA Galaxy vs. Seattle at 10. I'm anticipating the Western conference final more eagerly, but I'll be tuning into both.
Welp, goodbye Sounders. Disappointed but happy because hopefully ownership will fucking do something.
Go Red Bulls in the final. Would be hilarious if they finally win one the season they are the 7 seed.
Go Red Bulls in the final. Would be hilarious if they finally win one the season they are the 7 seed.
Not a fan of either Red Bull or the Galaxy. I don't watch the MLS very much anymore since I go to Hartford Athletic games.
It is extremely bizarre that this Red Bulls team got through to MLS Cup. I wonder what the betting odds were on this outcome at the beginning of the playoffs. So much for the Miami vs. Columbus glamor matchup in the East final.
From a neutral's perspective, the Galaxy are a fun team and they've been kinda bad for so long that my general dislike for them has faded somewhat. Riqui Puig is pure entertainment, since he just gets on the ball and does wild stuff while playing absolutely no defense and making minimal attempt to fit into any defensive shape. Since his talent level is well above that of a typical MLS player, the Galaxy have been willing to build a team around him and the result is pretty fun.
It's just so unusual to get an early/mid 20s guy of his caliber in the league, but since the clubs that someone as good as Puig is would normally play stopped using no-defense magician style #10s a long time ago, it's a good fit.
His absurd MLS FBRef chart has been making the rounds.
From a neutral's perspective, the Galaxy are a fun team and they've been kinda bad for so long that my general dislike for them has faded somewhat. Riqui Puig is pure entertainment, since he just gets on the ball and does wild stuff while playing absolutely no defense and making minimal attempt to fit into any defensive shape. Since his talent level is well above that of a typical MLS player, the Galaxy have been willing to build a team around him and the result is pretty fun.
It's just so unusual to get an early/mid 20s guy of his caliber in the league, but since the clubs that someone as good as Puig is would normally play stopped using no-defense magician style #10s a long time ago, it's a good fit.
His absurd MLS FBRef chart has been making the rounds.