North American Pro Soccer 2016

[Gothamite]

6 hours ago, Nyk33 said:

I'm flipping back and forth between the Red Bulls & NYCFC and I have to say that the Fire-NYCFC is just a gigantic montage of horrible defending. 

 

Also the Red Bulls are ending this game on a very sour note. 

 

Yeah, we got lucky there. Bad defending, but still walked away with three points. That won't happen often. 

[Nyk33]

1 hour ago, Gothamite said:

 

Yeah, we got lucky there. Bad defending, but still walked away with three points. That won't happen often. 

 

Chicago is a bad team that was debuting 9 players today. 

 

If your defense plays like the same way against Toronto next week Giovinco will rip them to shreds. 

[Gothamite]

Indeed. That's what I meant - you can't play that bad against a good team.  But for now, three points. 

[Sport]

Oh my those Crew uniforms are so gross. 

[2001mark]

2 hours ago, McCarthy said:

Oh my those Crew uniforms are so gross. 

 

What, a giant unwashed sweat stain down the middle isn't appealing?  It represents hard work lols.

[FiddySicks]

Just got word from work that Drogba is going to be training with the Republic for the next week or so. I guess he had a knee injury and they want to keep him off of artificial surfaces. There's talk that he may play a friendly or two with SFRC as well, but that's not confirmed. Either way, I'm pretty excited because Drogba has long been one of my favorite players. 

[MJWalker45]

2 minutes ago, Bucfan56 said:

Just got word from work that Drogba is going to be training with the Republic for the next week or so. I guess he had a knee injury and they want to keep him off of artificial surfaces. There's talk that he may play a friendly or two with SFRC as well, but that's not confirmed. Either way, I'm pretty excited because Drogba has long been one of my favorite players. 

Something is fishy about Drogba. Not practicing with his own team and not playing games specifically because they are on turf. Other than rug burn, the punishment is the same. And if he were to play Seattle or Portland in the MLS Cup, would he miss that? I think he's still sour that he would have had to pay a lot of money back to the team and the first chance he gets he'll leave for another league.

[Gothamite]

Thierry Henry almost never played on turf when he was with the Red Bulls.   He came close to sitting out the Eastern Conference Final match in Foxboro, but that's when the team and fans finally forced him to do it.

[Nyk33]

Congrats to Orlando City for having the 5th highest attendance in the world over the weekend. 

 

81,359 Borussia Dortmund-Bayern Munich (Germany)
68,467  Real Madrid-Celta (Spain)
67,420  Club America-Morelia (Mexico)
63,578  River Plate-Boca Juniors (Argentina)
60,147  Orlando City-Real Salt Lake
53,892 Manchester City-Aston Villa (England)
52,815 Monterrey-Tigres (Mexico)
52,107 Newcastle United-Bournemouth (England)                     
49,300 FC Cologne-Schalke 04 (Germany)
48,855 Chongqing Lifan-Guangzhou Evergrande (China)

 

http://www.socceramerica.com/article/67935/crowd-count-orlando-city-crowd-fifth-highest-in-w.html

[wences]

1 hour ago, Nyk33 said:

Congrats to Orlando City for having the 5th highest attendance in the world over the weekend. 

 

81,359 Borussia Dortmund-Bayern Munich (Germany)
68,467  Real Madrid-Celta (Spain)
67,420  Club America-Morelia (Mexico)
63,578  River Plate-Boca Juniors (Argentina)
60,147  Orlando City-Real Salt Lake
53,892 Manchester City-Aston Villa (England)
52,815 Monterrey-Tigres (Mexico)
52,107 Newcastle United-Bournemouth (England)                     
49,300 FC Cologne-Schalke 04 (Germany)
48,855 Chongqing Lifan-Guangzhou Evergrande (China)

 

http://www.socceramerica.com/article/67935/crowd-count-orlando-city-crowd-fifth-highest-in-w.html

Really impresive!

 

[Nyk33]

So MLS trademarked "Minnesota FC" & "MNFC" on February 18th. 

 

http://www.empireofsoccer.com/united-no-more-mls-trademarks-minnesota-fc-mnfc-45500/

 

If MLS makes Minnesota United change their name to Minnesota FC then the whole excuse about there being too many "Uniteds" is bogus. Somehow there is no problem with three FCs (Minnesota FC, Toronto FC, & Los Angeles FC) but there is a problem with three Uniteds. 

 

To me this is just Arthur Blank being an :censored: if it goes down like this. 

[MJWalker45]

2 hours ago, Nyk33 said:

So MLS trademarked "Minnesota FC" & "MNFC" on February 18th. 

 

http://www.empireofsoccer.com/united-no-more-mls-trademarks-minnesota-fc-mnfc-45500/

 

If MLS makes Minnesota United change their name to Minnesota FC then the whole excuse about there being too many "Uniteds" is bogus. Somehow there is no problem with three FCs (Minnesota FC, Toronto FC, & Los Angeles FC) but there is a problem with three Uniteds. 

 

To me this is just Arthur Blank being an if it goes down like this. 

We all know it's bogus because if a team had to change it should be Atlanta.

[Brian in Boston]

It won't happen, but Bill McGuire and the rest of the Minnesota United FC ownership group should collectively tell Don Garber and the MLS front-office suits to "get bent".

 

Minnesota United FC's identity has been in place since March 15, 2013. As such, the team has borne the United moniker 2 years, 4 months, 2 weeks, and 2 days longer than Atlanta United FC has sported the name. That's 2-plus years of brand equity that Minnesota United FC is being asked to toss aside in order to appease Don Garber's desire to bootlick Arthur Blank.

 

But, hey... why do right by an existing soccer club that has committed to the MLS vision of having its member-franchises play in soccer-specific stadia when you can cater to the whims of a johnny-come-lately to the sport of soccer whose MLS team will play second-fiddle to his National Football League franchise in a multipurpose, retractable-roofed, downsized mega-stadium?

 

 

[dfwabel]

• ESPN: The viewing audience declined by 32%
• FOX Sports: The number of viewers declined by 4%
• UniMas: Declined by 6%
• Univision Deportes: Increased by 70%

On 3/7/2016 at 2:37 PM, Nyk33 said:

Congrats to Orlando City for having the 5th highest attendance in the world over the weekend. 

 

81,359 Borussia Dortmund-Bayern Munich (Germany)
68,467  Real Madrid-Celta (Spain)
67,420  Club America-Morelia (Mexico)
63,578  River Plate-Boca Juniors (Argentina)
60,147  Orlando City-Real Salt Lake
53,892 Manchester City-Aston Villa (England)
52,815 Monterrey-Tigres (Mexico)
52,107 Newcastle United-Bournemouth (England)                     
49,300 FC Cologne-Schalke 04 (Germany)
48,855 Chongqing Lifan-Guangzhou Evergrande (China)

 

http://www.socceramerica.com/article/67935/crowd-count-orlando-city-crowd-fifth-highest-in-w.html

Unfortunately, TV ratings for Week 1 were down.

 

Quote

 

The number of viewers for the opening weekend of MLS games on national television in the United States declined by 11% compared to the opening MLS weekend in 2015.

While this year’s opening weekend is not an apples to apples comparison to last year, it’s pretty close. For the opening weekend of 2015, the season kicked off on a Friday night with live coverage of LA Galaxy vs. Chicago Fire on UniMas and Univision Deportes. This year, MLS and the TV networks decided to play all of the opening season games on Sunday.

Another difference is that FOX Sports 1 showed two games on the opening Sunday of last season. This year, FS1 showed the one game (Seattle vs. Sporting Kansas City) and let UniMas and Univision Deportes show the Sunday night late game (LA Galaxy vs. DC United).

Last but not least, only 3 MLS games were nationally televised on 2016 opening day compared to 4 during the 2015 opening weekend.

 

Comparing the numbers, the biggest disappointment was ESPN. The viewing number for ESPN’s broadcast of Portland-Columbus, which was a rematch of the 2015 MLS Cup final, garnered 32% fewer viewers than ESPN2’s game featuring Orlando and New York City FC on opening day. While New York is a major TV market, the fact that Portland-Columbus was on the main ESPN network should have generated better viewing figures than it did.

Overall:

• ESPN: The viewing audience declined by 32%
• FOX Sports: The number of viewers declined by 4%
• UniMas: Declined by 6%
• Univision Deportes: Increased by 70%

 

 

[MJWalker45]

As much as I would like to debate this, Columbus never does well viewer wise on ESPN. And the newness of two teams playing their first game makes for more viewers trying to figure out how those two teams will play the rest of the year.

[DG_ThenNowForever]

Portland is the champion, but they don't have any stars.  Neither does Columbus. MLS would have been better served featuring a DP-heavy team like LA, NYCFC, or Seattle.

[Gothamite]

Indeed.

 

I'm also not terribly inclined to read much into one day's numbers.  Let's see how MLS does over the course of the season.

[wences]

3 hours ago, MJWalker45 said:

As much as I would like to debate this, Columbus never does well viewer wise on ESPN. And the newness of two teams playing their first game makes for more viewers trying to figure out how those two teams will play the rest of the year.

It will be interesting watching if the NYFC model of signing stars better than signing good players. Columbus Crew got different system and I think can work better. TV market, for sure, will never be the same

[Nyk33]

5 hours ago, DG_Now said:

Portland is the champion, but they don't have any stars.  Neither does Columbus. MLS would have been better served featuring a DP-heavy team like LA, NYCFC, or Seattle.

 

Maybe MLS should open up the year with Galaxy-NYCFC at Yankee Stadium so you could attract European viewers as well. 

[crashcarson15]

6 hours ago, DG_Now said:

Portland is the champion, but they don't have any stars.  Neither does Columbus. MLS would have been better served featuring a DP-heavy team like LA, NYCFC, or Seattle.

Yeah, MLS should’ve had the Timbers open with a team like LA or NYCFC. Host them both this year. I get the rematch angle, but I always hate starting the year with that because it almost always seems forced.