North American Pro Soccer 2019

[dfwabel]

1 hour ago, Brandon9485 said:

 

What I noticed from your article is the lawsuits were brought by the United States Olympic Committee. Perhaps France doesn’t have a desire to bring it against these clubs. Probably, as you also reasoned, the longevity of the club names might play a role in that. 

Read this post written in 2016 from the IOC's Trademark Senior Legal Counsel

Keep in mind, the IOC filed for trademarks in the USA and the USOPC protects them under the Ted Stevens Act. 

 

Other countries, like Brazil, has their own set of laws protecting the IOC's marks. 

 

If you had it in your name before 1950, you were generally grandfathered in with no penalty as the Iin OC updated their Charter in 1950

27 minutes ago, gosioux76 said:

My guess is that the various Olympic federations of each country are charged with maintaining trademark protections in their respective countries, though I can't say for certain that it's the case. 

There's a little something called the Nairobi Treaty of 1981, which national Olympic committees generally use to enforce trademarks. 

[Gothamite]

1 hour ago, Maroon said:

Oh, just because it'd be cool, make sense, and be unique to MLS. Plus, a twitter rando (who, again, I have no clue if he knew what he was talking about) said that Montreal wanted to use Olympique but was told they couldn't, so they stuck with Impact.

 

Yeah, I’d have to go with “made it up on the spot”, actually.  

[Rockstar Matt]

Last night, Carlos Vela had one of the better goals that you’ll ever see. What a player. He honestly should still be in Europe, but I’m so grateful he chose to be in LA. 

 

Next up, the Galaxy. 

 

LAFC is having a dominant season that is literally unprecedented in MLS (61 points in 26 games with a +46 GD), but we still haven’t beaten our crosstown rivals. 

 

This game means so much for this season. I truly believe that if LAFC can finally beat the Galaxy, we’ll go on to the win the cup. We have an earned stigma of being unable to win big games and we need this victory on Sunday to finally get this proverbial monkey of our back. 

 

We simply can’t lose or draw to the Galaxy again. 

[FiddySicks]

I'm pretty sure LAFC is going to get bounced early on penalties or something this season because of the playoff structure. 

[BC985]

The STL MLS owner, Carolyn Kindle Betz did a radio interview this morning. Here are some tidbits:

 

When asked about the name for the team, she said that MLS has a role in the name creation. I got the impression that something like a “name the team” contest will not be happening.

 

She also gave insight into what may become a future competition. Stating that St. Louis helps provide regional rivals to Kansas City, Chicago, Cincinnati, and Columbus (I would add Nashville), she mentioned that during discussions with MLS a “Midwest Cup” idea was floated and that Dallas was interested in that idea as well. 

 

Stadium plans will likely be unveiled in the next few weeks (months?).

 

 

[-kj]

Chicago is sort of Midwest, but the rest are definitely not.

[BC985]

10 minutes ago, Mockba said:

Chicago is sort of Midwest, but the rest are definitely not.

 

To many, Dallas and Nashville would not be considered Midwest, but the others definitely would. 

[BC985]

I’ve seen maps that consider Minnesota Midwest, so there’s another potential entry. The Midwest Cup idea was completely speculative. 

[-kj]

Maybe it's just me, but I never think of Ohio as being Midwestern.  Chicago is located in the Midwest, but isn't really Midwestern.   Texas is just... Texas.

[Digby]

Going to be tough with divisional alignments, unless a radical rethink on that front is on the horizon.

[dfwabel]

36 minutes ago, Digby said:

Going to be tough with divisional alignments, unless a radical rethink on that front is on the horizon.

Not really. They'll do what they believe will maximize revenues the most since the schedule will be very unbalanced.

[Dilbert]

3 hours ago, Mockba said:

Maybe it's just me, but I never think of Ohio as being Midwestern.

Ohio is just a hodgepodge of regions. Northern Ohio (Toledo, Cleveland) is Great Lakes. Northeastern Ohio (Youngstown) is just a suburb of Pittsburgh.

Southeastern Ohio is Appalachia. Central Ohio (Dayton and Columbus) is midwest. Cincinnati is a mixture of midwest and the south.(I blame the last part on Kentucky)

[GDAWG]

 

Precourt attempts to be cool.

[Red Wolf]

The Midwest is whatever you want it to be.

[gosioux76]

15 hours ago, Digby said:

Going to be tough with divisional alignments, unless a radical rethink on that front is on the horizon.

I keep hearing rumblings of a new central division, which would make a lot of sense considering the appeal of geographic rivalries. Doing so, however, would make the idea of a Midwest Cup seem unnecessary. Cascadia Cup works because it's a regional thing with just three teams. A Midwest Cup that included STL, KC, Chicago, Minnesota, Cincy, Columbus (and maybe Nashville?) would make up for the majority of that Central Division. (The outliers, I'd assume, would be the Texas clubs). 

[Digby]

41 minutes ago, gosioux76 said:

I keep hearing rumblings of a new central division, which would make a lot of sense considering the appeal of geographic rivalries. Doing so, however, would make the idea of a Midwest Cup seem unnecessary. Cascadia Cup works because it's a regional thing with just three teams. A Midwest Cup that included STL, KC, Chicago, Minnesota, Cincy, Columbus (and maybe Nashville?) would make up for the majority of that Central Division. (The outliers, I'd assume, would be the Texas clubs). 

 

I hear you. It would be very Midwestern of them to say, "we're having a rivalry, aw shucks I guess everyone can come".

 

I'd rather they let the rivalries develop naturally. Maybe STL ends up having chippy important games with Nashville but not Chicago. Whatever, let it play out.

[Digby]

A new division would work nicely if they wanted to go up to 38 games like La Liga and the EPL. 10 games against one division, 10 against the other, 18 against your own = 38.

 

But I can't imagine adding even more games to the already congested schedule. A 38 game regular season on top of the playoffs, USOC, and three(?!) continental competitions seems like it wouldn't fly, and with good reason.

 

Something like four divisions, either 8 or 7 teams might work (add in an extra game or two across divisions to fill gaps).

 

Or just go single-table and play an extra game against the 5 closest teams geographically to yours. It would be hopelessly unbalanced but maybe that doesn't really matter.

[BurdBranding]

Phoenix Rising hit 14-0 on dollar beer night yesterday and move to 15-0 in their last 15 with a two game gap on the entire league and a goal difference that is more than 2nd through 5th in their conference combined (+41). Know it’s not the top flight, but lord is that decent stats to have in soccer. Hopefully it keeps building the communities interest because games have been great! (Just saw the post about LAFC from earlier and made me think about it)

[Gothamite]

Amazing Hudson River Derby at the Stadium.  NYCFC has been making their home a really tough place for New Jersey to play since that 7-0 embarrassment. 

[DG_ThenNowForever]

Weekend began with a message Seattle win at Portland, and ended with a banger in LA (that I sadly missed).

 

MLS!