How much has the growth of MLS helped Concacaf minows?

It can be doing both, but our player pool should be large enough that there are no problems with the minnows. Our current problems have all to do with coaching.

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It has def help deepen those teams player pool bc they are getting more chances to play pro other than some shitty central American or Caribbean league

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But also this:

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our player pool should be large enough that there are no problems with the minnows. Our current problems have all to do with coaching.

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i made this point in a troll thread and it was ignored (for good reasons i guess)

I don't think it's hugely significant. I'm sure it has had some impact but people tend to overrate the quality of MLS. I enjoy it but let's be honest, it's a pretty bad league.

Depends on your definition of bad. I don't understand the constant badmouthing of MLS on here, but that's just me. Like, everyone knows it's nowhere near the levels of the leagues that have been around for decades and decades longer.

MLS owners think they can model their league after the NFL and eventually have the same success. They are wrong. The NFL exists in a global vacuum. Nobody else plays that particular code of rugby so they can dictate terms. The opposite is true of soccer and as long as they insist on forced mediocrity for all, mediocrity both at the club and international levels is all America will ever have.

I don't get the hate some here seem to get off on by constantly trashing mls. It's only 20 years old and was essentially built from scratch. The progress that the league has made just in the last ten years is incredible in terms of ownership investment, quality, attendance, stadiums, infrastructure, academy structure, marketing, club growth, etc. Like everything else the us is trying to do in terms of top flight world class soccer, it will take time.

So it will continue to grow and get better just like it has over the past several years and I'm sure that some will continue to talk bad about it along the way.

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the core philosophy of the league is not a good one at this point and is holding our country back on a lot of levels.

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Disagree. Core philosophy is to grow a world class league. For the us to be a leading soccer country it has to have a world class league. So I think the mls is helping the overall growth and development of soccer in this country on many levels.

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I don't agree that the on field quality is dramatically better today than it was 10 years ago. Particularly if you take away the top half dozen or so DPs

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Strongly disagree. I've been watching mls since its inception and the quality is better than it was even five years ago.

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I don't like the academy structure, it's not set up for long term growth.

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Viscerally disagree. Academy structure in mls has been thoroughly overhauled in the past several years and is starting to pay dividends. Massive investment has been placed into academies. One example is fc Dallas having five homegrown players in a starting lineup. And fc Dallas isn't a bottom feeder, it is one of the better more exciting teams. Columbus overhauled their academy structure under Berhalter. The academy structure is night and day better than it was just a few years ago and mls academies will play a huge role in developing us talent. It's one of the most exciting things in soccer that I see I this country now. Ten years ago mls academies were non factors. It is a complete 180 today.

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I don't like the attitude MLS takes with the US Open Cup and the CONCACAF Champions League. MLS is very insular.

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Idk what you are talking about. Mls promotes and plays us open cup. They even want their club's b sides to compete in the us open cup and it was nasl that fought to prevent that.

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Investment has increased but there is no ownership.

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You are either misinformed or trolling. Investment ownership is one of the biggest developments in mls over the past ten years. Ten years ago 6 clubs were owned by one owner (AIG). Not the case today at all. One example is lafc whose ownership group is led by a billionaire and includes over 20 other well known and wealthy investors. Beckham's group in miami. Merritt Paulson in Portland. Seattle's group. Toronto's group. Smaller dedicated owners like Precourt in Columbus. NYCFC's group. And on and on. These aren't people using their clubs as tax shelters. They are spending millions, some cases hundreds of millions, to grow their clubs. Listen to lafc's and Columbus's owner and tell me if they are not prideful, committed owners determined to make great clubs.

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current MLS structure

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I believe the overall structure will adapt. The league has been growing and investing and I think garber has done well. I look for the training wheels to come off in the coming years. But ten years ago the league was nearly broke. It had to have sound investment and financing and that is being achieved under the current leadership. There are stages, and I think the next one will further evolve the ownership structure.

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I don't like the influence the NFL owners seem to have over the league.

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In the past I might agree but that's not the case anymore. The Vikings owners wanted the mls club in minnesota and had a corrupt deal with the city and the new stadium. Mls said thanks but no thanks and went with nasl club owner McGuire instead. For Blank to get atlanta united he had to agree that there would never be football lines on the pitch. There aren't many NFL owners in mls (Seattle but Allen is not majority owner, Colorado, Atlanta, New England, is about it off top of my head and they don't run the league by any stretch.

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I don't want MLS to have a monopoly on D1. MLS's people at the USSF have blocked competition and used underhanded tactics to hurt NASL at every turn to protect their monopoly. That monopoly is the only thing they really care about.

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And here we go. I knew you had an axe to grind. You are an nasl guy. Well, there can only be one top dog and mls best out nasl so just get over it. No, we don't need two top leagues. We need one. There aren't two Premier Leagues, there aren't two Ligue 1s, there aren't two Serie As. We need one top league and we need it to be successful. So just get behind it. I'm all for the nasl to have a role in the soccer league tier but it will have to be a supporting role.

Ideally, in my perfect world vision, in the future we have mls be a great top flight and combine nasl and usl into second and third divisions with relegation and promotion. There is a chance this happens but it's years and years down the road and it needs to be. I get it. Mls is still young and growing, you can't attract the commitment and investment you need if a club could be kicked out. So hopefully we reach that goal eventually but it has to be a long term goal.

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MLS may have been great for that in the past it's to the point where there are doing more harm than good.

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Again, completely disagree for all previously stated reasons. I love the role mls is playing. They are helping our youth through academies, bringing us good games, reaching people in communities, promoting the game, and also probably helping other CONCACAF nations as well. And that's good too. CONCACAF needs to get better. It's better that the us play against better teams in our realm, it will make us better too. Elevate everything with the us and mls leading the way.

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Core philosophy is to grow a world class league.

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I'm sorry dude but I stopped right there MLS's core philosophy could not be more diametrically opposed to growing a world class league. If you buy that nonsense from Garber then I'm sure the rest of your post is equally as silly.