Here's a startlingly obvious headline from my newspaper this week that reminds us despite all the great strides MLS has made over the past decade (and they have been far greater than many of us could have imagined), the sport still has a ways to go before it's acceptable in this country: Major League Soccer remains unpopular. Ouch.
Stefan Bondy's story boils down his musings in the wake of a disappointing and uneventful Red Bulls/Dynamo match last weekend. It roll-calls a number of the criticisms the league's fans and critics have been doling out for years. The players need to be paid more. The league needs more stars. The calendar, out of sync with much of the rest of the world outside of Scandanavia, should be flilpped to play through the winter and take the summers off for the big international tournaments. Oh, and it implies that the talent pool has dwindled as the league expanded, leading to sad, listless games.
Yes, MLS has some growing yet to do, but at least it's not the MISL. Ha.
In another story today, Stefan sat down with Erik Stover, the new Red Bulls maestro. Perhaps attempting to defuse the immediate criticism about his appointment as the team's new managing director, Stover explicitly said his number one priority is opening Red Bull Park. His entire career has been in stadium management, and he has no experience in soccer. Therefore, he said he'll leave the on-the-field management to Jeff Agoos and Juan Carlos Osorio. Let's hope they're up for it.
- Tom Meagher
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