2016 Preseason Thread

last year this tournament had more teams i think close to 10-12 they didnt all play each other of course...maybe there are more teams out there. we just dont know as tournament has not been made official yet.
Regardless of how many teams, if more than the 4 listed, NYCFC should beat the three teams we are currently scheduled/slated to play - those dates are known.

This appears to be last year's webpage/teams/schedule for the Suncoast Classic. Two groups of 4.
https://www.imgacademy.com/mls/

Edit: the standings page has two groups of 4 yet the first link I posted had 12 team logos.....
https://www.imgacademy.com/sand-sun-soccer-livestream
 
I just hope that these games can be streamed. I mean it's IMG Academy, we can probably get a 4K YouTube stream with no loss of streaming.
 
Executive of team news: okay boys the team really has nothing going on and we need to put some news out there, anyone have ideas?
(Intern in the corner waves hand frantically)
EoTN: Anybody? Anything please? No one?
Intern waving both hands frantically whisping "me me!"
EoTN: fine.
Intern: YES! Okay okay. Guys. Hear me out on this one. National. Bird. Day. We can change all the players names to have birds in them and make a funny starting 11! Dove-id Villa, and Andrew Blue Jay-cobson! It will be great!
EoTN: ... Anybody got anything else? Anyone... Please... Damn it. Fine.
Intern: YAYYYY!
 
My mistake. I should have known first division often means 2nd division.
I always thought it odd that England's *second* division is the Championship. It was apparently Division Two for a hundred years prior to that, but then they sort of split the league into two sections so now it's the top of the second section. But it took me years to get it straight when I first started following the Premier League.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Kjbert
I always thought it odd that England's *second* division is the Championship. It was apparently Division Two for a hundred years prior to that, but then they sort of split the league into two sections so now it's the top of the second section. But it took me years to get it straight when I first started following the Premier League.

It was Division Two for a hundred years, but it didn't change because of splitting the league. It changed because of the Premier League.

In 1992, the 22 teams in the First Division decided to break away from the Football League to form their own league for the sole reason that Sky offered them a big fat cheque from TV revenue if they would do it, as the FL was vetoing all attempts TV companies were making to put more than a token handful of games a season on TV. The league they made was obviously the Premier League. The FL was powerless to stop them but didn't want to lose its branding and certainly didn't want to make itself sound subservient to a bunch of upstart breakaways by changing its divisions to the Second-Fourth Divisions, so it kept its existing First-Third Division names even though the First Division was now the second tier etc.

Then about 10 years later, the FL realised that the First Division was still pretty high profile in Europe and compared to virtually every other second tier league in Europe was far more competitive and played to a much higher level, but they realised that the fairly generic "First Division" name was holding it back as it needed something more unique and associative to give it more publicity, so they renamed it to the Championship. However, they still rated the brand value of the First/Second Division names, so they simply bumped the third tier up to the First Division name (later Division One) and the fourth tier to Second Division/Division Two.
 
Last edited:
It was Division Two for a hundred years, but it didn't change because of splitting the league. It changed because of the Premier League.
I really hesitate to challenge or correct you on English football history, but I think this is an error. The Championship was not Division Two for 100 years, it was Division One. When the top teams formed the PL they created a whole new league, and what had been the top league for a century became the second league (regardless of its name). I think the rest of your post indicates you agree with this, and this sentence was just a typo. Or maybe I'm missing something?

It must have been a weird year for everyone when the switch happened. Most teams moved "up" a league even though their relative position stayed the same. Teams that got promoted moved up two leagues, and teams that were relegated stayed in the same league, if I'm understanding it all correctly.
 
Nah, I think technically the Championship was Division Two for a long time - the Premier League didn't come about until 1992, before that being "Division One" or something. Then, it was The Premier League, Division One, Two, etc. THEN for more rebranding efforts and to make some clubs feel rewarded (or something) they made it Premier League, Championship, League One, League Two.

ETA: i didn't read the previous comments, so someone may have already covered that....
 
  • Like
Reactions: Kjbert