2024 U.S. Open Cup
- Thread starter ZYanksRule
- Start date
No fucking way this is the “exciting” news coming up garber was talking about in his state of the league. This is fucking terrible, I’m salty. So we give up a chance at ccl.?
You know it's bad when MLS announces it in the late afternoon on a Friday right before the holidays. So shameful.
Messi probably said he wasn’t participating in the Open Cup so MLS said “what’s the point of the competition now?”
All the links are gone?! What the hell happened?! Why are we mad?? I wanna be mad too!!
MLS announced they will not be sending first teams to the US Open Cup, and will instead send MLS Next Pro sides.
I know this will be an unpopular opinion, but, YAY!
I'm surprised at how near unanimous the web and social media comments have been on this. Usually there's at least a 20-30% minority position on anything. Here it seems at least 9-1 against this move.
Futile gesture petition link:
Futile gesture petition link:
I will miss the games at St John’s. It was like those games in that small environment were made for us crazy hardcore fans. While the turf was bad, you were up close and personal (and maybe sitting next to Keaton parks!) and it was like watching a game with family.
What a bad decision by Garber, Apple TV and Messi League Soccer.
What a bad decision by Garber, Apple TV and Messi League Soccer.
My best guess is that, because of Leagues Cup, they don't have as many matchdays as they need for a full season, so they want to use US Open Cup matchdays to fill out the schedule and keep teams from having months that get a little insane. So this is an attempt to make the schedule a little easier.
Plus, let's be honest, MLS fans never reacted to the USOC. Stadiums were empty, many teams didn't even play in their normal stadiums (Atlanta, Seattle, Red Bulls, us, Charlotte I think ... I remember when we were in the quarterfinals against Orlando and there was no one there. MLS fans just haven't reacted to the tournament in recent years, so why should MLS continue to play in something fans don't care about.
Now, obviously, this is all wrong and MLS should absolutely be in USOC, but if I had to guess, those are two of their reasons.
USOC has suffered by being owned and run by USSF, an entity that lacks the historical standing and authority of your typical national FA. Then you have soccer's weird position in the US sports fandom landscape, with not just a limited fanbase but worse, many of them mostly watch foreign leagues like LigaMX, EPL, Bundesliga, etc., while getting all snobbish about MLS. Hell, it often seems that most of the fans of US Mens team disdain MLS. So the USOC was always a tough sell. It never received widespread promotion or broadcasts, and those probably would have failed if the USSF tried. MLS co-owns Leagues Cup, and it's not a coincidence it expanded the same year MLS acquired an almost in-house streaming network. Then they get extremely lucky with the Messi signing, which they probably knew was possible when they made their plans but certainly not definite.
LMX is the most popular soccer league in the US. MLS hopes LC will get Mexican-American fans to start following MLS, and LigaMX believes it will help them to retain those same fans long term. They're not mutually exclusive goals, but I think LMX holds the advantage here. It's easier to keep customers than to acquire new ones, and Leagues Cup just gives Mexican American fans more ways to easily watch their teams here in the US. Nobody takes the cross-league results seriously because the LMX teams spend an entire month away from home, and as a result the good outcomes by MLS in those matches probably does little to entice anyone.
I don't completely follow why you present all the reasons why USOC is no longer terribly relevant for MLS and a drag in terms of viewership and revenue, and something that makes the season even more over-scheduled for the players, and then say "Now, obviously, this is all wrong and MLS should absolutely be in USOC, but if I had to guess, those are two of their reasons." I haven't been a fan of soccer in the US long enough to understand the historic significance of USOC, but at this point in time the only reason I can see for MLS teams to participate would be to give lower league teams the chance to shine against Messi and co, so to speak, to make the pyramid more robust and viable. But if MLS fans are tuning USOC out anyway, that's also not working. MLS getting out of USOC is pretty much an acknowledgment of the gulf that exists between MLS and any viable lower league.
One of the only things I can say about MLS clubs pulling out is that it'll basically ensure non-MLS american teams also make CCL.
...Whether that's a good thing or not....
...Whether that's a good thing or not....
