The Increasing Growth of MLS

Fans take in a Seattle Sounders match. Photo credit: onegoalusa.com

When you think of major sports in America, soccer is not one that immediately comes to mind. In this country we love our football, baseball, and basketball. When we think about these sports, we think about the professional leagues we have established for them – NFL, MLB, and NBA. Hockey even has its own established, successful league in the NHL. These leagues are easily the best leagues in the world in regards to their respective sports. Every athlete dreams of playing in these leagues as a kid. That’s not exactly the case with Major League Soccer; every kid grows up dreaming of having the chance to play at a big European club. But MLS is slowly growing in quality and popularity and the rest of the world is starting to take notice. 

If you didn’t know, MLS, founded only in 1997, is now boasts the third-highest average attendance of all American professional sports leagues, having passed the NBA and NHL in 2011. As American sports fans are starting to take notice of the increasing quality of soccer being played, professional players in other leagues around the world are as well. This past week Robbie Keane, forward for the 2-time defending MLS Cup champions Los Angeles Galaxy and former forward for a number of prominent English Premier League teams, shared some of his thoughts on the increasing popularity of MLS: “There are a lot of players in England that I speak to now, youngish kind of players, that want to come over here and play over here…There are certainly a lot of players who look at this league now with certainly a different opinion than they did a few years ago…When I went back (last month) to Tottenham for a couple of weeks, the lads asked questions and stuff like that. That just goes to show you how the league has grown” (SportingNews). And not only is the quality of player wanting to come to MLS increasing, but the quality of player leaving MLS is increasing as well. Perhaps the best example of this is Clint Dempsey. He played three seasons with the New England Revolution before moving to EPL club Fulham in 2007. He steadily got better each season and this past year he finished the season as the fourth highest scorer in the league, earning a transfer to Tottenham in the summer. Dempsey also finished fourth in EPL player of the year voting.

Kei Kamara celebrates after equalizing against Everton. Photo credit to Alex Morton/ZumaPress.com

More and more MLS players are following Dempsey’s lead and moving abroad. Former FC Dallas winger Brek Shea just moved to Stoke City in the winter transfer window and put in a 75-minute shift yesterday alongside Geoff Cameron, who was acquired by Stoke this past summer from the Houston Dynamo. Kei Kamara scored the equalizer in Norwich’s eventual win over Everton yesterday after just recently arriving from Sporting KC on loan. Andy Najar, formerly of D.C. United, recently made history by becoming the first MLS homegrown academy player to make a permanent move to a European club, Belgian champions Anderlecht. These transfers are necessary to prove the quality of MLS is on the rise in the eyes of the world. Eventually MLS will want to be able to retain their star players but at this stage in the league’s growth it is a healthy thing.

Here's to the increased popularity of MLS in the United States and the rest of the world.

The Miracle in Manchester

(NOTE: This was from a previous blog that I didn't really do anything with but I figured I would go ahead and post it here again.)

Wow.

It's two days later and I still can't get over how great a finish that was. That was one of the greatest, most dramatic moments in sports that I can remember for a long time. And that is coming from someone who was born and raised in Knoxville, Tennessee, where football is king and soccer is merely an afterthought in the sports world (more on that later). In case you missed it, here's a link to the game winner. And here's another one showing Manchester United at the moment when City scored. Truly incredible stuff.

Here's the background: Manchester United and Manchester City play their home matches five miles apart. Manchester United is New York Yankees of English football. They have 19 League titles, the most of any club in League History. Manchester City had a grand total of two titles coming into the final day, the last one coming 44 years ago. Before the start of this season, Man City went on a spending splurge, having recently been bought by an extremely wealthy oil-based ownership group. This allowed them to build an extremely competitive squad for the upcoming campaign (and drew questions of the ethics of simply buying stars instead of developing players). Their spending proved to be worthwhile in the early stages of the season - they went in to Old Trafford and absolutely embarrassed Man United by a score of 6-1 (!). Man City found themselves comfortably on top of the Premier League Table for most of the first half of the season. However their form dipped mid-season and Man United overtook them for the lead.

United managed to build up an 8 point lead with five weeks to play in the season. City's title hopes were all but gone and their dreams of finishing ahead of their rivals were shattered. But remarkably United unexpectedly dropped points to lesser competition in some of their following games while City kept winning, including a 1-0 victory over United at the Etihad Stadium that saw City retake the league lead on goal difference. Both squads managed to win their following game, setting up an epic final day.

For Man City, it was as simple as it gets: win the game, win the title. They were even on points with Man United but ahead on an insurmountable goal difference of 8 goals. All they needed to do was beat bottom-dwellers Queens Park Rangers at home, who came in to the final day needing some help to avoid relegation. Man United had to win and have City either draw or lose, or tie and have City lose. All league games were played at the same time so no team would have a competitive advantage over another.

City managed to go ahead in the first half of a Pablo Zabaleta strike that the QPR keeper failed properly handle. Man United also scored in the first half through Wayne Rooney. However QPR equalized a mere three minutes after halftime, giving United a hand on the trophy. QPR was reduced to 10 men minutes later when Joey Barton was shown a straight red for an off the ball altercation with Carlos Tevez. Shockingly, QPR went ahead 2-1 off a counter attack ten minutes later, giving United a firmer grip on the title.

All hope seemed lost for City fans as they headed into five minutes of stoppage time, still needing two goals to take the title back from United, still leading 1-0. Nothing short of a miracle would save them.

And that's exactly what they got.

David Silva whipped in a cross of a corner kick that Edin Dzeko directed into the back of the net. The score    was 2-2 with only four minutes left in the season, the title still up for grabs. Meanwhile at the Stadium of Light the ref blew the final whistle, Man United having held on against Sunderland and champions for the moment. But all they could do was wait. And then two minutes later, Sergio Aguero, one of the many expensive signings made by City before the season, scored with a clinical finish near-post, snatching the title away from United and sending the Ethiad into delirium. Moments later Sir Alex Ferguson and Man United players looked around in utter disbelief as the news came into the Stadium of Light, that their 20th League title and been taken away by their "noisy neighbours."

First Post!

Hello internet, my name is Daniel (amtekkers) and this is my attempt at writing a blog. It's mostly going to be about sports, mainly soccer/football. Here goes nothing.


Why I root for Valencia

I'll start out by saying I did not watch soccer (sorry, I'm American) until about 2 years ago. I really had no interest in it. Sure, I grew up playing it in church leagues like every other kid in the United States. I even played two years in middle school. I watched the World Cup in the summer and cheered on the USMNT but again who doesn't do that. I was a typical American sports fan - I loved my basketball and football (though I don't watch baseball). MLS was an afterthought, and probably not even that. Soccer was just something the rest of the world was good at, and almost everyone that played it was a wuss and dived and screamed anytime they got touched by another player.

Interestingly enough my interest in soccer was actually sparked by a sleepover at a friend's house one summer night two years ago. We decided to play FIFA 10 on his PS3 because that was one of his favorite games. I had never played FIFA before, but once we started I was immediately hooked. It was my type of game - nonstop action, something you could pick up and play but had to spend time on to master.

So that's where I say my love of soccer started. In a video game. Yep, that happened.

Fast forward to that fall. It was my first year of college. I bought FIFA 12, the latest installment in the FIFA franchise, and decided I needed to pick a team to root for to really get into the "beautiful game." I decided I needed to pick a European team to follow since that's where the best football in the world is played and where most of the major tournaments happen. I didn't really want to follow an English team because I had always been turned off by comments on Youtube and whatnot by Englishmen always bashing MLS and American football and how they were always boasting about the Premier League being the best league in the world while giving not an ounce of credit to football in other countries (I realize not everyone does this but still). I'm also learning Spanish so I thought following a Spanish team would help in my quest to eventually become fluent. And Spain had won the last World Cup.

So I had narrowed down my choices to a Spanish team. Now of course everyone knows about Barcelona and Real Madrid, and justifiably so as they are two of the best teams in the world. But I really had no clue about what other Spanish teams were out there so I wanted to give one of those teams a shot. Plus just about everyone in the U.S. only cheers for Real Madrid or Barcelona so I wanted to stay away from that to avoid looking like a bandwagoner. I guess I'm still considered a bandwagoner for picking a team I didn't grow up watching or a have any ties to but whatever.

After ruling out the Big Two, I looked up the history of the other clubs that were currently in the Primera Division. I didn't want to root for some scrub club that never wins anything because it would have been too hard to really get into watching their games. After researching various clubs, one stood out to me in particular - Valencia. They seemed to be Spain's "third team," the best team behind the Big Two and the team most likely to challenge them, which I figured would be acceptable to root for. And their kit colors were orange, white, and black, which is similar to my university's colors. And their crest was a freaking bat. That was probably the deal breaker.

So that's how I came to root for Los Che. I realize that's not  the usual way one comes to root for a team - I wasn't born in Valencia or born into a family that rooted for the club. I definitely don't pretend to be a lifelong supporter and I understand if die-hard, lifelong supporters of the club reject me for that. But I'm here for the long-haul. Better late than never, right?

Amunt!