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.