What is MLS? Effing Tight

As if you didn't know that already. But Toronto FC fans, with all the recrimination, regret, sorrow and the like, should take heart that Real Salt Lake are in the final. Toronto FC finished the season on 39 points, RSL 40. On the ever important last two fixtures of the season, TFC went out winning at home, then losing away. RSL lost away and then won at home.

Had Toronto FC made the playoffs, it isn't conceivable they wouldn't have been able to recreate RSL's post season record, what with solid home support (although I don't see TFC recreating RSL's win on penalties in Chicago). So tonight, I'm supporting RSL, the team, which as Fake Sigi pointed out awhile back, is the lowest spending club in MLS.

So, yes, watching Toronto FC getting destroyed on their last game away to the worst team in MLS stung. But the loss didn't tell the story of the whole season. Really, it was the late goals, and that is something tangible, a target you can work on. That's a new manager's dream, and good reason why Preki took the job—a playoff round or two at Toronto FC next year will make him a hero. Sure, you're not going to get a world beater with TFC any time soon, but you might get a playoff contender in one or two simple moves.

Look at RSL.

What is MLS? Apparently Not Open to Criticism

I've written that Garber keeps his ideological cards close to his chest, but in fining DCU Prez Kevin Payne $5000 today for calling a spade a spade—that the onfield product in MLS is not good enough and won't draw in more fans until it is—means that the guy isn't hearing what needs to be heard.

This is really not good, especially in light of the fact Payne didn't even mention bringing better players with more money, everyone's favourite MLS bugbear. Payne instead said the league needs to move away from stiff formations, and slow, defensive play. This is at least in part what I've been trying to push lately—that tactically, MLS should be taking advantage of the current egalitarian set-up to experiment with more open, attacking football.

The gist of my frustration, and part of what Payne speaks to, is that if the league can't bring in the players, nor threaten teams with relegation, and include half the league in a knockout competition for the one trophy worth winning in the league, then bloody hell, why not open things up, why not bring in coaching staff worthy of bringing fitness levels up, dropping median ages so we can move away from league play that makes Serie A look like Space Invaders?

Whether it was for specifically calling out other clubs or not (we're all in this together everybody, even though we're different football clubs in direct competition in the league!), Payne is out of pocket for 5 Gs, and lord knows the rest of league isn't going to pipe up anytime soon. We can safely say Garber isn't on board with promoting these sorts of changes. But beyond that, managers throughout the world call out other clubs for parking the bus or not attacking enough; why should MLS be any different?

I dunno about this league.

What is MLS? Here is My Bizarre Fantasy Version

Let me present a very simplistic formulation. Let's assume that in order for MLS to receive higher television revenues, it must draw in more supporters. Let it also be resolved that, for those fans to show up at MLS games and commit wholesale to the league, the quality of the on-pitch product must get better. And let's assert that the only way the on-field product will get better is if the league spends more money to buy better players. Finally, be it resolved that the only way MLS can afford to buy better players is to generate higher revenues.

Assuming you agree with the above assertions, MLS seems stuck in a vicious cycle, right? It might also be the reason for so much blogger-on-blogger violence in the MLS sphere. So let's see if there is any way out of this conundrum.

Let's say that for now, the issue of the soft cap and designated players is immovable. How do you generate a better on-field product in order to entice more fans to the league?

This might put me on the business end of a very detailed flaming post, but why doesn't MLS consider a radical move: a wholesale ideological change in direction away from purchasing "ready-made" talent, either overseas or within the league, and toward investment in superb managerial and coaching staff? The move would be coupled with player development above and beyond the current academy and Generation Adidas college draft scheme, like strengthening administrative ties with USSF development academy clubs, as well as restarting the reserve league (Canada's player development set-up is so outmoded it requires its own post. In the mean time, listen to ICF's interview with CIS coach Pat Nearing and the SAAC's Gary Miller).

In other words, why not take MLS to the wild extreme of its original mandate? Why not lower the current salary cap across the board while increasing rookie wages, as Ben Knight once suggested, and allow owners to invest not in DPs but top line managerial and coaching talent, at the league and academy levels? Why not kill off the draft system altogether, and allow managers to compete with one another in negotiating with college and USSF academy players directly?

Sure, we might lose a lot of very good players in search of higher wages elsewhere. Good on the league; it might raise its overseas profile beyond the borders of Craven Cottage. Let's transform MLS into a European farm league, hell let's even encourage a European/MLS partnership, investment in player development in return for first rights to players when they reach a certain age.

My fantasy would be to have a league of up-and-coming eighteen, nineteen, and twenty year-olds, selected from a healthy and interconnected youth academy system, in administrative tandem with both a (reformed) CSA and USSF, coached by young, top level managers wanting a move away from the South American or European spotlight, free to experiment with formations and training techniques without the traditional repercussions of a top-heavy relegation/promotion system. Free, attacking football, young, mistake-prone, yes, but also open, new, and equal. A league where North American soccer fans can go to spot global talent in its infancy before hopefully striking out for Europe or elsewhere. A league where young managers can prove themselves before making a bigger move down the line.

Since we're likely to keep supporting our clubs no matter what, what is there to lose? It won't ever happen, and no one will go for it, and it the owners would likely balk at the prospect, but I think it would be kinda cool, even if it would mean bye-bye TFC as we know it.

What is MLS? Getting to Know Garber

There is a delicious sense of the absurd in the way Don Garber has gone about his MLS business in the last few days, almost like a Steven Colbert satirizing the moronic "ideas" market of the Blatter/Warner contingent in order to expose football's upper echelon time-wasters for what they are.

First, we had Garber telling European clubs that MLS could be a model for wage sharing on the continent, the equivalent of asking the Germans to slow down on the Autobahn or the French to "clean up those unions so everything can run better in the country and there'd be less strikes and stuff." For anyone who saw this as a serious recommendation and not as a sly knock on debt-plagued European clubs' historical condescension toward America, look again.

Then Garber responded to Blatter's typically ignorant call for MLS integration with the European calendar by all-but eliminating the possibility, unless "we...start thinking about roofed stadiums at some point." An obvious bluff, it was enough to send respected soccer-following newspapers like USA Today into a tizzy of half-arsed wheezings on Garber's throwaway half-sentence. Yet as Match Fit USA deftly points out, this was Garber's way of saying it would never happen (although I think it has more to do with scaring MLS fans out of supporting the idea with the prospect of a infrastructural and cultural step backward than anything else).

I caught a bit of this conniving flavour when Garber hinted back and forth on when exactly Montreal would get their MLS entry, but this week has made it clear: Garber is one clever, if not shifty, guy when it comes to giving quotes to the press.

What is MLS? It's Ours

Reading through the submissions these past two weeks, stories of waiting for years for a club to arrive in your hometown a decade too late, seeing your club switch stadiums only for the supporter culture to die off, wondering what Don Garber has up his sleeve regarding the league's growth in the next five to ten to twenty years; you get the impression that, ultimately, the future of MLS is out of our control. We're mere supporters; the investors and MLS front office hold all the cards.

As has been written elsewhere, what is the soft-cap debate among bloggers other than a simulation of upcoming collective bargaining among the league and team owners? Who are we to clamour for more money for better players, less arbitrary team expansion, better marketing? It's out of the control of ticket-buying fans, like it is in the rest of the world.

This morning I woke up and read Tom Dunmore's open letter to the Chicago Fire ownership. Tom is heavily involved with the Fire front office, and like many of us in MLS, he is deeply committed to the well-being of his club. Many of us here in Toronto take for granted the way that MLSE, specifically by way of Paul Beirne, have co-operated with fans since opening day. The notion of fighting front office on key issues of importance to the team seems distant now, but this could change in a heartbeat (need I mention the Argos?). Dunmore is fighting the sort of fight MLS club supporters may find themselves involved with as the years progress.

And this is a fight worth fighting, because MLS is at a point in its life cycle where the invested supporters have more power than they might realize. Section 8 is the heart of the Chicago home support. As Tom points out, you rip that heart out and you end up with FC Dallas. No, this isn't Europe, no, thirty thousand supporters aren't going to show up no matter what front office decides to do to the team. So supporters do have more leverage to change things for the better than in other comparable leagues.

Of course, it is theoretically possible to build a soccer club in a city without dedicated supporters, with decisions made over and above the people who buy season tickets, and yield a modest profit, but what would be the point? What is the point exactly of MLS, or any sporting enterprise for that matter, if it's stocked with dead clubs with fly-by-night fans? I think we all know there are far, far easier ways to make money than build soccer teams in America. Why get involved if you don't give a shit about bringing in dedicated supporters who love the sport through and through?

It's for that reason I believe while we might not always agree on what sort of league we want in North America, acquiescing in the status quo merely because it happens to be in the hands of private interests is a cop out. What is MLS? It's the Red Patch Boys, it's Section 8, and yes, it's the Nordecke, (feel free to tell Mark McCullers to fuck off for me). And it's the moms and pops and kids league too. Major League Soccer may frustrate the hell out of us, growing at a snail's pace, slow to take advantage of a strong North American soccer-loving base, making very bad decisions about investment and finance, perpetually shaking in its boots lest it resemble dear old granddad NASL too much.

But it's ours, if not in the dollars and cents department, then certainly in heart and soul. And yes, we do have a say in its future.

Thanks to you too for having your say over the past couple of weeks. This conversation will go on and on I'm sure, so expect to see it crop up again round these parts...

What is MLS? The Top of a Pyramid that Doesn't Exist

The first few comments I received when I kicked off this little experiment immediately went into the relegation/promotion question. It goes without saying that structurally, R/P is a non-starter for Major League Soccer; private investors spent a lot of time and money insuring the necessary infrastructure had been put in place before securing their MLS club, with the agreement said club would always play at the highest professional level. It's hard for that reason alone to imagine club owners would ever agree to a R/P system, never mind MLS' fragile average attendances and the nature of the salary cap system.

There is MLS, and there is USL, and never the twain shall meet. Or as Fakesigi put it, commenting on Wikipedia's entry on MLS: "there's no such thing as the North American soccer pyramid." And it will likely stay that way for some time; witness the turmoil currently surrounding everyone's great hope for a true MLS second tier, USL-1.

But R/P is not really the point; the point is how do you grow a league like MLS? Everything in this series thus far has touched on it; packed stadiums with passionate fans, greater media involvement, creating a unique, and competitive, North American league. What should MLS do to foster growth in a responsible way? Your answer to this question will depend on whether you think North America will embrace soccer if the product on offer is on par with the best leagues in the world. For some a soft salary cap approach coupled with a second designated player allocation, while hardly ideal, represents a good first step in improving on field quality, and therefore drawing in some of the more middle of the road, Champions League watching half-footie fans.

For others, this approach is unproven (or perhaps even disproven if one considers the financially irresponsible growth of the NASL). Better to maintain an equitable single-entity league, take a more conservative approach to league expansion, and hope that slow and steady will eventually lodge MLS into the mainstream sporting psyche. The league, after all, is only thirteen years old. Why try to emulate Europe by risking player inflation, possibly putting smaller clubs out of business and wrecking everything the league has helped build in the past decade?

For some, MLS will always be a tepid cauldron, a mickey mouse league where Premier League stars come to die. For others it's all we have and all we might ever have, and worth protecting at all costs in its present form. In both case I think this issue of growth is central to the discussion, and tomorrow I will tie it in to the underlying question of this two-week series: What is MLS?

What is MLS? A Boon for Local Sports Journalism

Colin Smith's (author of keepie-uppie.blogspot.com) email about the opportunity Toronto FC gave him as an aspiring sports journalist speaks mostly for itself, so I've included it in full below. I would only add that, while I'm proud of what I've done here on AMSL, I was struck reading Mark Bowden's piece in the most recent Atlantic in which he describes newspaper columnists who sit at their desk writing columns about whatever news lands on it instead of going out and finding the story, "thumbsuckers."

The football blogosphere is packed with us "thumbsuckers," often by simple case of necessity; we can't all get press accreditation and get in a minivan to follow the team bus to Dallas. But I think about what some independent football writers have been able to do (see Inside Minnesota Soccer's work on the recent USL-1, Team Owner's Association dispute), and I think of how Big Paper-Neglected Major League Soccer lit the fire under other writers like Smith to go out and get their first real story, or even me once long ago, to do some digging around Toronto's soccer history, and I feel good about the future. Anyway, here's Colin:


I was just starting a job as a copy editor at the National Post when top-level professional soccer returned to Toronto in the form of Toronto FC. On a personal level I was absolutely chuffed that I was going to be able to watch and support a professional soccer team alongside a number of other passionate soccer fans in the city I have come to love (I'm originally from Calgary, C'mon Calgary Kickers). On a professional level I saw Toronto FC as an opportunity to work—albeit mostly on my own time and for very little monetary gain—as a proper soccer journalist. You know, not a soccer blogger (no offense!). I was sent to cover Toronto FC games by the National Post sports editor and on my own volition borrowed/stole The Guardian's minute-by-minute format and began live blogging games from the pressbox at BMO Field. Few people read them, no body commented on them, but I didn't care. I always had a great time doing it. And I apologize for sounding a bit like your great uncle telling you that he invented gravity but... to my knowledge I was one of the first reporters at any major media outlet in Canada to live-blog a sporting event.

In Toronto FC's first year I remember one media scrum with then-coach Mo Johnston specifically. It was the start of the 2007 season and standing in front of a group of reporters at BMO Field Johnston tried to quickly gloss over the fact that Ronnie O'Brien had hurt himself during training and would miss the first four games. Laying into an easy target I asked Johnston if his injury had anything to do with the turf (which was a huge issue from Day 1) and Johnston immediately defended the surface to keep his bosses happy before pausing and saying, "Ronnie did something silly in training. He lashed out and kicked one of his teammates and he hurt his knee doing it. I've talked to him and he's been punished." I felt a little buzz that every journalist feels when they get a bit closer to the truth and watched as all the other reporters around me perked up and began scribbling in their notebooks as a result of my question. Good old fashioned reporting.

As I spent more time at TFC matches and followed the Nats more closely I began writing for Soccer360, Canada's only half-decent soccer magazine (new issue out now at Chapters/Indigo!!!). I have since written for the FourFourTwo web site and The Glasgow Herald and I'm now working on a documentary on soccer in Rhodesia during the 1970s. All of this work focused on the sport I have always loved would likely never have come my way had it not been for Major League Soccer's expansion to Toronto. The soccer media landscape is, like MLS, only going to grow and hopefully improve.

So I suppose MLS, specifically Toronto FC, has helped build a respectable community of professional and amateur soccer journalists in Canada and I'm glad I am a part of it.

The Tepid Cauldron

Guest post time! In keeping with AMSL's series on MLS, Elliot, author of the fantastic futfanatico.com, tells the story of how the fan culture irrevocably changed after the Wizards moved from MO to KS. Enjoy!

When you hear the word cauldron, a host of cool words come to mind. Sizzle. Burn. Fry. Heat. You associate the cauldron with warmth, with red hot metal. Yet the Cauldron at Community America Ballpark, home of the Kansas City Wizards, lacks the above. This cauldron is not a cooking contraption. It is a place. A cold, cold place.

I understood the gripe about the Wizards old home, Arrowhead stadium, a cavernous monument to American football. With 40,000 empty seats, morticians enjoyed a more lively atmosphere than Wizards fans. Yet amidst the vast sea of red chairs, a spark led to fire led to smoke. A hearty group of Argentines sang their hearts out amidst drums and flags; a vibrant oasis amidst the despondent desert. They were the Cauldron.

Complaints surfaced. The noise bothered the minivan brigade. The cursing, although exclusively in Spanish, offended Anglos and Latinos alike. Beer was occasionally tossed. And racially based arrests pervaded the scene. Still, the Wizards had succeeded in luring a loyal and elusive demographic: the 30 something Latino.

Enter Community America Ballpark. The Wizards switched fields from football to baseball, but still no soccer. The stadium seats less than 10,000 spectators, making for considerably more cozy viewing. Games also sell out more regularly. And you can actually smell the tears on Jonathan Leathers face as home fans heckle him for his latest defensive blunder. But for everything gained, something is lost.

In name, the Cauldron exists. Community America Ballpark has a special "free speech zone", quarantining the Midwestern version of ultras. Fences and bleachers separate the rabblesousers. I struggle to answer one basic question: is this a piecemeal reform or corporate commodification? Is this the skate park next to the playground, or our own prison?

The Argentines, perhaps residents of now faraway Missouri, no longer make the trip. The remaining mass of cynical Midwesterners has failed to fill the vacuum. Lacking South American expertise, the songs have decrescendoed into the faintest of echoes. And you can only hum along to the White Stripes so many times.

Not surprisingly, philosophical dissonance self destructed. The current Cauldron is the "alternative" school, a misnomer obvious to all but some oblivious superintendent. The miscreants drop out to cook french fries rather than endure the indignity. The current Cauldron is Modest Mouse pre Float On; compromised, yet uncomfortably so. The current Cauldron is many things, except a steaming bastion of spontaneity.

What is MLS? An Uneven Market?

Greg Thorn writes:

Everything would change for me in 2007 when my wife and I moved to Kansas City. There, I was finally able to get intrenched in supporting an MLS team and quickly began to cheer for an exciting Wizards forward named Eddie Johnson. My support for Kansas City was soon equaled by my support for my new/old favorite team, Seattle Sounders FC. When I was living in Seattle the Sounders played in the A-League (now USL). Their games were fun to go to but lacked the excitement and star power of a top division professional team. On March 19th, 2009 my soccer fanaticism would reach a new level. I now had what I had waited my teens and twenties for, a local team to root for (Kansas City) and a hometown team to support passionately from afar!

Greg had been waiting since 1994 for MLS to come to Portland or Seattle, which he describes as "soccer-crazy" cities. The A-League version of professional club football, which had been around in North America in other forms for awhile, wouldn't do. It took thirteen years for MLS to "discover" thirty thousand fans willing to pay to see live soccer; by that time, Greg was cheering a young Eddie Johnson over in Missouri.

There is something maddening about MLS' haphazard franchising. On the evidence it seems there were many other Gregs in the Northwest waiting patiently for football to come home—enough of them, as Greg proves, that some of them might have been biding their time filling seats at other MLS venues like Kansas City. And the hype over some of the newer league entries might lead one to suspect that maybe there are some North American markets that for whatever reason—history, ideology, demographics—might just be more soccer-friendly than others.

That's why looking at how MLS has grown and contracted since '96 sometimes reminds me of the Gary Bettman ethos in NHL; just push the game around enough to smaller, southern middle markets and the fan culture will soon see how hockey is intrinsically worthy enough a game to go pay to see every week. Which sometimes leads to teams like the Phoenix Coyote's, waiting in a sullen desert courtroom to die.

While the NHL is hardly comparable in terms of spending, history, and the nature of the league as an organization, and while clubs in MLS don't usually die in such a drawn out, public way, the idea is the same. X game should have broad continental appeal, so we should be able to market clubs wherever individual owners are wealthy enough to buy stadiums. Meanwhile strong markets like Seattle and Philadelphia take years to enter the scene.

But then again the long wait for Seattle, Philly and Montreal in MLS could be a good thing. Toronto probably wouldn't have supported the club so strongly had its twenty year olds not had ten years of cheap exposure to European football. Other major markets may have been waiting to get a sense of MLS' long term viability in a harsh North American market. Maybe the previous thirteen years of MLS were a sort of sampler for the some of the more skittish big markets taking a wait and see approach.

I'm not certain, but as more and more new stadiums potentially debut with strong, season long sellout crowds, the league table in five or ten years might begin to more closely reflect North America's footballing geography.

What is MLS? The USMNT's Life Partner

Robert R Luker writes:

The MLS and Football in general is going in the right direction in North America. Because of this, MLS needs two things. First, they need to figure out what their goals are. I'm sure Don Garber has them written down, I would just like them to be more transparent to the public. Secondly, they need time. With time, I think the clubs will garner more fans, tradition, and money. Along with time I think the quality of play in MLS will slowly rise and eventually jump from the benefits of more youth playing high-level football. I never want to see MLS die because the USMNT needs the MLS, whether all 11 or none of their starting XI are playing in MLS. Unfortunately, that is another problem because unlike me there are a group of USMNT fans that are not MLS fans. The answer to how you make them MLS fans is beyond me, though.

This is the latter part of a longer comment from a Red Bulls supporter who feels that overall, MLS has a done an admirable job in slowly building the league since 1996. He pointed out that European leagues have had a one hundred year start on North America in the stable league department so there's no need to hoist the grand aspirations of restless fans eager for a competitive, internationally respected club competition onto MLS' tiny shoulders.

But this last bit struck me, and maybe more educated MLS writers will know, but has Don Garber actually laid out a clear, detailed vision for where he sees the league five, ten, twenty years down the stretch (outside of dropping a few hints willy-nilly about which North American city might be next in line to get a franchise)? And I mean outside the whole "we want to build the best, most economically viable soccer league North America can offer" bland reassurance stuff? Perhaps some sense of whether Garber thinks a soft cap might eventually be needed to help remove the training wheels (thanks for that, Ben)?

I was also struck by Luker's assessment of the USMNT's fan culture. It's been my experience that in Canada, you'd be challenged to find a Canadian national team fan who didn't also pull for one of Canada's three premier professional clubs. And bonne chance finding a Canadian CMNT supporter who exclusively watches European football; I could ring off in order the countries that would have to be eliminated from a World Cup before they'd pull on the CSA red.

But USMNT supporters who don't follow MLS? As the league slowly changes gears, introducing for the first time players out the academy system and moving away from collegiate football (as Match Fit USA wrote about recently) as a source of American talent, Major League Soccer's health and well being will be even more integral to US national soccer than before. Maybe a large portion of USMNT fans are Fulham supporters, I don't know, but they might start thinking about going local to get a sense of where the national team might be headed in future.

Over the next couple of weeks, AMSL will be examining Major League Soccer through a series of anecdotes, stories, and opinions, to help get a better sense of where the league could or should be headed in future. Please see this post for an idea of what I'm after, and please do send in something either to amoresplendidlife[at]gmail.com or in the comments section below.

What is MLS? The Best Thing to Happen to Canadian Soccer Since 1986

Running around a bit today, so here's a feel-good story. I hadn't read this comment in full when I posted my story about De Ro scoring the golden goal; amazing how resonant it was north of the border. Here's Duane Rollins in his own words:

That game hooked me. I was writing for a B.C. magazine called World Football Pages doing a bi-weekly Canadians abroad thing. We considered MLS to be abroad, so I was tracking DeRo at San Jose. Somehow, through that, I became a fan of the 'Quakes and I tried to follow the team as best I could (mostly by following BigSoccer threads on game day). The MLS Cup offered a rare opportunity to actually watch them play.

So when DeRo, a CANADIAN!, scored the golden goal...yeah, that was great. At the time I never dreamed that six years later I'd be walking into a stadium in Toronto with 19,999 other people wearing red scarves.

The scarves. The image of everyone wearing the scarves on opening day will be with me forever. It was incredible to see that there really were that many people out there that cared about Toronto having a team in MLS. I had heard that it would be sold out, but I didn't actually believe that it would until I saw it.

And the stomping...I can still hear a wall of noise from sections 112 and 113. It sounded like they were going to break through the stands when you stood in the concourse. In Toronto!

Singing. Alllll we are saying...is give us a goal! Oh my God, you can't imagine how incredible that felt. This is really going to work, isn't it!

Finally I'm walking home after the game. I'm walking past a hair salon when an older man literally starts chasing me. He's seen my scarf. "Did they score?" he asks with his British accent. "No," I say sadly. He's legitimately upset. "Next week," he says smiling. "We'll get 'em next week."

We'll. A British ex-pat in Toronto just called a domestic soccer team "we."

It was then that I really knew it was only going to get better.

Over the next couple of weeks, AMSL will be examining Major League Soccer through a series of anecdotes, stories, and opinions, to help get a better sense of where the league could or should be headed in future. Please see this post for an idea of what I'm after, and please do send in something either to amoresplendidlife[at]gmail.com or in the comments section below.

What is MLS? A Ground of Our Own

My view at the Valley, December 2006

Abu Zilif writes:

MLS made me a soccer fan. I stopped hating soccer because I got to experience the World Cup while I was traveling in Germany, but without MLS I would have become one of those people who follow the USMNT like they follow Michael Phelps every four years. I got to come home, settle into my normal life, and have a place where I could go and chant and sing and do all the things I'd seen in Germany while actually having a stake in the game. That was the most important part. MLS allows you to be a real fan, to have a home stadium and a chance to smell the smoke and have a handshake with a player, and that's all the difference in the world.

Yesterday, in part to deal with the stress of making last minute applications to music schools in London, I went on a walk and listened to the It's Called Football podcast (subscribe in iTunes if you haven't already) featuring an interview with Philadelphia Union Prez Tom Veit. Now the Union have gotten some flak recently for being behind schedule on a number of matters, most importantly stadium construction, and Tom helped put some of those fears to rest by focusing on how the Union will provide the Philadelphia footballing community, led prominently by supporters group the Sons of Ben, a proper footballing atmosphere.

Atmosphere. What is amazing to me is how the Union have already sold seven thousand season tickets in advance of a single signed player. In a league like MLS, clubs are often nothing more than the outlet for a long pent up desire to join the rest of the world in the experience of watching live football. I went on a visit to England over Christmas 2006 and went to see Aston Villa play Charlton at the Valley, followed by Colchester City at QPR. These were pretty milquetoast fixtures, but they were my first proper live club matches. I will never forget the feeling of rounding the corner in East London to see the Valley tucked in behind some row housing, the feeling of walking with fellow supporters to the ground, the songs, the booze, the betting, the anger, the excitement, the hilarity of it all. They were both dreadful fixtures on the whole, but it didn't matter. When I came home I bought my TFC season ticket package pretty much as soon as I could, not knowing what to expect.

Zilif hits the nail on the head: "MLS allows you to be a real fan, to have a home stadium and a chance to smell the smoke and have a handshake with a player, and that's all the difference in the world." Some would say that building healthy, competitive clubs is the only way to secure long term support—fans won't simply savour the live game experience per se forever. But remember: MLS is young. League football had been around for twenty plus years in England before fans started arriving in trainloads in the early 20th century, often arriving at grounds without knowing at all what they were about to see, not caring where Bolton or Sheffield was in the league table.

Players came and went, trophies won and lost, but the ground was the gathering place, the spiritual home for the club and its supporters, the meeting place for a community of friends otherwise separated by geography, class, and ethnic background. It's my belief too in MLS' early phase, getting the ground right is crucial. Let's hope Toronto city council remembers that today when they vote on installing grass at BMO Field.

Over the next couple of weeks, AMSL will be examining Major League Soccer through a series of anecdotes, stories, and opinions, to help get a better sense of where the league could or should be headed in future. Please see this post for an idea of what I'm after, and please do send in something either to amoresplendidlife[at]gmail.com or in the comments section below.

What is MLS? Throwing Coke at Valderrama

Hough writes:

In 1996 I was in high school and visiting a friends brother with my friend in Dallas. We talked him into taking us to a Burn game, They were playing whoever Valeroma (sp?, guy with giant blonde fro) played for. I wasn't sure what to expect having only been to NFL, NBA and MLB games before. The game became pretty intense and we were sitting with many latinos. At one point Valderoma came near the sideline in the cottonbowl to make a throw in and one of the guys around us threw his coke at him, many more people did the same thing and before I knew it I threw my coke at him. I knew then that soccer was very differnt from the other sports I had been to. I must say I've never done it before, but that one game made me a life time FC Dallas fan even as I live in Kansas City and they are pathetic today.

You'll find stories like this one scattered throughout North America, this one from a 1996 match up between the Tampa Bay Mutiny and the Dallas Burn. What's interesting though are the cross cultural lattices with Dallas' Latino fans, some likely targeting Valderrama based on various CONMEBOL allegiances, bringing their own particular grudges to a run-of-the-mill Major League Soccer match-up and in turn converting an out-of-towner to the club and the sport.

This story also provides an interesting counter to the usual "build-it-and-the-Euro-loving-soccer-hardcore-will-come" model in newer MLS expansion cities. Major League Soccer was the deciding factor in Hough's conversion to the game, not any student exchanges to Barcelona or memories of watching the World Cup with dear old granddad: "I knew then that soccer was very different from the other sports I had been to." No family-fun time MLS game day stereotypes here, no whining about how it couldn't match the atmosphere in European grounds. Angry fans throwing shit at players on the pitch because it mattered that much to them in an American league.

Club football discovered by accident with your high school buddies, cheering with Latino fans by throwing Coca-Cola at a famous Columbian national in Dallas, Texas. Getting warmer...

Over the next couple of weeks, AMSL will be examining Major League Soccer through a series of anecdotes, stories, and opinions, to help get a better sense of where the league could or should be headed in future. Please see this post for an idea of what I'm after, and please do send in something either to amoresplendidlife[at]gmail.com or in the comments section below.

What is MLS? Part One

Over the next couple of weeks, AMSL will be examining Major League Soccer through a series of anecdotes, stories, and opinions, to help get a better sense of where the league could or should be headed in future. Please see this post for an idea of what I'm after, and please do send in something either to amoresplendidlife[at]gmail.com or in the comments section below. Today I'll get the ball rolling with my own first encounter with MLS.

My own initial experience of MLS seemed fairly innocuous at the time. This was a couple of years before Toronto FC arrived on the scene, before I knew I had something to look forward to in the Great Canadian footballing wilderness. At that point, I knew what MLS was, I knew there were Canadians playing in it and some Americans I recognized from the 2002 World Cup. But those days I was still a newspaper person, so damned if I'd even seen an actual game live or followed league standings. It might as well have been Bridge.

I was still living in Montreal, watching Premier League games on the satellite television at Champs on St. Laurent Boulevard. I remember going home to watch football clips on Youtube, usually in search of that day's highlights when such a thing was still possible. One day, searching around, I found a clip labeled "De Rosario Golden Goal" (that clip is long gone but you can watch match highlights here). No other context, just a dreadlocked midfielder in white striking a curling shot into the net followed by a panicked announcer shouting "San Jose wins!"

This stood out because I knew De Rosario was Canadian. The scenes were incredible, a football stadium erupting on a single incredible moment, followed by a cup getting handed out, all taking place in Columbus Ohio and brought to you by a Scarborough native. I came back to this clip a few times, and then I did some research on former MLS Cup winners, the play-off system, the epic 2003 MLS Cup between Chicago and San Jose featuring Dwayne De Rosario and Pat Onstad. I started watching MLS highlights semi-regularly after that.

It was also around that time I started noticing headlines that MLS would be coming to Toronto. By then, the city of my birth was long off my radar. I didn't even think I would still be Canada when the club arrived, and I felt a tinge of regret. The Montreal Impact were getting crowds and winning games. Soon you started to hear about Major League Soccer everywhere, about how everyone said they would so go to games if it came to Canada. I thought they were full of shit, but then I imagined how incredible it would be for De Rosario to play for his home club, how people would go to games if Toronto's club provided a showcase for hitherto unheralded Canadian footballers.

So at first, I saw MLS as a way to build up the Canadian national team, providing a gathering point for all the talented Canadians playing for American clubs. So nothing more than a vehicle really. Canada won the Gold Cup that year too, so it didn't sound so sophomoric then. But it was a pipe dream. I watched the 2006 WCQs and tried to forget about it. All that would of course change in the next four years, but that was the initial limited scope of my vision of what MLS could be.