Yahoo! Sports’ Martin Rogers wrote an interesting piece about the mini-exodus of American players leaving for foreign fields…Scandinavia, in particular. His piece mainly reports on the semi-perverse euphoria among league honchos, who view where Major League Soccer (MLS) is today as as much as they could hope for. The conclusion to the piece, pulling quotes from that Ivan Gazidis fella, captures this most succinctly:
“But where is it all leading?”
“Well, Gazidis, the South African-born, UK-raised, lifelong Manchester City supporting visionary carries the blueprint for the future inside his brain and believes he has the answer.”
“‘I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that MLS will be a major soccer league in the world,’ he said. ‘Growth is inevitable, both because of demographics and because of how the world is bound together.’”
“‘It is happening under our noses right now. I have seen it from the beginning. We have been pushing to the tipping point for years, and we feel it has tipped already.’”
Rogers’ piece is a fascinating read for what it is, but there’s this irksome feeling that should lurk in the back of all of our heads when we read things like this. And it arises from something very similar to what J Hutcherson describes in what is really just the latest piece to gripe about MLS and its relationship with the media. Starved as we are of hard information on the league’s finances, what it spends on players and travel, versus what it takes in on ticket sales, advertising, transfers, etc. how does anyone independently assess the reality of that tipping point?
Filed under: MLS, Major League Soccer, media
