Guinness Guzzler
Striker
Just echoing what everyone else is saying really, the lack of promotion and relegation is a major barrier to it being taken seriously here. That being said I accept it's a bit hard to implement initially as you need quite a lot of teams in order to have two leagues and, if "soccer" isn't really ingrained in an area then you'll struggle to get fans to attend the lower league games. Maybe the idea is just to grow it for now and introduce a second tier several years (or even decades) down the line.
Equally they need to ensure they avoid moving "franchises". We can moan all we want about American fans not really being loyal to their club in the way a Sunderland fan is to ours, but it's hard to be a loyal fan if you know the team might move 1000 miles away before you can pass it onto your son.
To give a positive, it does seem like it's a bit fairer in terms of the draft idea. Mind, even then I've heard that some teams who know they aren't going to win the thing are actively happy to finish as low down as possible to get the best draft pick, another consequence of lacking relegation.
Get promotion/ relegation, have champions decided by league position and have a separate cup to have the playoff style competition and it'll improve. Ultimately though I don't think it'll ever take off here, other than amongst some hipster types, simply because we've already got a very good, very well established league at home, in much the same way as there's not massive interest in other European leagues
Equally they need to ensure they avoid moving "franchises". We can moan all we want about American fans not really being loyal to their club in the way a Sunderland fan is to ours, but it's hard to be a loyal fan if you know the team might move 1000 miles away before you can pass it onto your son.
To give a positive, it does seem like it's a bit fairer in terms of the draft idea. Mind, even then I've heard that some teams who know they aren't going to win the thing are actively happy to finish as low down as possible to get the best draft pick, another consequence of lacking relegation.
Get promotion/ relegation, have champions decided by league position and have a separate cup to have the playoff style competition and it'll improve. Ultimately though I don't think it'll ever take off here, other than amongst some hipster types, simply because we've already got a very good, very well established league at home, in much the same way as there's not massive interest in other European leagues
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