Around We Go Again
These things happened last week:
MLS trumpeted a bunch of numbers with some transparently self-serving framing.[1]
Michael Wilbon said he wouldn't put Lionel Messi and the MLS Cup playoffs on any of this three TVs.[2]
John Muller dropped a piece at The Guardian about Messi's incredible season, the lack of buzz around it, and the state of Major League Soccer's popularity in the United States of America.[3]
Messi discussed his feelings about MLS spending in an interview with NBC Nightly News. Shockingly, he said there should be more of it.[4]
We discussed much of this on Morning Kickaround. None of it feels very new to me, a person who has thought more about Major League Soccer's place in the American sports mainstream than any other person on the planet (who didn't work directly for MLS) over the last...shit, 17 years.
I'm even certain I've spent time specifically on Michael Wilbon's feelings regarding MLS, though to his credit, he seems to have at least come around to the idea of soccer as a worthwhile endeavor of human sporting prowess.
It's not about Wilbon, of course, it's about the kind of old school American sports columnist/talking head Wilbon represents. Wilbon is just one of dozens of white whales American soccer (as a..."movement", if we can call it that) has been trying to bring down since the days of Pele and the Cosmos.
Maybe Wilbon's a little bit of a soccer guy now, but he's certainly not an MLS guy. Even when the MLS in question features the greatest player any of us have ever seen.
One question that comes to mind: Would Wilbon have watched Michael Jordan playing in EuroLeague at the end of his career? It would have had similar vibes to Messi in MLS.
Here's the real question I can't get away from, even as I read reasoned takes that align closely with things I've been saying for a very, very long time:
Does it matter?
Meaning, should we gnash our teeth over any of this?
Sam Fels hits all the points I would. MLS is behind the eight ball in so many ways its often difficult to get a handle on how to assess its successes and failures over the last 30 years. The problem for a lot of soccer boosters is that acknowledging those difficulties seems akin to letting MLS off the hook.
When the league effectively represents the sport in the United States to the rest of the soccer world while simultaneously acting like the take-no-prisoners American corporation it is, the boosters will always be reticent to hand out credit.
A lot of this is just the latent American desire to win and our discomfort with Major League Soccer's place in soccer and in American sports. I'm as guilty as anyone of falling into the rage trap that stems from that psychology. It's very easy to view everything MLS through the prism of "WHY ISN'T IT BETTER?" and then gin up various indictments of the league to scratch an itch.
No one wants to admit there's a ceiling on their dreams.
I know I'm being simple with this question. My guess is that the consensus is something like "Of course we should be demanding more of MLS", and that the critical conversation about its popularity, success, quality, etc. is in both natural and necessary.
But really. What's the end game here? Is the idea that MLS not capitalizing on the presence of Messi when measured against an undefined bar represents failure because it suggests MLS will never reach the pinnacle of the sport (or at least be delayed interminably in doing so)?
Or is this about the quest to win a men's World Cup?
Even if you buy that the latter thing flows from being home to one of the world's top leagues (which wasn't true for Argentina), I'm not sure if stressing over the commercial success of the league your club plays in makes for a better fan experience.
And if you don't support an MLS team but still make time in your life to fire off angry missives about how many (read: few) viewers MLS is getting on its OTT platform, maybe it's time to shift to a new interest. Not politics, though. Definitely not politics.
Look, I'm not finger-wagging. I want MLS to grow and take the general state of American soccer with it. Soccer boosterism is a difficult habit to kick and comes with the American soccer membership card. Few, if any of us, can just let it go and see what happens.
Thanks for reading! Tell a soccer pal about the newsletter, will ya?
As a bonus, here are my picks for the MLS Cup playoffs with one game played in every series:
Miami in 3
Philly in 3
NYCFC in 2
Cincy in 3
San Diego in 2
Vancouver in 2
LAFC in 2
Seatle in 3
I don't blame MLS for trumpeting its trumped up numbers or those who feel compelled to cynically pick them apart. The league's uphill battle for relevancy is pitched by so many factors that any progress is worth celebrating. ↩︎
Wilbon isn't really a soccer guy and he's certainly not a soccer guy who would tune into to see an all-time great at the end of his career play in a second-rate league. Not all of us are sickos and I don't think MLS can (or should want to) win over the Mike Wilbons of the world. ↩︎
Messi is the wrong personality to capture the attention of the American sports public, soccer-focused or otherwise. Muller's piece doesn't tackle that issue head on, but I think it's important. If Messi was the best player of all time AND more like Zlatan, things might be different. ↩︎
He's right, mostly. MLS teams should be spending more across their whole rosters, not just spending more in terms of pure dollars. Get rid of roster designations. ↩︎