Compelling Soccer

So I'm laying my cards on the table: Major League Soccer has never been my thing. As hinted at in my intro on Saturday, I've never been able to get past the fact that it wasn't the best, or the second best, or third best talent out there. At times, I might have been able to talk myself into it being the equivalent of the lower leagues in Europe, like Sweden, Denmark or Austria. But the fact remained that you are likely to find better play in English League One. And that's has been too large an obstacle to overcome, especially when I'd see a relatively slow, dull long ball style of soccer.

I'm not alone. Snobbery towards MLS is fast becoming the soccer tradition in this country. With a better product available now quite easily, it's quite simple to say "MLS sucks, so why bother with it when you can check out the Premiership?" And you know what? There's merit to the argument. If someone said they didn't want to watch minor league baseball because they found it vastly inferior to the majors, would we begrudge them? No more so than the people who stopped watching the XFL after two weeks because the game was more hype than substance.

On the other hand, MiLB has never sold itself as an authentic MLB experience. It's always tried to say it is something different with it's own unique charms. Unique charms aren't for everyone of course, but a niche can be profitable if embraced and handled correctly. MLS has in the past seemed reluctant to do than in the mainstream, going more for the XFL strategy outwardly of trying to bill itself as something more. It seems to try to pass itself off as the cool kid at the party when it just ends up looking like a poser. Not only do you have the occasional fan/league employee spouting off how it's on par with Europe, the league has long been populated with ideas to try to make it sound traditional "soccery". FC Dallas? FC stands for Football Club. You can call it Liverpool FC because in Liverpool, they call it football. Nobody in America calls it that. Who are you trying to impress by naming a team FC? If it were SC Dallas, then yeah, you'd be naming it Soccer Club Dallas, but it'd make more sense. Or DC United? What has been United? There only has been one club in DC. Or Real Salt Lake? Apposed to the non existent Athletico Salt Lake?

As pathetic as it is, I'd rather a team named New York Red Bull. Is tacky a company names a team after itself? Sure, though I suppose Robert Johnson and the Charlotte BOBcats would argue otherwise. However, the team is what it is naming wise. It comes off as stupid when you try to tap into a culture that isn't yours just to make it seem more official. You are a soccer team in America; if you embraced that, you might have more luck carving out an identity.

Ironically, they pretend with names, but skip out on the nuts and bolts. The season takes place off from the FIFA calendar, making transfers tougher. And of course, there's no promotion relegation, with the argument that the fan bases could not handle it. It's funny in a way, the concept of "success due to merit" is such an American ideal that the relegation system makes so much sense for us. Why should the bottom teams continue to get paid? Let someone more deserving come up. How can one of the most capitalistic societies in the world not have a relegation system anywhere? Alas, at least with the near future, it's not to be.

But as someone who has willfully participated in said snobbery, dismissing it outright for such injustices and faux pas probably isn't the right way to approach matters. Just as there's a place and purpose for minor league baseball, MLS exists for a reason. It isn't the highest quality, but soccer is still great to watch when it's played right. Getting over the names on the unis, the knowledge of the level of play; strip all of it away and do you have an entertaining product?

As my roommate said on Tuesday, if you buy a five dollar game and get fifteen dollars of enjoyment out of it, you're technically pulling a better profit than if you buy a sixty dollar game and get sixty five dollars of enjoyment from that. Given the fact that MLS is even today much more accessible than English or Spanish soccer, does it's low bar of entry make it worth it to follow?

With that in mind, I decided to watch some MLS Tuesday night. Or at least an MLS team. For the second time in three weeks, I plopped down to check out DC United. Last time it was in the US Open Cup finals match against the Seattle Sounders, in a game which made me rethink my MLS snobbery, if only for a moment. The bad news was that it was more Seattle than DC that aided in that department, so I wasn't sure what to expect here with DC playing a CONCACAF Champions League battle against a Trinidadian side, San Juan Jabloteh in Port of Spain.

Those that know me know I love Trinidad's national team because my dad is originally from there. But I couldn't tell you the first thing about their league other than it's not likely very good. However Dennis Lawrence, the well capped and very tall defender (6'6 defender) was on the side, so I hoped it wouldn't be a total loss.

Overall, the style of play was better than I remembered. There was a lot less long ball and far more play on the ground. Attempts at runs were made with some frequency.

Unfortunately, the level of play was about as advertised. There was a lot of poor first touches and DC United looked lazy on defense. Since they were playing a Trinidadian side, they didn't pay for it, but any squad of quality would have burned them badly. It's not meant as an offense to Trinidadian league, but they shouldn't be competing with an MLS team in terms of talent. They don't have the talent pool nor the financial resources to draw from.

The announcers brought up a fair point; the MLS teams tend to do poorly in this competition, something that should be long past acceptable. There's a lot of effort made by some MLS people to argue the strength of the league and its legitimacy on the world wide stage, but the best chance to display that is in events like this. If you consistently get outplayed and beaten by the other teams in North America and the Caribbean then no one is going to take you seriously when you want to claim your brand of soccer can compete with even the lesser leagues in Europe, who battle with the giants of England, Spain and Germany.

People want to see good soccer, not just enough to get by.The performance DC United put on is not going to draw people towards them. It looks bad on two fronts; it looks like you're not a good squad and the game isn't exciting because your opponent lacks the capability to punish you for those mistakes. Had they played a Mexican League side tonight, United would have probably gotten crushed with the amount of chances they were giving up. But in the end, it might have been more entertaining to watch as a soccer game without good finishing can get dull real fast.

However one game does not a judgment make. I don't think I'll be able to pay attention to Liverpool's match today, but it wouldn't be a fair comparison anyway. I will try to check out a game today elsewhere in the CONCACAF CL and compare. And though I've now been thoroughly unimpressed by DC United twice over the past few weeks, there was enough here to make me wonder if MLS deserves another chance. At the very least I'll look for some Sounders games and see if what I saw there leaves me with more of a fifteen dollar feeling than DC did.