Cant even produce players to better Panama and Honduras.

They cant even beat part time NPL teams :laugh:

I mean on the field. That's ultimately what counts to me.

It beats the A league in every single metric comprehensively. Its the king of plastic football.

MLS has every reason to be miles ahead of the A-League. But it isn't.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/mls/2017/11/17/mls-attendance-up-tv-ratings-lag-as-us-mulls-future/107770250/

It's different in the US. Soccer (they insist on calling it this, even soccer itself) is seen as a late sipping liberal wank sport.

It rates horribly and i dont think ive ever seen highlights on any of the numerous recap sports shows they have.

At least here fox sports news will give you A league highlights after the main sports out of the way.

Lol the annual MLS wankfest. 

Bottom line is they did not get to the WC. Their league like ours is woeful. It serves the rich and no one else.  

Very true. They also aren't limited to having five foreign players at each club. 

ESPN broadcasts MLS nationally, so I don't know how you figure that.

MLS isn’t even deemed worthy of criticism, on a national level the league pretty much doesn’t exist, it performs well from a regional point of view, as in many cities have taken to their local mls team and they probably get reasonable coverage in their respective cities from local tv stations, but nationally (fta stations, ESPN etc) would barely rate a mention.

without knowing and best asked here
but does the MLS suffer the same anti football agenda from the media like the HAL  does ?

i was talking about which league was better more then which teams are better 

I agree.
What with having Central and South America on their doorstep and being able to offer wages as good, if not better, than they could get at home, the only thing holding them back is language.
The MLS teams are full of Argentines, Mexicans, Costa Ricans etc who are making the locals finding that extra gear.
A top MLS team would beat a HAL team easily and those at the foot of the table would push a top HAL mob.

One country has a population of 300m+ and we have what almost 25m now? Much bigger talent pool and more money over there..

I just watched the 2nd division cup final between Louisville and Phoenix and the standard seemed to be on par with the A league. But i think those 2 teams might be better than the worst mls sides. Great atmosphere as well crowd of around 10k crammed in.

People seem to think it is the same quality as a few years or so ago. The quality tactically, skill local players and their imports have significantly improved. They actually compete very well with the Mexican clubs and nearly knocked them off in the CL.

So many deluded people here.  I watch a lot of MLS and it is of a far higher standard than A-League.

Only a handful of clubs over there are rubbish and our sides would regularly beat, such as Colorado, San Jose, maybe Minnesota and Orlando.

Melbourne and Sydney may make the quarterfinals of the MLS cup but I'd be surprised if they got further.  

Most A-League sides would be near the bottom of the tables.

True story

Roar are no better this season.

Never watched an MLS game, but I fine it hard to believe that they have worse teams then Phoenix have had for the last few seasons, also, I'm still seeing cross's flying no where near attakers more then on target. Seems every a-league team has one or two players that have some degree of accuracy (Ikon for eg) the rest are either reached thier peak or trying to get to the next level, and we see the odd glimpse of potential.

Can't imagine the MLS being any worse 

MLS makes more money than the AFL.

Semi related:



This is a match from the USL their consolidated second division 

Its pretty much exactly what we would be looking at if we got a second division running here.

The quality of broadcast is fine, the crowd is fantastic & the standard of play is absolute horseshit

I'd be very interested as to how any A-2 league we would set up here could be better than this, considering their massive population and sponsorship/ownership money over there.

I've been interested in the MLS for a few years now (I found the 'total soccer show' podcast, really good and about one third US focussed)  just for curiosities sake and my quick take is that we used to be smaller, but close to on par with each other 5-7 years or so ago but the MLS has spent the last 5-7 years improving (mostly off the field) where as we stalled.  Right now the growth in culture, supporter base, mainstream appeal, competition etc in the MLS is miles ahead of us.  Their salary cap and weird transfer rules (as well as perhaps their much larger competition) seem to have meant the on field quality is not as dramatically better than ours as the off field but they probably still are a small step above.  If they can slowly relax their wage rules and introduce pro-rel like a lot of fans are asking for (and if they can integrate their multiple lesser leagues into one pyramid) they will get another massive boost.  I suspect in fifteen or twenty years we are going to be talking about the US as football power, not in the top five national teams or leagues but solidly in the top twenty over a long period... something I can't see us doing for a long time if ever.

One of the issues with MLS is a similar cultural issue we have of trying to graft certain elements of established sports onto football and ignoring best practise in developing elite talent. For the US that means trying to squeeze footballers out of the college sports system which throws breadcrumbs at football after developing all their gridiron/basketball players. They care less for footballers than they do a lacrosse player.

OTOH, the corporate side of things the MLS leaves us for dead. Their average attendance is up to 24k which is pushing them into the top leagues in the world. I'm surprised at how low the salary cap is there, considering how much more money they generate than us, and also the amount of investment utterly dwarfs ours.

The lasting legacy of the USA world cup was the formation of the MLS. After hosting another, their league will explode.

CONCACAF champions league says otherwise.

The only thing in comparison IMO is they are both Franchise leagues.
Obviously the pops of both countries show a huge playing pool divide.
The have 2 conferences making up  23 clubs.
Many Latinos etcetc plus a few quality old EPL players past their prime but still good players at that level.
I can't see many of our HAL clubs beating any of the top clubs but mid table down be interesting to see what divide there actually is.

not a fan of the finals system, salary cap, closed league etc...   but in this case we're almost comparing apples to apples here...
I'd say on the field they're about on par, maybe A-league a little better, but off the field the MLS is better run, and obviously a stronger financial backing

I'd say on individual skill the MLS is definitely better. Tactics and decision making on the other hand the A-league is better. Some of the defending I've seen in the MLS left me fucking gobsmacked.