wasn't sure where to put this, but wanted to share this highlight vid of the Union U12 team in Brazil somewhere.
DirtBall I thought we were friends but then I don’t even get a tag to tell me the Crew drafted a Japanese player in the Superdraft?!?!? Hell yeah
15/24 teams have had record signings this offseason. None of those 15 players are over the age of 29.
Charlotte's also being a bit cringy and over the top forcing this rivalry on, but I guess I'd rather them be more excited than not Spoiler
If they need to consult a new upstart on how to manufacture a rivalry, #Los Angeles Football Club is here for you. Only took a couple years but many people are calling el traffico the preeminent rivalry in MLS. Barber’s guys claim it’s one of the best in the world. https://www.mlssoccer.com/post/2019/07/16/why-la-galaxy-lafc-already-one-worlds-great-club-rivalries
Tenorio interviewed Vermes and he talked about the league a bit: Spoiler Vermes, who was voted the league’s sporting executive of the year in 2018, had some of his own ideas about where he hopes the league goes over the next decade. In short, he says, the league should work backwards; first deciding how many teams it would ultimately add in expansion and then figure out answers from there — from the format of the regular season and playoffs to the number of conferences and the salary budget. “We had a playoff format we did every year and now we change it, and I don’t know if it’s good if we change it again in three years,” Vermes said. “If you could say, ‘This is how many teams we will have and this is what the format will look like,’ and then we can implement it now, then why don’t we do that? That’s how I look at it. I’d like to know how everything is going to fit in moving forward.” What the league will look like after the CBA negotiations remains a big talking point. The league has seen rapid growth in the level of players it is recruiting from abroad because of targeted allocation money (TAM). But MLS still remains behind leagues like Liga MX in roster spending. For his part, Vermes said the league does not get enough credit for the success of TAM, but with The Athletic’s Sam Stejskal reporting the league is weighing a change to the designated player rule, Vermes warned that the wrong changes to the roster rules will keep MLS from gaining ground on the rest of the world. “People miss this, but TAM by itself, if you had zero DPs on teams, and went to TAM, it has no impact on the league,” Vermes said. “But TAM with DPs on teams has a huge impact. There was a time when there were a lot of teams that had DPs and they didn’t win a championship at the end of the year. There was criticism: they spend all this money and they’re not guaranteed to win. … When the TAM opportunities came, what it did was it gave those very good DP players a much better supporting cast. And it made them that much more valuable and productive within their teams. And that’s why you’re seeing now the teams that have good DPs are winning as well. Because that quality has risen. “We have to continue to progress, we have to continue to progress in the area of being able to compete around the world in the recruitment and acquisition of players. You have to continue to inject more – whether it’s cash, whether it is player mechanisms, I don’t care what it’s called. Just continue to put yourself in a position where you can compete in the global market.” Again, Vermes encouraged the league to work backwards from its ultimate goal, saying that MLS cannot be satisfied in incremental growth if that growth doesn’t really register globally. The league’s decisions over the next few years, both in CBA negotiations and after, will dictate how quickly MLS can begin to truly compete with top leagues. “We have to remember when we go up, so does everybody else,” he said. “We have to close the gap. If we’re 30 percent behind everybody and they go up 20 percent and we go up 10 percent, that’s not helping our cause. If everyone else goes up 10 percent, and we go up 11 percent or 12 percent, now we’re closing the gap.”
Should be a really good signing. Soldier Field will still be completely empty. Also they made him drink Jeppsons Malort.