This is the thread to discuss anything and everything to do with Major League Soccer- the premier league in the U.S.A. for soccer/futbol.

The teams are as follows...


Western Conference:

Los Angeles Galaxy
Club Deportivo Chivas USA
Colorado Rapids
Real Salt Lake
Futbol Club of Dallas
Houston Dynamo


Eastern Conference:

Kansas City Wizards
Chicago Fire
Columbus Crew
New York Red Bulls
D.C. United
New England Revolution

Expansion 2007:

Toronto Futbol Club- its not yet determined which conference Toronto F.C. will be a part of, though one can assume that it will be the Eastern Conference.

The MLS started in 1996.  Their 'championship' is the MLS cup(which will be held in Dallas this year!).  When the League first started, there was a tendency toward North American-style names for the teams, and they played in already-established stadiums.  Now more and more teams have built soccer-specific stadiums, and within another 3-4 years I think every team in the League will have their own.  The League recently started a deal with Adidas too, and now most games can be viewed on television, on ESPN, Gol TV, Fox Soccer Channel etc.  The MLS is increasingly seen as the fastest growing professional sports organization in the United States.

Now more teams are moving toward European-style names(the Dallas Burn became F.C. Dallas for example, the new team in Toronto, C.D. Chivas USA...), the League has moved toward a pretty well traditional style of play(originally they tried to Americanise the sport with tie breakers and such but it didn't really work out).

Just wanted to give people some background info about it. :)


Lately the top teams have been F.C. Dallas in the Western Conference and D.C. United in the Eastern conference.

Dallas couldn't finish the other day, the Crew outmarked both strikers and pretty much cancelled them out.

I think the MLS needs to get a better system in place for training future players and nurturing their careers, like in Europe & Latin America.  Each franchise needs an academy and youth soccer division, IMO.

What do you think, Davey?

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Well, youth is certainly the future. (I'm sorry, it was too good) Must be invested in, etc, etc.

But yes in all seriousness, with so many kids taking up the game, the big clubs need to set up solid and well funded youth systems and academy's for budding prospects. The idea of feeder clubs is an interesting one, some of the bigger european sides do that and it seems to work for them.



Its weird, a LOT of North American kids play soccer before their teenage years but drop it as they enter adolesence.  I was thinking about this and trying to figure out why and it dawned on me.

For a long time, the U.S. did not have a Division One soccer league.  The MLS didn't start until '96, and even then it hasn't been until the last 3 or 4 years that you can watch most games on television.  I think a lot of kids reached a certain age, and looked around and noticed that beyond THEIR own play, there wasn't much going on with North American soccer.  They couldn't turn on the television and see heros playing a professional sport they could emulate.  But they could with other sports like baseball and basketball, so they drifted away from soccer and to those sports. 

Not only that, but they could also play these sports quite easily by signing up with their school athletic program.  Unfortunately most middle schools and high schools as you know don't have soccer programs.  If they can't continue playing in the higher grades OF COURSE they're going to stop.  I don't think soccer will ever gain a footing like baseball, basketball and football until we start seeing more programs in public schools. 

I think this reason is whats kept hockey from doing better than IT has.  But in that case its almost impossible for most schools to have a program and it be decent, because it of course requires an ice rink.  Only your more wealthy schools can afford the extra costs of building that.  The really good thing about soccer is its very pick-up-and-play.  All they really need is a field, goals and a ball and those are all fairly cost-efficient to set up especially compared to hockey or football which are much more involved equipment-wise.

So now that the MLS is really expanding the first problem of lack of exposure on the professional level is being addressed.  But the problem of a lack of after-school soccer programs in middle schools and high schools is probably going to continue for awhile. 

But that dosen't fully explain why they don't just play amongst themselves.

As kids, we'd use anything for a goal and anything for a ball.

You have a point, but you know how kids are.  Competitive.  They want something they can actually compete at, I suppose.  ???

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Man you can't tackle, its football not rugby! :P :D

This thread hasn't exactly taken off.

I posted MLS threads on other forum I post in but none of them took off either. :(


Americans just aren't interested because they don't like soccer and Europeans don't pay attention to or think much of the MLS for the most part.

I'm thinking about closing this.

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