We Care A Lot

Just about what we care about. Which very well might not include Lionel Messi and his accomplishments in MLS.

Been wanting to get to this one for a couple days. First off, the source material, which is John Muller's most excellent treatise on Lionel Messi's season in MLS and the lack of ripple or splash that it caused not just in the American sporting landscape, but even the American soccer one:

Lionel Messi just had the best season in MLS history. Does anyone care?

The Argentine has been as excellent as ever in his later years, but his presence and performance has yet to push MLS into the US mainstream

The GuardianJohn Muller

I go back and forth on some of Muller's points here. I don't think the average MLS fan really cares about any perceived "dissolution" of MLS's enforced parity to fit in Messi and his friends, as most fans I know or have talked to would love to see the salary cap and byzantine roster rules the league uses to be greatly loosened or lost altogether. I'm not sure that sort of resentment is what's causing the collective shrug at Messi and his doings.

But Muller does hit on some points about perception, that this is the greatest player of all-time playing below his level, or what his level used to be, and it's not seen as abnormal or noteworthy that he would be dominating it. If we were to drop 38-year-old Aaron Judge into AAA, he would probably hit a fair few home runs.

While I've been ruminating on this for the past couple days, what I've really hung on is the challenge MLS has in the American sports scene. No other league faces what they face, in that it's the only major sports league in this country where everyone watching it, and not watching it, knows that it's nowhere near the best in the world. This is something the NBA, NHL, NFL, and MLB have never and will never think about. Even the women's leagues that have stormed to greater popularity in just the past five years, the WNBA and NWSL, can claim to be the best league in their sport. Maybe the NWSL has competition from England's WSL, but it's no worse than 1A. Even if it were second, fans really have to struggle to watch the WSL (it's on ESPN+ and YouTube, if you're curious). NWSL is obviously pretty accessible for soccer fans, and providing, at worst, just about the best women's club game product there is.

MLS lives in a completely different world from every other major league it shares time and space with. Not only do fans know it's not the best, but the best is easily accessible for them to watch. The Premier League is on cable, and NBC proper, every weekend. La Liga and Serie A are on streaming services, but also pop up on ESPN 2 or CBS Sports Network, too. The World Cup and Euros are on network TV. The Champions League is easily found, as well.

For every level of soccer fan, the illustration of what MLS isn't is flashing in their face, whether that's justification for not watching it or the frustration for those who do. It is a mountainous challenge.

I'm not sure this is a hurdle that MLS can ever overcome. I know people out there love minor league baseball, which in some ways MLS is, but people love going to minor league baseball. They don't watch it on TV. If they do, it's only to scout players who will play for the MLB teams they love one day. You can watch MLS as a scout, given the amount of talent they export now, but there's no guarantee of where those players will end up, and infinitesimal chances any player a fan gets attached to will end up on the European or South American club they support. There isn't that same connection.

That's a big reason, I would argue, that MLS is so parochial. Fans love their MLS team, but very few watch the league as a whole religiously. It's fun to go to the games, live footy is always worth it, and maybe follow along when one can on Apple TV. But how many come home from watching the Revs or the Union live and then flip on to catch the end of LAFC or the Sounders game on the west coast? My hunch is that number is Flo Rida-like (Low Low Low, for those who haven't been drunk enough to accidentally end up in a chud bar). This would be MLS's similarity to Minor League Baseball. I know people in Grand Rapids love going to see the Whitecaps. That doesn't mean they're keeping tabs on the Fort Wayne Tincaps.

I'm sure that's not all of it. MLS has spent a good amount of time devaluing its regular season. I know this is something I care about and notice greatly, but how many others share that I'm not sure. These first-round playoff games have been a reminder, though. 18 teams make the playoffs, 60 percent. Only those at the very top of the Supporters' Shield race, and those scrapping at the bottom of the playoff picture, have games that feel like they mean much for September and October.

And what is that really worth? If you were at all interested in the Fire on Sunday, you watched them claw back a draw against the Shield-winning Union, and then a penalty shootout to win Game 1. That could have gone either way for no soccer reasons. The Union, the league's best team, could have been 0-1 down in the first round without "losing." So what was the regular season for, really?

This is something I'm pretty sure I'm aware of more than a lot of fans, but I know I'm not the only one who is. MLS wants to, has to, mirror the other American leagues in structure. But the other American leagues aren't dealing with leagues around the world, better leagues around the world, showing fans how it can be done differently. No one's A and B'ing the NBA.

While I'm a promotion/relegation head, even the installation of that wouldn't create the "urgency" fans see in other leagues in every game. There are no "European places" for teams to fight over below a title race or Champions League places race. There is the CCL, but that doesn't have any of the cache yet, in terms of making fans think that finishing second or third in the conference has some sort of reward.

I'm not sure what the answers are. How would MLS even make itself into as single-table, round-robin league that is used everywhere else with 30 teams, if it ever wanted to? In the near future, it'll probably be 32 or more. How would pro/rel work with conferences? Opening up the salary cap would allow MLS to probably better compete with Liga MX, but that's probably the ceiling for a good long while. Perhaps there was a world where getting into the Copa Libertadores would have been worth looking into, even with the logistical nightmare it would be. But Mexican clubs have been denied that opportunity, they were in it once, so there's no chance of that for MLS.

It may be that this is the best MLS can do. Many passionate, localized fanbases around the country, a niche sport and league, soccer's version of Minor League Baseball. Perhaps that's why Messi's accomplishments don't resonate. They're not the top of the mountain. They're barely at base camp. Other records American fans have watched, they know it's the pinnacle of that sport. MLS just isn't that, and fans know it. It's reminded by the league and by everything else every day.