Major League Soccer Offseason 2019-20: Zlexit

Titans Bastard

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Wahl is reporting that Chicharito to LA Galaxy is done. That's a huge signing for a club that's suddenly been a bit overshadowed by LAFC.


Some other moves:

- Orlando signed Pedro Gallese from Veracruz. Gallese has been Peru's starting GK since 2014 and will no doubt push Brian Rowe back to the #2 at OCSC.

- Minnesota signed Tyler Miller as their new starting goalkeeper. They had been trying to bring back Vito Mannone, but he wanted more money than they were will to spend on a GK. Miller had a decent year as LAFC's keeper. He can be a little inconsistent, but is definitely MLS starting caliber. They also signed James Musa, a New Zealander CM who spent the last two years with Phoenix Rising. He's the second player from that highly successful squad to move to MLS this winter and there could be a third on the way.

- Colorado made a third attacking signing in three days: Braian Galvan, a 19 year old Argentine winger from Colón. One more team stocking up on young Latin American players with growth potential...

- Vancouver made two signings. The first is Cristian Gutierrez, a 22 year old Chilean/Canadian left back who comes from Colo-Colo in Santiago. The second is Cristian Dajome, a 26 year old Colombian winger who has played for a bunch of teams in Colombia and Ecuador. The Whitecaps are still a LONG way away from looking like anything resembling a good team.

- Chicago signed Mauricio Pineda to a homegrown contract. There have been rumors that he'd sign for years, but probably due to Chicago's dysfunction with regards to signing former academy players (Andrew Gutman?!) he's ridden out a four-year college career. For now, he's the Fire's #3 center back — or maybe #2, since they don't have any actual RBs on the roster so, as it stands, Kappelhof would have to play there.
 

Titans Bastard

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Multiple outlets reporting Robert Beric to the Fire is a done deal with a $3.5m fee and enough salary to be in DP-territory. From my brief background research, he seems to be strong in air (listed at 6'1") and adequate at holding up and laying off the ball. Not exactly the kind of player I envision playing the style Wicky had the USMNT U17 side playing, but probably a very useful player when you're thin on talent and need a target man to pump balls toward. We'll see. There's all of 18 players (4 of them really U19) on the roster still.

#cf97 getting worked up about news that Chicharito's deal with the Galaxy hasn't been finalized yet. I may very well regret coming back to the Fire. These supporters are borderline neurotic.
Official, and he's already doing shots.

View: https://twitter.com/ChicagoFire/status/1218594702850740226
 

67YAZ

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Shot of Malort! Took it pretty well, too. He’s gonna be a fan favorite.

Edit: nice to see them bring in a homegrown with Pineda. And yeah, right now he’s the #2 CB. It’s gonna be a long rebuilding season, but reasons for optimism.
 

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Chicharito has really fallen hard. Wasn't two seasons ago he was starting in the Champions League, now he's in a relative backwater, even if it's his cultural backyard too.
 

67YAZ

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We'll start with the good news for the Chicago Fire...they signed a backup keeper, Connor Sparrow from Nashville SC. He's only 25, so there's hope he might continue to develop into a starter. But considering the backup had been a 15 yr-old local kid, this was a very necessary upgrade. This brings the roster up to 19!

The Fire also have 5 academy players in camp with them. Their academy doesn't have 5 players ready to make the gameday squad, but they needed a few live bodies just to train properly. I think it also reflects Heitz and Wicky's desire to improve the quality of the academy, which will be a process. But Chicago has more than enough local talent to keep a squad rounded out with homegrowns, contribute a few regulars, and offer up the occasional star.

The bad news..looks like 21yr-old Polish international winger Jozwiak is headed to Derby County instead of Chicago. Hopefully Heitz can use his UEFA network to consistently find young, undervalued talent like this, though convincing them to leave Europe for MLS will be a hurdle if competing offers come in.

And there's rumblings that Pizzaro's agents have rejected a second offer from the Fire. It reads like they are delaying in order to drum up a Spanish offer, which is Pizzaro's preferred destination. Mansueto has been personally involved in these talks, but as a brand new owner, it's hard to project how that bodes
 

Titans Bastard

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Chicharito is official.


Goff reports that Julian Gressel has been traded to D.C. for a boatload of money. That's a big loss for Atlanta, with whom Gressel was at a contract impasse.
 

67YAZ

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Bunch of twitter confirmations that the Fire have landed Gaston Gimenez for $5.5m from Velez Sarsfield (Argentina). This has been rumored for a few weeks, so it’s nice to see Heitz close the deal, though it won’t be until the Primera Division wraps up in March.


Gimenez is 26 and has been capped by Argentina once - a friendly vs El Tri in 2018. He has been described as a #6 with superb range of passing and the characteristic Argentine willingness to dribble at opponents. To me, this sounds like a player for Wicky’s system, a pivot who can move the ball effectively and creatively. Apparently Club America and some unnamed European clubs were also interested, so it’s exciting for the Fire to nab an in-demand player during his prime years.

Some of the same twitter accounts reporting that the Fire are close to a deal for Miguel Angel Navarro, a 20 year old LB playing in Venezuela’s first division. A young, promising back up for Jonathan Bornstein would be fantastic.

Some time soon - like next week? - the Fire need to start rounding out the roster with trades and free agents. These two moves would put the roster at 21, but 3 of those players are really U19/USL guys.
 
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Titans Bastard

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Transfers!

FC Dallas signed Franco Jara, a 31 year old Argentine forward, from Pachuca. He won't join until the summer, but he'll be a centerpiece at CF, as he has 60 goals in 131 games for Pachuca. I'm curious how they handle Jara along with Ondrasek and the youngsters like Ferreira and Pepi.

Philadelphia signed Matej Oravec, a 21 year old Slovakian DM from DAC Dunajská Streda in his domestic league. He should be a backup to Jose Martinez.

FC Cincinnati signed Bobby Edwards, an American GK who somehow wound up in the Northern Irish second division with Portadown, where he seems to have becom something of a legend in a half season there. The step up to MLS from a league like that is large, but he'll be the 3rd or 4th string keeper.

Minnesota traded for CM Jacori Hayes, a solid MLS backup who had become expendable in Dallas due to the high number of young academy products pushing their way ino the first team.

RSL signed LB Ashtone Morgan, who just wrapped up nine years with Toronto FC. He'll compete for a spot with Donny Toia.

Vancouver signed 22 year old Ghanaian CM Leonard Owusu from FC Ashdod in Israel. Maybe he'll surprise, but his resume is that of an underwhelming signing typical of th Whitecaps. More importantly, they re-signed Erik Godoy, an important player at CB for them.

Toronto signed a trio of Canadians from their academy: Rocco Romeo (CB), Jahkeele Marshall-Rutty (AM), and Jayden Nelson (FW). They always sign a lot of academy players, but most of them never seem to go anywhere. The productivity of their USL team stands in stark contrast to a team like NYRB II. Nobody seems to get better.

NYRB took Southampton winger Josh Sims back on loan. They had him for the second half of 2019 as well; he seemed decent enough, if not spectacular. NYRB has had a VERY quiet offseason so far.

Atlanta signed Irish midfielder Jake Mulraney from Hearts. Looks like depth.
 

Titans Bastard

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The latest:

Chicago signed 20 year old Venezuelan left back Miguel Navarro from Deportivo La Guaira. They now have 20 players on the roster – exciting times! Here's hoping they find a right back.

Columbus took Fanendo Adi off FC Cincinnati's hands, though FCC is on the hook for most of his ample salary. Adi has been totally useless in recent years, but perhaps reuniting with Caleb Porter will reignite his good form for the Timbers.

Sporting KC signed 25 year old Israeli central midfielder Gadi Kinda on loan from Beitar Jerusalem. He'll fit...somewhere in the mix of their 4-3-3, though from reports, probably on the attacking end of things.

NYCFC signed 27 year old Icelandic LB/CM Gudmundur Thorarinsson, whose career has been a tour of Scandinavia (Iceland, Norway, Denmark, Norway again, and most recently Sweden).

Vancouver signed David Milinkovic on loan from Hull City; he's a 25 year old French/Serbian winger who did well on loan at Hearts a few years ago and then not so well at Hull over the last 1.5 years. I'll say it again: the Whitecaps always sign guys with these "meh" resumes. They also signed two academy products: Gianfranco Facchineri, a 17 year old CB, and Patrick Metcalfe, a 21 year old CM.

Portland signed Blake Bodily, a 22 year old winger most recently of the University of Washington. He's an academy signing, and that rare pro who is originally from Idaho.

One-time Revolution starting GK Cody Cropper has landed with the Houston Dynamo. I'd expect him to be a backup at this point. They also signed Kiwi defender Kyle Adams, who has spent the last two years with their affiliate Rio Grande Valley FC.

Montreal brought back two players who had been on loan in 2019: Orji Okwonkwo (who is on loan from Bologna again) and Zachary Brault-Guillard (on a permanent transfer from Lyon). Why does every Québécois player have a hyphenated last name?

Minnesota transferred Angelo Rodriguez to Deportivo Cali. He just never quite worked for them. He's been replaced by Luis Amarilla, a 24 year old Paraguayan who is on loan from Velez Sarsfield. Amarilla is coming off a high-scoring loan stint in Ecuador and will contend with Mason Toye for playing time.
 

67YAZ

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The latest:

Chicago signed 20 year old Venezuelan left back Miguel Navarro from Deportivo La Guaira. They now have 20 players on the roster – exciting times! Here's hoping they find a right back.
I’d forgotten how wild the MLS rumor mill is - deals that come out of nowhere, moves that have been hyped as done for weeks never materialize...

But Navarro looks like a fine addition, the kind of young LB they need. He’s currently starting in Olympic qualifiers, so he’s definitely going up against quality completion in CONMEBOL.

Mixed messages on the Pizarro deal. One rumor is that the Fire and Adidas have come to agreement to finance the deal. Another says the Fire have moved on, think Pizarro has his sights set on Spain.
 

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Winston Reid, who hasn't played for West Ham since 3/3/2018 due to injuries is allegedly moving to MLS on loan (presumably with an option to buy). Moyes wouldn't say which club yet because there haven't been physicals and such done yet.

Edit- Twitter says it is either Nashville or KC.
 

67YAZ

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Fire sign another defensive mid - Dejan Ljubicic from Rapid Vienna. He’s only 22 and has become a regular for the club he came up through the youth ranks with. Fee was $2.7m. This is the kind of move I expect from Heitz.

Word all over Twitter is that Inter Miami has signed Pizzaro. That really stings for the Fire.
 

Titans Bastard

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FC Cincinnati signed Dutch forward Jürgen Locadia on loan from Brighton. He was sold by PSV for £15m only two years ago, but he didn't do that well at Brighton. He's still only 26, so is potentially a very interesting project at the MLS level.

Seattle signed João Paulo, a 28 year old Brazilian midfielder who has been a regular for Botafogo. He's an attacking midfielder per TM, so I wonder if Lodeiro moves wide.
 

Titans Bastard

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67YAZ

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LOL

Mansueto is trying to completely refresh the entire organization, and I’m here for it. Yeah, they should have stuck with red as the dominant color, but their kit template was over 20 years old. It, like everything else in this club, needed a palette cleanser.

of course, now there’s reports that the deals for both Ljubicic and Giminez have fallen apart. I appreciate the quality of player that Heitz is reaching for, but he’s got to figure out how to close these deals working through MLS.
 

Titans Bastard

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So, this process happened very smoothly and quietly and was wrapped up faster than the last time.

It looks like the players made progress on a number of fronts. I don't think the MLSPA will get criticized like they did with the last one.
  1. Fairly solid increases in the baseline salary cap, before all the weird MLS accounting stuff is tacked on. It sounds like MLS front offices have another $650k to play with for 2020, as well. The minimum salary increases again.
  2. Much of each team's Targeted Allocation Money ("TAM") is being converted to General Allocation Money ("GAM"). [What a ridiculous sentence!] This is good for players because TAM could (almost) only be used to cover costs of new acquisitions, while GAM can be used for anything, including raises for current players. The, uh, other type of TAM (discretionary TAM, or dTAM) which teams weren't required to spend still exists but will be reduced over time. The overall spending structure is in a chart here.
  3. Free agency has been expanded considerably. The current system, which requires players to be 28 and have played in MLS for eights years, did little more than allow veterans to choose where to end their career. The new standards for free agency are to be 24 or older with five years of MLS experience. That's a big jump. That being said, there's a cap on how big a raise players can get via free agency.
  4. Charter flights: last year, teams could do up to four one-way charter flights per season, but many clubs did fewer, or zero. Clubs are now required to do eight one-way charter flights (no more, no less), rising to 16 by 2024. In addition, all travel to/from playoff games and CCL games will be chartered.
  5. Players get a slice of media rights revenue starting in 2023, but it's really impossible to get a sense of how much money that might be right now.
 

Zososoxfan

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So, this process happened very smoothly and quietly and was wrapped up faster than the last time.

It looks like the players made progress on a number of fronts. I don't think the MLSPA will get criticized like they did with the last one.
  1. Fairly solid increases in the baseline salary cap, before all the weird MLS accounting stuff is tacked on. It sounds like MLS front offices have another $650k to play with for 2020, as well. The minimum salary increases again.
  2. Much of each team's Targeted Allocation Money ("TAM") is being converted to General Allocation Money ("GAM"). [What a ridiculous sentence!] This is good for players because TAM could (almost) only be used to cover costs of new acquisitions, while GAM can be used for anything, including raises for current players. The, uh, other type of TAM (discretionary TAM, or dTAM) which teams weren't required to spend still exists but will be reduced over time. The overall spending structure is in a chart here.
  3. Free agency has been expanded considerably. The current system, which requires players to be 28 and have played in MLS for eights years, did little more than allow veterans to choose where to end their career. The new standards for free agency are to be 24 or older with five years of MLS experience. That's a big jump. That being said, there's a cap on how big a raise players can get via free agency.
  4. Charter flights: last year, teams could do up to four one-way charter flights per season, but many clubs did fewer, or zero. Clubs are now required to do eight one-way charter flights (no more, no less), rising to 16 by 2024. In addition, all travel to/from playoff games and CCL games will be chartered.
  5. Players get a slice of media rights revenue starting in 2023, but it's really impossible to get a sense of how much money that might be right now.
Obviously great improvements for the players, but reading about the changes just made it even more clear why MLS is competing with CONCACAF and CONMEBOL federations and not UEFA. I'm not saying this is a bad thing, and the owners are obviously being deliberate about the growth of the league, but the ultimate goal should be to compete with the best leagues in the world.
 

Titans Bastard

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Obviously great improvements for the players, but reading about the changes just made it even more clear why MLS is competing with CONCACAF and CONMEBOL federations and not UEFA. I'm not saying this is a bad thing, and the owners are obviously being deliberate about the growth of the league, but the ultimate goal should be to compete with the best leagues in the world.
MLS is already a better quality league than most UEFA leagues. The biggest UEFA leagues, of course, are another story.
 

Titans Bastard

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Yesterday, the NY Times reported that NYCFC is close to a stadium deal. The article is detailed and has comments from NYCFC, so this appears to be a very real possibility. The proposal is for a 25,000 seater in the Bronx, quite close to Yankee Stadium. Obviously, this would be a huge deal for NYCFC if this pans out, as building a stadium in New York is quite difficult.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/07/sports/soccer/nycfc-stadium-bronx-mls.html
In bad stadium news, Nashville is having real problems getting their deal finalized because the new mayor is hemming and hawing about reneging on the deal. This would be a serious problem for the team. There are already some wild rumors that MLS would pull the plug on the franchise at some point if the deal doesn't go through, although I doubt they'll have a quick trigger finger. Nashville SC is having a rough launch: the stadium deal, reportedly slow ticket sales, and a roster that looks like it's heading down the FC Cincinnati path.

https://theathletic.com/1587288/2020/02/07/they-have-no-plan-or-proposal-nashville-must-move-forward-on-a-soccer-stadium-and-set-racing-aside/
 

Titans Bastard

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RSL sold Jefferson Savarino to Atlético Mineiro for a reported club record fee...which is around $2m. They replaced him with another Venezuelan attacker, 18 year old Jeizon Ramirez from Deportivo Táchira.

Toronto signed 30 year old Argentine winger Pablo Piatti. Piatti has a very long history in La Liga, going back to 2008, with Almería, Valencia, and Espanyol. Based on a viewing of his stats, his fallen out of favor with Espanyol in recent times.

Seattle signed Yeimar Gomez, a 27 year old Colombian CB from Unión de Santa Fe. I'd imagine he'll be Xavier Arreaga's partner. The Sounders have really mixed things up at CB, with Torres and Kim Kee-Hee leaving and Chad Marshall retiring.

FC Cincinnati signed Adrien Regattin, a 28 year old French/Moroccan midfielder who comes from a Turkish club that allegedly wasn't paying him. His humdrum resume is befitting of FCC.
 

Zososoxfan

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MLS is already a better quality league than most UEFA leagues. The biggest UEFA leagues, of course, are another story.
Looking at this a bit more, I believe we would agree that the top 5 European leagues (EPL, La Liga, Bundesliga, Serie A, and Ligue 1) are undoubtedly better than MLS. I'd add to that the the Eredivisie and Primeira Liga.

Just looking at Transfermarkt's league value, MLS is at 678M. A few other UEFA domestic leagues are higher: Russian Premier League (1.13B); Jupiler Pro League (Belgium) (851M); and Turkish Super Lig (698M). This metric isn't the end-all be-all, but I'd say for Russia and Belgium it makes the case pretty emphatically. In other words, taken together with the quality and quantity of international players in Russia and the quality of players coming out of Belgium, I'd rank both leagues higher than MLS.

Other leagues in Europe are a bit harder to compare because for some they are so top-heavy with 1-3 superclubs dominating. These are leagues that consistently have clubs in the UCL group stage. So how you judge a league that may have a club or two that can legitimately compete with UEFA's second tier, but may have a very weak league otherwise is up to you. Nevertheless, I'd imagine that MLS fits somewhere in between the leagues listed below.

Austrian Bundesliga
First Professional Football League (Bulgaria)
Croatian First Football League
Czech First League
Danish Superliga
Greek Superleague
Ekstraklasa (Poland)
Serbian SuperLiga
Allsvenskan (Sweden)
Swiss Super League
Ukrainian Premier League
 
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OCST

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Winston Reid, who hasn't played for West Ham since 3/3/2018 due to injuries is allegedly moving to MLS on loan (presumably with an option to buy). Moyes wouldn't say which club yet because there haven't been physicals and such done yet.

Edit- Twitter says it is either Nashville or KC.
Wow talk about someone I forgot existed
 

OCST

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Looking at this a bit more, I believe we would agree that the top 5 European leagues (EPL, La Liga, Bundesliga, Serie A, and Ligue 1) are undoubtedly better than MLS. I'd add to that the the Eredivisie and Primeira Liga.

Just looking at Transfermarkt's league value, MLS is at 678M. A few other UEFA domestic leagues are higher: Russian Premier League (1.13B); Jupiler Pro League (Belgium) (851M); and Turkish Super Lig (698M). This metric isn't the end-all be-all, but I'd say for Russia and Belgium it makes the case pretty emphatically. In other words, taken together with the quality and quantity of international players in Russia and the quality of players coming out of Belgium, I'd rank both leagues higher than MLS.

Other leagues in Europe are a bit harder to compare because for some they are so top-heavy with 1-3 superclubs dominating. These are leagues that consistently have clubs in the UCL group stage. So how you judge a league that may have a club or two that can legitimately compete with UEFA's second tier, but may have a very weak league otherwise is up to you. Nevertheless, I'd imagine that MLS fits somewhere in between the leagues listed below.

Austrian Bundesliga
First Professional Football League (Bulgaria)
Croatian First Football League
Czech First League
Danish Superliga
Greek Superleague
Ekstraklasa (Poland)
Serbian SuperLiga
Allsvenskan (Sweden)
Swiss Super League
Ukrainian Premier League
feels right but I think we’d agree that MLS has upside whereas these others have plateaued

MX would be in the Belgium/Russia tier?
 

Titans Bastard

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Looking at this a bit more, I believe we would agree that the top 5 European leagues (EPL, La Liga, Bundesliga, Serie A, and Ligue 1) are undoubtedly better than MLS. I'd add to that the the Eredivisie and Primeira Liga.

Just looking at Transfermarkt's league value, MLS is at 678M. A few other UEFA domestic leagues are higher: Russian Premier League (1.13B); Jupiler Pro League (Belgium) (851M); and Turkish Super Lig (698M). This metric isn't the end-all be-all, but I'd say for Russia and Belgium it makes the case pretty emphatically. In other words, taken together with the quality and quantity of international players in Russia and the quality of players coming out of Belgium, I'd rank both leagues higher than MLS.

Other leagues in Europe are a bit harder to compare because for some they are so top-heavy with 1-3 superclubs dominating. These are leagues that consistently have clubs in the UCL group stage. So how you judge a league that may have a club or two that can legitimately compete with UEFA's second tier, but may have a very weak league otherwise is up to you. Nevertheless, I'd imagine that MLS fits somewhere in between the leagues listed below.

Austrian Bundesliga
First Professional Football League (Bulgaria)
Croatian First Football League
Czech First League
Danish Superliga
Greek Superleague
Ekstraklasa (Poland)
Serbian SuperLiga
Allsvenskan (Sweden)
Swiss Super League
Ukrainian Premier League
I agree that it's tough to compare MLS with Euro leagues. If you took the median salary on MLS squads, the difference between highest and lowest would be far smaller than the spectrum between the highest and lowest of any European league. The Portuguese league is the best example: Porto and Benfica would absolutely smash MLS and the bottom half of the Primeira would probably be awful in MLS.

I do think the list at the end of your post is a bit outdated; MLS spending has really ramped up in the last 2-3 years. I read that something like 1/3 to a 1/2 of the league broke their transfer records in the last year. My sense is that this has propelled the quality of MLS a bit higher on the whole than that list. It's hard to know for sure because literally nobody watches all of these leagues. It's just my sense based on where MLS players are coming from and how they do once they are there. League-average starters from Sweden have consistently flopped in MLS, for example. Maybe where I'd land is that MLS would be at the top of that group, but not in the next tier yet.

I think Liga MX would be in the tier right below the Big 5. Clubs like Tigres and Monterrey are damn good; they have really big budgets. They'd qualify for the CL group stage with some regularity, IMO, in a sort of Galatasaray/Dynamo Kyiv kind of way. But I think Liga MX has more depth than Turkey or Ukraine.
 

67YAZ

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Chicago trades Raheem Edwards to Minny for Wyatt Omsberg. It makes sense for the Fire to bolster their CB options by trading a player who doesn’t fit Wicky’s system and fell to 3rd choice. Edwards is a quality LB, but doesn’t pass and maintain possession very well; he’s best dribbling at midfielders and using his speed cover the flank.

Still a gaping hole at RB, though.
 

Titans Bastard

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Chicago trades Raheem Edwards to Minny for Wyatt Omsberg. It makes sense for the Fire to bolster their CB options by trading a player who doesn’t fit Wicky’s system and fell to 3rd choice. Edwards is a quality LB, but doesn’t pass and maintain possession very well; he’s best dribbling at midfielders and using his speed cover the flank.

Still a gaping hole at RB, though.
Wyatt Omsberg is a rare men's pro soccer player from northern New England; he's currently the only male pro from Maine.
 

Titans Bastard

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Titans Bastard

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Inter Miami lost a trademark case to Internationale.

Hopefully this will put an end to the asinine club naming. There's no reason that MLS can't come up with unique and powerful identifiers without hitching their wagons to foreign clubs.
Amen.

From what I understand this dispute is mostly about Inter Miami's ability to market itself as "Inter" and not its ability to use "Inter Miami" in general, but hopefully this dissuades the Euro copycat stuff in general. The deeply unimaginative trend toward "United", "FC", and other Europhile names has been strong in MLS and also in the USL.

The biggest failing of Inter Miami, though, is that they chickened out on the jersey. A uniform that really emphasized the pink in their colors could have been iconic; instead, we have a generic black jersey.
 

Senator Donut

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The deeply unimaginative trend toward "United", "FC", and other Europhile names has been strong in MLS and also in the USL.
The full name of the team is "Football Club Internazionale Milano" and as you know Italy is not an English-speaking nation, but even they decided to shoehorn an "FC" into their name. As time goes on, I don't think fans will care much about having American-sounding franchise names. Do you even think about Eastern European clubs when you hear Houston Dynamo anymore? It feels pretty authentic at this point.

The USA is kind of unique in that we really only like sports that we invented, but soccer is trying to break that trend. Therefore, I have no issue acknowledging the foreign roots of the sport. Real Salt Lake still sucks though.
 

Jimy Hendrix

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The USA is kind of unique in that we really only like sports that we invented, but soccer is trying to break that trend. Therefore, I have no issue acknowledging the foreign roots of the sport. Real Salt Lake still sucks though.
Real Salt Lake to me is like the Utah Jazz, where it's sucked super bad enough for long enough that it now kind of rules. I don't think the sin of INSERT CITY HERE United FC is so much the Euro poser question, which I suspect most regular people just don't care about. It's the boringness.
 

dirtynine

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The good part about [City or Region] FC is that the fans and media can nickname the team naturally. So you get the Blues, the Loons, the Hoops, etc. That’s how most of our storied teams (ahem, Red Sox) got their eventually-formal nicknames. So the FC trend is a bit boring, but I think of it as a blank canvas and giving permission for something organic to happen, which I really like.
 

Senator Donut

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Real Salt Lake to me is like the Utah Jazz, where it's sucked super bad enough for long enough that it now kind of rules. I don't think the sin of INSERT CITY HERE United FC is so much the Euro poser question, which I suspect most regular people just don't care about. It's the boringness.
Yeah, that's important distinction. I agreed it was pretty lame that two teams named "United FC" joined the league in the same year, but I also really like unique European-inspired names like Forward Madison, Philadelphia Union, and even El Paso Locomotive FC.
 

Jimy Hendrix

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I also at least give both of those Boring United FC teams credit for at least getting their Euro-style "the team name is boring, but we call it a different thing" names to stick. "Five Stripes" and "Loons" both honestly work for me.

The one that's truly a searing nothingness is Orlando, for whom I had to do a few Google searches to remember what the name actually even was.
 

67YAZ

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Dec 1, 2000
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Wyatt Omsberg is a rare men's pro soccer player from northern New England; he's currently the only male pro from Maine.
This will be fun.

"Hey Omsberg, that strikah is sittin' in your fuckin' door yahd. Mow down on that ankle bitah!"

"Nice cleats. You get those at Reny's?"
 

InstaFace

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The full name of the team is "Football Club Internazionale Milano" and as you know Italy is not an English-speaking nation, but even they decided to shoehorn an "FC" into their name. As time goes on, I don't think fans will care much about having American-sounding franchise names. Do you even think about Eastern European clubs when you hear Houston Dynamo anymore? It feels pretty authentic at this point.

The USA is kind of unique in that we really only like sports that we invented, but soccer is trying to break that trend. Therefore, I have no issue acknowledging the foreign roots of the sport. Real Salt Lake still sucks though.
"Dynamo" is at least an English word that connotes some qualities one would like to ascribe to a sports team. Copycat or not, it's not a dumb team name in the abstract. Say what you will about singular-noun team names like the Wild or the Fire, they at least have some basic level of evocativeness.

"Inter" is not itself a word, and whether a shorthand for "international" or not, is not saying one damn thing about the team. It exists purely in order to piggyback on a well-known foreign soccer brand. There's a legal 5-point hierarchy of protected-ness for trademarks from most distinctive to least, fanciful -> arbitrary -> suggestive -> descriptive -> generic. Within that, "Inter" or even "Inter Miami" is at best suggestive, but more likely descriptive. In other words, as an attempt at branding, even an agency full of government bureaucrats can all tell that it's a miserable failure.

I'm very anti IP-troll in general and take a dim view of people trying to enforce their IP on new upstarts, but this is one in which I'm 100% behind the USPTO just on the merits. An actual IP lawyer is welcome to come along and correct me on why the ruling is wrongly decided, and I'd be interested to read it, but until then I'm going to say I'm glad this got enforced and share TB's hope that it'll inspire some more creative thinking for names.
 

Titans Bastard

has sunil gulati in his sights
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The full name of the team is "Football Club Internazionale Milano" and as you know Italy is not an English-speaking nation, but even they decided to shoehorn an "FC" into their name. As time goes on, I don't think fans will care much about having American-sounding franchise names. Do you even think about Eastern European clubs when you hear Houston Dynamo anymore? It feels pretty authentic at this point.

The USA is kind of unique in that we really only like sports that we invented, but soccer is trying to break that trend. Therefore, I have no issue acknowledging the foreign roots of the sport. Real Salt Lake still sucks though.
I hear what you are saying. It rankles me, though, because I pick up the unmistakable whiff of insecurity. US soccer has always been riddled with inferiority complexes.

I'd rather be the best version of myself than a second-rate version of someone else. All of these Euro-copycat names feel more like knockoffs than some sort of homage. Maybe that's just me.


I do wish Sporting KC committed to the bit, moved their reserve team, and rechristened it Topeka Benfica.
 

Jimy Hendrix

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The best way to do it in the end will be to do something US teams have failed to do and just exist for a century or so. Then us who are being fussy about it will be dead and whatever dumb name it is will just be the way it's always been, problem solved.

I mean, we're all here because we like a team named after what socks it wears, which would seem insane if it wasn't also old.
 

Zososoxfan

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I don't know the background of the United suffix, but FC and SC are fine with me when they apply. SC in particular is acceptable as a stand in for 'Soccer Club' or 'Sports Club'. FC is also fine with me because I like referring to global football as football, but I recognize that I'm likely in the minority there. What is totally unacceptable to me is Real Salt Lake. That is a weak attempt to connote Madrid and not quite in the same way Latino clubs have 'Juniors' or other English words, since those have direct connections to the genesis of many of those clubs. But ultimately I'm with @Jimy Hendrix in that if these clubs survive for 50+ years I will stick likely mock their names and be happy doing so because American football ;) will still be a thing.