mocking the mls

Though the Europeans mock the MLS as a retirement lot for aging thirty-year-old talent, it has “a place.” By “a place,” I literally mean it’s “there.” Without it, the pool of national team players – albeit current or potential players – would not have a chance to compete at a level higher than college. Without this opportunity it gets very difficult to achieve a level of performance, and expectations, worthy of staying on the field with top teams from Europe and South America. It just isn’t possible. Back in the 1980s, when American soccer was edging its way closer and closer to a highly competitive level, there were players like Rick Davis, a young Tab Ramos and Brent Goulet – all talented players who would’ve been “more talented” players had they been permanently raised in Holland or Argentina (excluding Ramos, raised in South America). They had the disadvantage of being trained within the college game. Competing against international teams was very lopsided – the rest of the world has been competing in their own professional leagues for close to one hundred years. It’s not so much how good they could have been, it’s more of what they were used too. It just wasn’t fair. France, the winner of the European Cup in 1984 would be a fine wine, while American players were empty bottles of beer on the side of the road, tossed out the window by a trucker that shouldn’t have been drinking and driving. The kind of bottle liberal trash scavengers will collect in a ditch ten years later, lamenting, “If only this could’ve been recycled earlier.”
   The other teams possessed simple skills, elements of technique that we were impressed with. Little things like kicking the ball off a player’s leg for a throw-in, chipping the ball over a player’s foot as a dribble – all things American players were aware of, but still impressed, nonetheless, when seeing other teams doing it so casually, without any effort, or thought. They just did it. We noticed them doing these things. This alone shows how far we've come. To us, they were doing it instinctually, whereas, our players would have to remind themselves of it. We noticed also, they were so comfortable in front of goal. They finished with ease. They were raised around the game, in the backyards and streets, playing with older guys that had professional experience; and there were pro leagues awaiting them. It was a totally different culture. A culture that produced seasoned players – from the miniscule skills, onward to the larger macro ideologies of the game, including possession for possession’s sake.  The MLS has changed that to an extent, with better things to come...