Want to watch soccer? Start here! Soccer thread 2014

[Kang]

Only wussies play for 3 months. Football is a 12-month sport.

[Cutriss]

This is a fair assessment for the Mexican league, which is probably at least fairly close to English second division play, but MLS is overall a reeeeally low level of soccer that's only recently given up on attempting to Americanize the sport and is still rarely taken seriously for good reason.

So, perhaps this is a broader question that applies to minor league sports in general, but how exactly do you evaluate an entire league's "level of soccer"? Serious question - I've only started casually watching soccer from about two years ago.

What are your criteria for MLS to be taken "seriously"? Do we have to start routinely beating Monterrey in CONCACAF? Go back in time and prevent Chivas USA from ever forming?

[Plow]

The primary thing that you find in MLS is really bad defending, and strikers that aren't good enough to abuse it.


And, unfortunately, in the soccer world for MLS to be taken seriously salary caps have to go. It can't happen, though, because the money isn't there anyway.

Remember how I mentioned ManU is making half a bil a year at this point? They can spend as much as they want.

MLS salary cap is 3.1m a year, with options for single player exceptions, which are the few places you find the 3-4 people that could probably make lower table teams in the top euro leagues. The rest of the league consists of teams making less than those individual players (most teams in the league pay their entire team half what Michael Bradley makes). And they're not players that would be big names by any means in Europe.

[Tyrath]

lol wait so whats Villa gonna get paid?

[Cail]

http://espn.go.com/racing/f1/story/_...-nod-world-cup

[Mayareira]

So, perhaps this is a broader question that applies to minor league sports in general, but how exactly do you evaluate an entire league's "level of soccer"? Serious question - I've only started casually watching soccer from about two years ago.

What are your criteria for MLS to be taken "seriously"? Do we have to start routinely beating Monterrey in CONCACAF? Go back in time and prevent Chivas USA from ever forming?

You could go with http://www.transfermarkt.com/ total market value rankings.

Also for future refernce, this site is an incredible database. Probably the most reputable football database in Europe.

http://www.transfermarkt.com/major-l...ettbewerb/MLS1

also above the direct link for every single MLS related statistics you can find.

[Abandon]

where does the american hero play

[Mellema]

where does the american hero play

Tim Howard plays for Everton FC

[Judai]

You can look at the usmnt roster and it shows what clubs they play for. (then just google the club if you don't know where it is, lol)

http://www.ussoccer.com/mens-nationa.../latest-roster

Tim Howard - Everton FC - EPL
Clint Dempsey - Seattle Sounders - MLS (DeAndre Yedlin also plays there)
Michael Bradley - Toronto FC - MLS
Jozy Altidore - Sunderland - EPL

[Cutriss]

I would've answered him hours ago but I thought he was being sarcastic.

Just under half the team is MLS.

[Izzy]

lol wait so whats Villa gonna get paid?

He's gonna get paid on a contract that doesn't count against the cap.

It's probably a fuckload of money.

[Tyrath]

Philipp Lahm retiring from international football. What a great way to go out, as WC winning captain. But it will be a big loss for the German team.

[Mellema]

Philipp Lahm retiring from international football. What a great way to go out, as WC winning captain. But it will be a big loss for the German team.

Too bad Zidane lost his cool in his last match. Great career, but pretty much just remembered for his head butt now.

[Ashmada]

This ranking of WC teams from Wikipedia is interesting:

1 	 Germany 	G 	7 	6 	1 	0 	19 	18 	4 	+14
2 	 Argentina 	F 	7 	5 	1 	1 	16 	8 	4 	+4
3 	 Netherlands 	B 	7 	5 	2 	0 	17 	15 	4 	+11
4 	 Brazil 	A 	7 	3 	2 	2 	11 	11 	14 	-3
Eliminated in the quarter-finals
5 	 Colombia 	C 	5 	4 	0 	1 	12 	12 	4 	+8
6 	 Belgium 	H 	5 	4 	0 	1 	12 	6 	3 	+3
7 	 France 	E 	5 	3 	1 	1 	10 	10 	3 	+7
8 	 Costa Rica 	D 	5 	2 	3 	0 	9 	5 	2 	+3
Eliminated in the round of 16
9 	 Chile 	B 	4 	2 	1 	1 	7 	6 	4 	+2
10 	 Mexico 	A 	4 	2 	1 	1 	7 	5 	3 	+2
11 	  Switzerland 	E 	4 	2 	0 	2 	6 	7 	7 	0
12 	 Uruguay 	D 	4 	2 	0 	2 	6 	4 	6 	-2
13 	 Greece 	C 	4 	1 	2 	1 	5 	3 	5 	-2
14 	 Algeria 	H 	4 	1 	1 	2 	4 	7 	7 	0
15 	 United States 	G 	4 	1 	1 	2 	4 	5 	6 	-1
16 	 Nigeria 	F 	4 	1 	1 	2 	4 	3 	5 	-2
Eliminated in the group stage
17 	 Ecuador 	E 	3 	1 	1 	1 	4 	3 	3 	0
18 	 Portugal 	G 	3 	1 	1 	1 	4 	4 	7 	-3
19 	 Croatia 	A 	3 	1 	0 	2 	3 	6 	6 	0
20 	 Bosnia and Herzegovina 	F 	3 	1 	0 	2 	3 	4 	4 	0
21 	 Ivory Coast 	C 	3 	1 	0 	2 	3 	4 	5 	-1
22 	 Italy 	D 	3 	1 	0 	2 	3 	2 	3 	-1
23 	 Spain 	B 	3 	1 	0 	2 	3 	4 	7 	-3
24 	 Russia 	H 	3 	0 	2 	1 	2 	2 	3 	-1
25 	 Ghana 	G 	3 	0 	1 	2 	1 	4 	6 	-2
26 	 England 	D 	3 	0 	1 	2 	1 	2 	4 	-2
27 	 South Korea 	H 	3 	0 	1 	2 	1 	3 	6 	-3
28 	 Iran 	F 	3 	0 	1 	2 	1 	1 	4 	-3
29 	 Japan 	C 	3 	0 	1 	2 	1 	2 	6 	-4
30 	 Australia 	B 	3 	0 	0 	3 	0 	3 	9 	-6
31 	 Honduras 	E 	3 	0 	0 	3 	0 	1 	8 	-7
32 	 Cameroon 	A 	3 	0 	0 	3 	0 	1 	9 	-8

It shows the story of the cup, better than combing all articles about all matches (or having seen and remembering all matches) could:

1) Germany's a worthy winner who clearly dominated the tournament, aside from their slight misstep against Ghana: average 2.71 points/game (highest, obviously); a GD of +2/game.


2) Brazil was a much weaker team than expected: average 1.57 points/game (if the teams were ranked solely by that criteria, they'd dropped to 10th behind Mexico, barely ahead of Switzerland & Uruguay); the only top 10 team with a negative GD (-.43/game)... clearly showing that the only reason they got so far in the tournament is because they were tremendously helped by the referees.
Interestingly, if they hadn't been helped by the refs, they'd have even worse stats AND probably not even have gotten through the group stages, a Spain v2 if you will.

3) The Netherlands was probably better than Argentina overall, just not during those shoot-outs.
Numbers-wise, Argentina (2.29 points/game ; +.57 GD/game) would fall below Colombia (2.4 points/game ; 1.6 GD/game) and Belgium (2.4 points/game ; .6 GD/game)... but one could argue that's solely because they played against Germany.

Honestly, Argentina was about on par with Belgium. Same progression throughout the tournament, the direct game between both teams was mostly determined through psychology: our players were clearly scared of Messi & co early on and flailing desperately after the goal occured. (ok, that last conclusion doesn't come from the numbers but from having watched the game)
And Colombia was probably better than both; they just fell to biased refereeing.

More conclusions could be reached, but I'm about as bored with it this post as everyone else was by the second line, so yeah.


Tangentially, FIFA has finally released the post-WC rankings.
Interestingly (and here's the tangent with the above analysis), the top of the rankings (top 6/5) matches the above table... except in Brazil's case, reinforcing my second conclusion.
Overall, the ranking is quite predictable (it's a formula, afterall), apart from Venezuela gaining 10 places from 40 to 30 without even being in the Cup. They must've been winning quite a few friendlies.

[Talint]

Graham Zusi, Matt Besler sign four year contract extension with Sporting KC

[Plow]

ok so I'm watching the NWSL game that's on espn and it's reminded me that women's soccer is not as bad as it sounds, and it's a pretty decent way to find live soccer (uswnt does lots of friendlies and shit, and the league games are cheap, and then there's college women's which isn't as subpar as college men's), and it's also the one case where the American version is the best in the world


and as I was sitting around thinking about making a post about it, one of them just scored one of the more amazing goals I've seen lol, hopefully it will be on youtube at some point

[Cutriss]

ok so I'm watching the NWSL game that's on espn and it's reminded me that women's soccer is not as bad as it sounds, and it's a pretty decent way to find live soccer (uswnt does lots of friendlies and shit, and the league games are cheap, and then there's college women's which isn't as subpar as college men's), and it's also the one case where the American version is the best in the world


and as I was sitting around thinking about making a post about it, one of them just scored one of the more amazing goals I've seen lol, hopefully it will be on youtube at some point

I saw that Thorns/Breakers was one of the "featured" matches on ESPNFC today. I clicked into the article (brief as it was) and at the bottom, a single comment saying "Where in the hell did these teams come from, are they a MLS minor league?"

I just shook my head.

http://www.espnfc.com/gamecast/stati...tatistics.html

The top comment about ESPN's lack of stats is also amusing, because really ESPN's soccer site is complete and utter garbage. I'm surprised they even had game entries for the NWSL. There wasn't an entry I could find anywhere for yesterday's friendly between SSFC and THFC, presumably because they don't list non-league matches in the fixtures list (even though they used to do this prior to the World Cup-ification of the site).

[Tyrath]

http://www.cbssports.com/general/eye...rld-cup-trophy

Germany celebrated too hard, broke World Cup trophy

Germany, apparently, can't have nice things.

The team came home last week with their fourth World Cup title, and they must have been pretty excited, too, because they ended up breaking the trophy.

"At one point, a small piece of our World Cup trophy was chipped off," German soccer federation president Wolfgang Niersbach said, according to ESPN. "But do not worry! We have specialists on the case who can fix it. We have investigated persistently who it was that damaged the trophy, but the investigation was concluded without a result."

Luckily, Germany came home with just a replica of the trophy they hoisted in Brazil, which is valued at $10 million.

Typical Germans and their partying. Good thing they don't get to keep the real thing..

[Talint]

So the MLS v BPL international friendly thing going on. This caught my eye over the 7-0 trouncing of Man U over LA Galaxy.

Manchester City dominates Sporting KC with 4-1 win in international friendly match

Sporting Kansas City ultimately had bigger fish to fry than Wednesday’s international friendly Champions Shield match against defending English Premier League champion Manchester City.

There was a smidgen of disappointment in the 4-1 loss at Sporting Park, which saw Sporting KC substitute its entire lineup at halftime.

And all I have to say, really, is:

Graham Zusi, Matt Besler, I hope you enjoy the choices that you've made.

[Izzy]

I was so close to getting Arsenal/Red Bulls tickets for this Saturday. I, however, can not justify spending 200 bucks for a ticket that normally costs me 20. I'll just head to a bar and watch it lol.