USA TO SUBMIT BIDS TO HOST WORLD CUP IN '18 OR '22

[Oyvoyvoyv]

elprincipe said:

GamingChartzFTW said:

elprincipe said:

Firstly I think we are definitely better right now than Peru and especially Bolivia.  I think we are also pretty clearly above Venezuela.  I think we are competitive with teams like Chile, Uruguay and Ecuador, maybe Paraguay.  Definitely we are well behind Brazil and Argentina (although this is no shame for most teams in the world).

You don't know much about our league, I would guess.  It is vastly improved since its founding in 1996.  Players like David Beckham can come here and have a minimal impact.  Perhaps closer to home, a player like Marcelo Gallardo played here in DC last season and did pretty well when he was healthy (not often enough, sadly), but hardly dominated every match.  MLS is a decent league but still has a long way to go to challenge the top leagues in the world.  It is not as good as the Mexican league at this point, although we are not too far below them.  But the Mexican league is a very good league that challenges even in the Libertadores.

In any case, the bottom line is I feel you are underrating American players, MLS and the US national team, but I would not claim we would even necessarily qualify from the South American group in World Cup qualifiers - it would probably be close with those teams I mentioned above.

 

Please. Do elaborate.

Sure.  David Beckham has been considered a top player, at least at times (although I've always felt him to be overrated).  He was somewhat ineffectual for Los Angeles and they failed to even make the playoffs in MLS (the top eight teams out of 13) in the past two seasons.  I was just pointing out that a player who was starting for a Real Madrid side that won the La Liga title the season before came to MLS and failed to even help his team to the playoffs.  I think that says a little about the qualify of the league, as I've described.

 

 

David Beckham was 32 years old at the time though. He wasn't really a key player for Real Madrid anymore (to the same extent as he used to be), and that's pretty obvious considering they sold him (without really having a top of the line back-up).

 

I do believe Beckham was also injured when he arrived, and had several injures during his 2 years for Galaxy.

 

Not only that, but Los Angel Galaxy had already made some silly mismanagements, and the club was starting to do pretty horribly, Beckham was just not able to reverse that.

 

I don't think you can take Beckham not making a major impact as something that tells you the MLS league is as high quality as the European (top) leagues.