Usually football fans watch the big five championships and European cups: the Europa League and the Champions League. Of course, it is much more interesting to watch such venerable football players as Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo, Radamel Falcao, Diego Costa and others. Contact football in England, technical in Spain, ideal tactical formation in Italy, iron discipline in the fields of Germany - all that attracts viewers to the screen. But, recently, more and more often heard about leagues in the United Arab Emirates, Australia, India and, of course, in the United States of America, and all because of the massive buying up of famous football players.
MLS - what is it?
As could be understood from the introduction, this is a football term. The meaning of the word MLS is a non-existent thing, because it is an English abbreviation, which stands for Major League Soccer. Until some time, Americans absolutely did not like the so-called Sokker, so it developed in the United States much worse than the same rugby or basketball. The world tendencies of European football as the most popular sport have reached the USA, but they have a harder time starting, because winning the same popularity is becoming very difficult. In order to at least somehow attract people to the stadium and to the TV screens, the owners of teams that have any kind of money are inviting European stars with a name that are no longer able to play at the proper level. A striking example of this is Thierry Henry or the recent transfer of the English star Frank Lempard.
History of the creation of MLS
As noted earlier, the Ministry of Sports of the United States spoke of the need to create a Socker league only after it became the most popular in the world and the trend followed to America, where more and more children were enrolled in sections for this sport. Even to this day, American football remains the most popular , followed by boxing and only then soccer, but the progress in the growth of fans is obvious. In 1993, MLS was founded. The sport league was created with the aim of attracting attention for the application for holding the 1994 World Cup, but the first games of the European season were held only in 1996, 3 years after the foundation. This season is the 20th anniversary and the number of fans who watch the game of leading teams, breaks all records. Isn't that a success for this sport in America? The best team in the MLS is considered a local club from Los Angeles, where, incidentally, David Beckham himself played last season. The team is the champion in the number of cups won.
Promotion of young soccer players
The clubs of America had a very poor choice of their own pupils until 2008, when the football federation obliged all the teams that participate in the Premier League matches to have their own plan, which will allow the young talents of the United States to develop. Each club annually invests a lot of money in financing its football academies, but the youth soccer competition, which is symbolically called the Development League, is funded entirely by the United States. Now children should not explain anything about MLS, what it is and what they play there. Many children start playing football, keeping in their hearts the dream of once wearing a T-shirt of their beloved club and going on the lawn in league matches. Since 1997, an organization has been operating in the MLS that covers absolutely all the costs of young soccer players for clubs who decided to accept promising players.
Broadcast matches
Thanks to the work done to increase the popularity of sokker in the USA around the world, people also began to pay attention to this league. Since 2015, MLS has signed a contract with several channels, one of which is Spanish and the fee they received exceeded last year by 5 times! If in 2014 the league received 18 million US dollars for the broadcast, then in 2015 as much as 90 million, which is definitely a record at the moment! At this MLS continental tour does not end there. For the first time in history, the league has reached a new level of broadcasts in Europe, having signed a contract with two television giants on the Old Continent: Sky Sports and Eurosport. At the moment, there is not a single continent in the world where matches of the MLS league are not broadcast, which inspires respect for the people who were engaged in the popularization of this sport in the United States of America (of course, do not take Antarctica into account, because there is no television at all, which is very unfortunate).
Clubs participating in the MLS. What kind of conferences are these?
Exactly 20 clubs take part in the United States football championship, which is a very good result, because not every European championship will allow itself the luxury of playing with 20 clubs in the Major League. Due to the fact that America is quite a big power, geographically, it was decided to divide all the clubs into 2 conferences: Western and Eastern. Each club can have a limited number of players on the contract, the maximum number is equivalent to 28 athletes. Of the 21 clubs that have played at least once in the MLS in its entire history, 10 of them won the league, which makes it extremely unpredictable and interesting for the fan. After all, 10 applicants for the victory are quite a lot. Each of the clubs has its own modern stadium, many of them were envied even by the teams of Europe, because they were built according to international standards and have interesting design solutions. Each of the football bowls has a capacity of more than 20,000 seats, so quite a large number of fans come to watch the football of their local team.
As a result of all of the above
The article completely disassembled the concept of MLS - what it is and what it is eaten with, as the saying goes. The league itself is quite interesting, which attracts more and more football fans to watch it every year. Huge money is invested only so that fans can see such an interesting sport as European football, because it is worthless for a developed country such as the United States to keep up with world trends. We can say that watching one of the MLS matches will not be wasted time. The results of the league, frankly, are not encouraging on a global scale, but, as they say, there is something to strive for, so you can look to the future with hope.