Football (Soccer) Thread

[Grey Fox]

And that situation, you want the MLS to join?

I wish Don Garber wouldn't let MLS teams sell players outside the NA system.

[Josephus]

And that situation, you want the MLS to join?

I wish Don Garber wouldn't let MLS teams sell players outside the NA system.

Um, that would work well with the players union. "Sorry, I know Chelsea are willing to pay you $12 million, but alas you have to stay with DC United and get $3 million."

Probably not even legal.

[Duque de Bragança]

Not just lower tier teams either, there are big teams and some entire leagues that depend on player trading.

The Dutch league comes to mind, yeah

Or the Portuguese one. And nowadays with the deep pockets of every single Premier League club it seems as if almost every European league is a feeder for the Premier.

Outside of PSG in France indeed. Lille and Monaco recent owners are in it for player trading.
Italian, Spanish and German clubs can still make money by feeding their local champions.

[Grey Fox]

And that situation, you want the MLS to join?

I wish Don Garber wouldn't let MLS teams sell players outside the NA system.

Um, that would work well with the players union. "Sorry, I know Chelsea are willing to pay you $12 million, but alas you have to stay with DC United and get $3 million."

Probably not even legal.

That is how any other pro league in NA works.

Also, I am not saying players can't go, I am saying the teams shouldn't profit from it.

[The Larch]

And that situation, you want the MLS to join?

I wish Don Garber wouldn't let MLS teams sell players outside the NA system.

Um, that would work well with the players union. "Sorry, I know Chelsea are willing to pay you $12 million, but alas you have to stay with DC United and get $3 million."

Probably not even legal.

That is how any other pro league in NA works.

Also, I am not saying players can't go, I am saying the teams shouldn't profit from it.

Why shouldn't a team profit from player sales?

[Liep]

VAR.

[Sheilbh]

Or the Portuguese one. And nowadays with the deep pockets of every single Premier League club it seems as if almost every European league is a feeder for the Premier.

Plus Barca and Real. Everyone's a feeder club to those two.

[Liep]

Valencia - Chelsea is a hugely entertaining match with ping pong attacks, goals and drama both VAR and normal.

How Valencia is not winning this game is the greatest mystery of our time.

[Admiral Yi]

That sort of exists in Europe too, where lower tier teams survive simply by selling their prospects to higher tier teams.

The difference, AFAICS, is that lower tier fodbol teams have invested time and money into developing that player, whereas the Hedgehogs have invested nothing.  They've just been handed a windfall in the form of a draft pick by virtue of existing.

[Grey Fox]

And that situation, you want the MLS to join?

I wish Don Garber wouldn't let MLS teams sell players outside the NA system.

Um, that would work well with the players union. "Sorry, I know Chelsea are willing to pay you $12 million, but alas you have to stay with DC United and get $3 million."

Probably not even legal.

That is how any other pro league in NA works.

Also, I am not saying players can't go, I am saying the teams shouldn't profit from it.

Why shouldn't a team profit from player sales?

Because it incensitize selling players.

[The Larch]

And that situation, you want the MLS to join?

I wish Don Garber wouldn't let MLS teams sell players outside the NA system.

Um, that would work well with the players union. "Sorry, I know Chelsea are willing to pay you $12 million, but alas you have to stay with DC United and get $3 million."

Probably not even legal.

That is how any other pro league in NA works.

Also, I am not saying players can't go, I am saying the teams shouldn't profit from it.

Why shouldn't a team profit from player sales?

Because it incensitize selling players.

Why are you against player selling?

[Barrister]

That sort of exists in Europe too, where lower tier teams survive simply by selling their prospects to higher tier teams.

The difference, AFAICS, is that lower tier fodbol teams have invested time and money into developing that player, whereas the Hedgehogs have invested nothing.  They've just been handed a windfall in the form of a draft pick by virtue of existing.

That's a good point.

[Valmy]

How so is it fascinating? As I said, it's the standard model for most pro sports in the world. A player from anywhere is good at the sport they play, teams scout the player and, if they want to sign, extend offers to the club the player is currently at and the player as well. What's so fascinating about it?

What is fascinating about it is...well...what I was just saying. If a major league team waits to hear about a good player and then scouts them they are not going to succeed. They go out searching in the most obscure places to try to get a leg up on their competition, and often they go much farther and literally train tons of Venezuelans and Dominicans from small children to adults to try to find potential stars in their camps and baseball academies.

And there is a movie about an agent who went to India to scout cricket players, I mean guys who had never even played baseball in their lives. And yes he found and got some players signed that way IRL.

It's crazy. And not what normally happens with our other sports leagues. I mean the NBA is interested in spreading basketball but they still have to draft international players so it is not quite as insane.

But I don't know, maybe its normal. Maybe Spanish football clubs go scout players who have never even played football before, but just happen to play a sport that kind of looks similar. Maybe they train kids from third world countries to.

[dps]

How so is it fascinating? As I said, it's the standard model for most pro sports in the world. A player from anywhere is good at the sport they play, teams scout the player and, if they want to sign, extend offers to the club the player is currently at and the player as well. What's so fascinating about it?

What is fascinating about it is...well...what I was just saying. If a major league team waits to hear about a good player and then scouts them they are not going to succeed. They go out searching in the most obscure places to try to get a leg up on their competition, and often they go much farther and literally train tons of Venezuelans and Dominicans from small children to adults to try to find potential stars in their camps and baseball academies.

And there is a movie about an agent who went to India to scout cricket players, I mean guys who had never even played baseball in their lives. And yes he found and got some players signed that way IRL.

It's crazy. And not what normally happens with our other sports leagues. I mean the NBA is interested in spreading basketball but they still have to draft international players so it is not quite as insane.

But I don't know, maybe its normal. Maybe Spanish football clubs go scout players who have never even played football before, but just happen to play a sport that kind of looks similar. Maybe they train kids from third world countries to.

It's not really that fascinating.  As I said, it's essentially the same system that existed in the US and Canada until 1965, except that MLB teams didn't run baseball academies here, because they could simply scout high school and college teams.

[The Larch]

How so is it fascinating? As I said, it's the standard model for most pro sports in the world. A player from anywhere is good at the sport they play, teams scout the player and, if they want to sign, extend offers to the club the player is currently at and the player as well. What's so fascinating about it?

What is fascinating about it is...well...what I was just saying. If a major league team waits to hear about a good player and then scouts them they are not going to succeed. They go out searching in the most obscure places to try to get a leg up on their competition, and often they go much farther and literally train tons of Venezuelans and Dominicans from small children to adults to try to find potential stars in their camps and baseball academies.

And there is a movie about an agent who went to India to scout cricket players, I mean guys who had never even played baseball in their lives. And yes he found and got some players signed that way IRL.

It's crazy. And not what normally happens with our other sports leagues. I mean the NBA is interested in spreading basketball but they still have to draft international players so it is not quite as insane.

But I don't know, maybe its normal. Maybe Spanish football clubs go scout players who have never even played football before, but just happen to play a sport that kind of looks similar. Maybe they train kids from third world countries to.

Well, with football is different, since it's such a widespread sport, it's not as if you can easily find some kid who has never played it or heard from it. Then again, you have the odd case of some futsal palyer who crosses over to try his hand (or foot  ) in 11 a side football, but those are few and far between.

But yeah, big football teams will proactively scout players all over the world, and the richest ones will go to the strangest places (every team worth its salt will scout say, Argentina or Brazil, but not many teams will scout in weird African countries, for instance), set up academies abroad and do agreements with local teams in other countries or even directly set up subsidiary teams abroad. It's completely cut-throat in that sense, and it's not unusual for, for instance, South American players who start showing star qualities to be fought over several European big teams even when they're still minors. In the last few years several teams have landed in hot water regarding the signings of minors, and IIRC international transfers for minors are nowadays forbidden, and teams have to wait until the players turn 18 to bring them over (Real Madrid had to do that with their two latest Brazilian starlets, for instance. They signed them when they were 16 or 17, and they kept playing in Brazil until they turned 18). In the shadier fringes of the sport this turns into a sort of low key people trafficking, mostly affecting young African players, with self proclaimed agents or scouts luring kids to go to Europe for a series of team trials to try their luck at getting signed by any of them. This sometimes does not go well, as you might imagine.