Re: World Cup Soccer XVII: There can only be ONE!!!11!!!
btw - I haven't paid much attention lately to the MLS friendlies, but what's the general consensus on the level of play, have the international teams brought full sides, and can we say anything about the future of the MLS from what's taken place?
I haven't watched a ton on TV, but I went to the Red Bulls - Tottenham match last night, and the Red Bulls - Barcelona match two years ago. Judging by those:
The international teams have brought mostly full sides. Spurs had their full team except for the players who were at the World Cup this summer (which I don't think is uncommon; Fulham's guys who played at the World Cup haven't been in any of their three friendlies so far, all played in Europe); Barcelona had their full team except for Messi, who was at the Olympics at the time.
I find it tough to make judgments about the level of play, because the MLS players are match fit, whereas the Europe-based teams are in preseason and are just getting their legs back under them. I think in terms of pure athletic ability, MLS guys aren't significantly behind. They're all capable of running for 90 minutes, jumping up in the air, withstanding a shoulder charge, that sort of thing; the fastest guy on the field for Spurs (Bale) isn't significantly faster than the fastest guy on the field for RBNY (Richards). Yeah, Joel Lindpere might get muscled off the ball by Tom Huddlestone, but Danny Murphy will get muscled off the ball by Tom Huddlestone too.
RBNY didn't look like they didn't belong on the same field as Spurs or anything, they actually controlled long stretches of play and probably had the edge in good scoring chances; both of the goals Spurs scored were the direct result of indecisive play by RBNY's backup goalkeeper. But of course, a lot of that is probably due to rust; if match fit, you'd expect Spurs' B team (this wasn't a B team, more like an A2 team, since they did have Bale and Modric and Kranjcar and Huddlestone and Jenas and Corluka on the field) to look more competitive, but I don't think RBNY would get played off the field by them. (On the other hand, I don't think they would've been able to handle Crouch and Defoe at all.)
In contrast, they really didn't look remotely competitive in a 6-2 loss against Barcelona, but like I said this was Barcelona's A team except for Messi. (This was before most of us knew who Pedro and Busquets and Bojan and Jeffren were, but they all looked very good too.) But plenty of teams in Spain and around Europe didn't look competitive against that year's Barcelona team either, so I don't know how much you can read into it.
I guess one way you might be able to look at is, how does the performance of MLS teams in midseason shape against EPL (etc.) teams in preseason shape compare to the performance of teams from Northern European countries on a spring-fall calendar against those same teams? That might at least give you some idea of how MLS stacks up against those leagues.
