Why America isn't a World Power in Soccer and How we can Become One.

It's no secret that American sports fans are spoiled with options of which sport they choose to watch. If you're like me, you'll also enjoy playoff baseball all weekend, while watching football games on Sunday, and may even catch a glimpse of preseason basketball and hockey of your favorite teams as they get ready for their upcoming seasons. While all this is going on, a majority of Major League Soccer (MLS) games have been ignored by many sports fans. Even people who live in America and watch European soccer aren't fans of MLS. After now 20 years of existence, MLS is still struggling to gain respect from the American sports world and the World soccer world. The goal eventually for MLS is to be as prestigious as the Barclays Premier League, La Liga, and Bundesliga. Although it may be difficult for to be considered a top league around the world there still reason for improvement across the board.
If you look at the new trend for aging European soccer superstars they seem to all be coming to America and playing in the MLS to finish their careers. This trend started when English superstar and former player of some the biggest European clubs like Manchester United and Real Madrid, David Beckham came across the Atlantic and started a playing career in MLS for the Los Angeles Galaxy in 2007. The immediate outcome of Beckham coming to MLS was a big success financially for LA Galaxy and MLS, this then lead to other MLS clubs doing everything they can to bring a European superstar to give their team a boost in revenue. So players like, Ricardo Kaka, Andres Pirlo, and Steven Gerard followed in Beckham's footsteps and came to America. Even after quality players came to America, MLS still struggles to be a high profile league. Yes fans in America now have the opportunity to see generational soccer stars but it's easy to see that those player's aren't of high quality anymore.
This now begs the question 'What can be done to improve the quality of players in MLS?' There's a simple answer to the question but there are many factors that complicate it.
1. The quality and style of soccer players start off when players are young. Kids that play probably need a coach that has a European style of play to influence the kids This part of the plan has been successful you can even say it's too successful because now instead of bringing these higher quality players into MLS, these kids leave to join European academies (read last blog post to catch up on academies). An example of this is 17 year old Christian Pulisic of Borussia Dortmund, who instead of being high school senior getting ready for prom while practicing for an academy in America he was such a highly sought out talent that at 17 Pulisic is scoring goals for the United States National Team and Borussia Dortmund of the Bundesliga.
2.  In order for this plan to improve quality to be successful, something needs to be done to counter what could go wrong in the first step. MLS needs to keep their young potential stars, Pulisic isn't the only example of a teenage kid leaving to go to Europe. In order to stop that, all MLS teams must commit to their youth and reward their youth with some incentive to stay a pursue a career at home. Obviously teams can't stop all youth players from leaving abroad but just an extra attempt or incentive could persuade a teenager to stay. Once MLS can keep a consistent amount of players that alone will improve the quality of the league in general.
This plan laid out seems simple enough to achieve, but at the end of the day this needs to be completed to see a growth in quality all around the MLS. Young American players leaving to Europe isn't necessarily a bad thing, because improving individuals helps improve the national team, which would have an effect and improve fan interest and if fan interest for the national team can improve then interest in MLS will improve. Every action has a consequence, and many more actions need to be done to make the MLS a top tier league around the world. Right now it seems impossible to think that MLS could become a top league, but like the saying goes "Rome wasn't built in a day." And neither is the MLS but in the next 10 years if player development continues to grow don't be surprised if MLS becomes a regular event that sports fans take time out of their day to watch.  

Building a Championship from Within

Sports have changed in so many ways over the 140 or so years that professional sports have existed. Back in those, players were bought and sold for sacks of food, but in the present, every year in world soccer the transfer fee record has a chance to be broken, which was broken this past summer by Manchester United (England) signing the French midfielder Paul Pogba from Juventes (Italy) for £89m roughly $115.5m. Source: Sky Sports. 

While the big money clubs spend every penny possible to get the best players to create the best possible team. Low budget clubs have to keep up with the big boys by using extensive scouting to find potential good players on economic deals. Since all there transfer deals are usually big gambles for the club, the best hope for the club is that one player every year breaks through and is worth more than what they had paid for. A great example of this would be the transfer of Robin Van Persie to Arsenal (England) from Feyenoord (Netherlands) for £2.75m ($4.17m). It's fair to say he was more than worth that fee scoring 96 goals in 194 games during his 8 year tenure with the club. Source: The Telegraph. But on the other hand when too many transfers are not successful and a club spend too much money it could lead to the club's worst nightmare, relegation.

Getting relegated from the top division to the second tier, or even second to third, third to fourth, etc: isn't necessarily the end of the world for a club. Usually after getting demoted from a higher division, other teams that remained in the higher division or newly promoted teams will go after that demoted team's best players to create some extra revenue for the club. Then there are some options what a club can do with that revenue.

Option one would trying invest that money into a few players that could be an immediate impact but in the long term by the time the club reaches the top division again those players may not good enough or young enough to compete at the top level. That's the crazy thing about sports and being a paid athlete, their careers truly start around age 20 but by the time they're 35 years old they may not be physically good enough, they could lose their speed or their strength to keep up with the new young guns.

The second option for a demoted team with money would be to invest into their own academy. For those who don't what an academy is in world soccer let me briefly describe it. The academy is the soccer version of minor league baseball or the developmental league in basketball. It is a lower level team usually made up players from age 18-22, similar to collegiate athletics but the major difference between an academy and all the other examples I listed is that clubs may sign players at any age. Usually the kids are separated into different age groups for competition, but no matter what nationality or age any young kid could sign for any club, Lionel Messi arguably the greatest player of all time but never played professionally in his home country of Argentina because at the age of 13 years old the Spanish giant Barcelona FC signed Messi to their academy. Back to the positives of investing into an academy. It is by far cheaper to build an academy because of kid’s low wages, regularly getting pay raises as they get older and move closer to the professional squad. Also there is no transfer fee to pay to another club because the young kid isn't owned by any club yet. But there is less guarantee that these academy player will be successful pros.

At the end of it all both options have their positives and negatives. No matter the size of the club big, medium, small every club has an academy for the future plans and every club will purchase players for the present. When you're a small club and those cheap potential good players end up working out to be good and your academy produces enough good players then your small club can have a magical season like Leicester City had last season defying their 5000-1 odds to win the English Premier League. 

Welcome to the Blog

Hello readers, my name is Alvin Lurye. This is my introduction post welcoming everyone to my new blog. The goal of this blog is not only to discuss the "beautiful game", but to also discuss the business behind it.
Some topics of discussion will be: creating a winning team from within a club is possible, major sponsorship affecting the world transfer market, and how match/seasonal results affecting team's financial situation among other topics. Most of the content posted will be my opinion with facts (of course), because the most important thing to me isn't that everyone agrees with me but understands my perspective, so in the future with any business situation the same logic can be used to comprehend that predicament. I will also do my best to make the blog very user friendly so at any time if you want to give me feedback on the content I will probably responded to the feedback rapidly. I will also have a poll question or 2 in each post to get a little more insight on what the readers think.                                            

I believe that sports business like any other industry has business principles, the only difference would be that your company would be literally competing on the field with another company. Obviously the best way to create a successful soccer club is to create a successful business first. And this principle is used throughout all professional sports. When I say to build a successful club I mean spending the money in your club’s budget wisely, building a good youth academy, so instead of having to spend so much money to acquire new players, the club produces its own players. Financially, teams are successful through team sponsorship’s, TV revenue, team sales (tickets and jerseys), but most importantly through results of a competition. Every team makes the same amount of money through TV revenue no matter what but the big difference maker for a club to receive $5 M and $20 M is the difference of finishing last place and first place in a league.
Going away from the blog for a second let me introduce myself even further. I am a second year student at California State University Northridge (CSUN) majoring in Management. Following the completion of my undergraduate degree I intend on going further in my education and going to graduate school to attain a master’s degree in Sports Management. Sports have been my passion since I was very young. I grew playing multiple sports throughout my life, eventually sticking to soccer where I played as a goalkeeper throughout my adolescence and high school where I was awarded team MVP my junior year. I continued playing at CSUN for the club team my freshman year but due to unforeseen circumstances I am no longer affiliated with them.
I hope everyone enjoys my blog and I'll write to you all soon.