Quote:
Originally Posted by Skipaway
Oil oligarchs spending their own money to give fans a better team is better than American sports teams pocking fan's money and create rules for them to field mediocre teams and still compete.
College sports teams don't pocket the profit to enrich the owners either. Most of them run at about even or losing money. That's better than the pro teams.
Going back to the Celtic case, the problem the winning is not as awarding is because the team is stuck in a secondary league with no way up, while losing most of its European games. There also seems no hope for the team to get better. Ajax dominates domestically also, but they have much more fun in Europe.
It'd be much easier for Celtic fans to enjoy the wins, if they are more ignorant about soccer in other countries. MLS fans can't feel too serious about whatever winning, unless they only know MLS and no European football. This kind of thing is possible in the US, not really possible in Scotland.
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MLS fans can feel good about watching their team play and win games against an entire league of competition on near equal footing. There aren't any off-week fixtures. No one believes it's the best soccer in the world but a game in Atlanta is right up there with any game day experience you'll find. And most fans would agree MLS needs to get rid of a ton of ridiculous rules around designated players and targeted allocation money and similar nonsense in order to grow bigger.
Meanwhile Celtic has a wage budget the size of the rest of the league combined, beating glorified amateur teams in 6K capacity stadiums before getting crushed in Europe. I don't really see how any part of that is fulfilling or fun.
I agree with your point that the domestic league structure is flawed and causes teams to get "stuck" without any real goals to shoot for. If they were to combine the Eredivisie/Belgian/Danish leagues and then do the same in Eastern Europe maybe you can start boosting the TV revenue enough for some teams to progress.