by Gourab Modak

Created on: July 12, 2010   Last Updated: July 13, 2010

As a young league, the MLS has struggled for a long time in making money and training the soccer elite of the United States into glory. From the beginning, when there was no premier Division One soccer league in the United States, the MLS was a wimpy comparison to its European sister leagues. But over the years, the MLS has grown to be pretty popular with the soccer educated population of the United States. With talented players and a great fan base, the MLS is a young and growing league. However, there are many things that are stopping the MLS from becoming as popular as the English Premier League, or the Spanish La Liga. The MLS has to do a lot of things in order to take charge and show the United States how the beautiful game truly is the beautiful game.

However, given the current thoughts about soccer in the minds of most of the U.S. population, the MLS will have to undergo some drastic changes. They will have to show the United States that soccer isn’t what it’s usually labeled as. It’s not uncommon to hear soccer called lame and boring. Many people agree that soccer is long and a sport for people not strong enough to play American football or basketball. In other words, people think of soccer as a wimpy, recreational kid’s game in the United States.

But it is possible to overcome these feelings. First and foremost, the MLS should keep one thing in mind: soccer is not an American sport. It is in no way similar to baseball, football, or basketball. Soccer fans aren’t like fans of any other sport in the world. While there are a lot of fans for all three of these sports, soccer fans have a different mentality than fans of football or basketball. The problem is that the MLS is trying to create the same mentality people have towards basketball and football in soccer.

I’m not trying to say the league is bad, I’m just saying that the league needs to change its way of representing itself. It needs to change its way of advertising itself. First and foremost, the MLS needs to back off. Instead of representing the MLS as one big entity, it needs to turn the spotlight to the franchises that make it up. It should let the clubs represent themselves. That way, each separate franchise can build up their fan base at a faster rate, and let rivalries start between clubs. In other words, the MLS logo, and every mention that a particular team belongs to it needs to go. The league should just be a governing body of the U.S.’s

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