Originally Posted by
jloome
Maybe. I watch a lot of English National League, their lowest league, and most games appear so organized that THEY'D beat the average MSL team, as do Scottish league games.
But what I'm actually seeing is far more tactical rigidity.
MLS looks like unorganized chaos, but it's really not. James Sands recently returned to NYFC from rangers and he talked about this, as did Cristian Ramirez last year.
The tactical approach is entirely different, with MLS teams often having so much movement, and so much instruction, that it looks like chaos. When they went to the SPL, the first thing they both realized is that they limit player movement and responsibility to a much greater degree.
They're far more conservative in their approach, and more patient about breaking down defenses with short passing instead of trying to create transitional imbalances.
The net result is that ANY organized Euro football that you compare MLS to looks more organized. Seriously, go watch Wrexham play Maidenhead or whomever they're playing next week. It's hard not to watch it and think both teams could destroy us.
But... they're both playing the same type of game at the same speed. And that speed is slower than MLS, by quite a bit.
I'm not saying that as true of Serie C, but ask yourself which serie c players, despite their terrible pay, have ever made it in MLS, where the pay is substantially higher. If the play were that much higher then, given the number of Italians with dual nationalities, we would see many more of them coming over.
The same is true of the English lower leagues.
English League Two football looks, compared to MLS, like Serie C football. Very organized, very technical. Andy Welsh was a prolific, productive winger in League Two. In MLS, he was substandard in every respect.
I'm not saying, also, that MLS's way is better. I actually find the MLS hybrid American/South American/English approach to be visually messy. But in terms of the spectacular, there's just way more of it here than in lower leagues there.
I think that, across the board, the differences in levels of football are finer than we all think most of the time. There are plenty of guys in MLS who could be playing a higher level; there are plenty of guys at a higher level, like the EPL, who could not survive outside that 'style' of disciplined football and would do badly over here.
EDIT: With how things have gone for us with BB, for Marsch at Leeds, with Armas here, I'm starting to think the fluidity and over-instruction is a problem for any MLS team that doesn't have serious wheels.
