Discuss
Yes
No
Discuss
fun poll, discussion.
is there some article or ranking that spawned this?
if so, i'd be interested in a link to it.
Gotta ask Danny K.
Road Games:
2013 - Montréal , 2014 - Orlando (Disney Classic), Montréal
2015 - Columbus, New England, Montréal
2016 - NYCFC (Leg 2 Conference Semis), Montréal (Leg 1 Conference Final)
2017 - Ottawa (Leg 1 Canadian Championship Semi), DCU, Red Bulls (Leg 1 Conference Final), Columbus (Leg 2 Conference Final)
2019 - Montréal, NYCFC (Eastern Conference Semi @ Citi Field), Seattle (MLS Cup Final)
I think we would be quite competetive in The Championship.
Why not? It's a fun idea.
MLS is a tough, physical league, that emphasizes speed, and features plastic fields, grueling travel, extreme weather, and incompetent refs. - NK Toronto
No. 1 with a bullet.
100? No. 106th? Now you have yourself a debate.
Would love to see an initial ranking of teams rather than just guessing
79 teams are in the champions league
160 teams in Europa league
This doesn't take South America or Mexico
So I'd say no. Closer to 200 than 100 - maybe even 300
Last edited by jabbronies; 08-21-2017 at 01:15 PM.
that's not fair to say though. I mean, some of those clubs in the qualification round are teams from very small countries, only in there by virtue of their league just happening to be in Europe.
IMO, you can't say just because a team is in the Qualifying round of CL or EL, they're automatically better than TFC.
Teams who got automatic qualification of course are better, but I think we can give a good game to AT LEAST 50% of the teams currently in the qualifying rounds.
Might be crazy, but just my opinion....
100 is not too far off.....the top halves of England, Spain, Germany, and Italy (plus say top quarter, at least, of France) with maybe some SA or Mexican teams included would take up the first 50, then it could get interesting....
Last edited by TFC Tifoso; 08-21-2017 at 02:07 PM.
According to this we are 508th, (FC Dallas is 425th top MLS) http://footballdatabase.com/ranking/world/11
335th here (FC Dallas is 184 - top MLS) https://www.clubworldranking.com/ran...7/name/toronto
Last edited by rydermike; 08-21-2017 at 02:30 PM.
Ya I can agree that some of those CL and EL teams are minnows that TFC could compete with, but even if you half those numbers - which is being very generous - that still means TFC won't be in the Top 120.
And if you factor in teams just outside of a place in European competition - we are talking about teams like Everton, Southampton, Leicester, Werder Bremner, Schalke, Bayer Leverkusen, Espanyol, Inter, Fiorentina
And again, this is not including teams from South America and Mexico, some richer teams in Middle east, China, Japan...etc etc
If you made a list with all this factored in you are looking at TFC being in the 200's at best
Like do't even rank the other teams, just make a list of all the teams that are better than TFC and see how far down they go.
Love this club, but reality is, they are not with the big boys yet. They are middle tier team at best
Last edited by jabbronies; 08-21-2017 at 05:07 PM.
No, it's far off. Every team in the top four leagues is much better than TFC. The worst EPL team has a payroll that is 4x what TFC spends.
Plus half of the Mexican, Brazilian and Argentine top divisions would be better.
Plus most of the Championship has a higher payroll than us.
Same for best 3 or 4 teams in the top flights in the next 12 countries in Europe, and the next 6 countries in South America. (TFC would stand no chance against a top team from Russia, Turkey, Poland, Uruguay, Chile, Colombia etc)
We are similar to the biggest clubs in places like Egypt and Japan, which are very good, and might be better than us.
I think 150-200th is about right.
Last edited by ensco; 08-21-2017 at 05:15 PM.
"There are some people who might have better technique than me, and some may be fitter than me, but the main thing is tactics. With most players, tactics are missing. You can divide tactics into insight, trust, and daring." - Johan Cruyff
Apples to Oranges to Grapes to Mangoes
"There are some people who might have better technique than me, and some may be fitter than me, but the main thing is tactics. With most players, tactics are missing. You can divide tactics into insight, trust, and daring." - Johan Cruyff
Yes but to only a certain extent. I think TFC could beat some of the lower end EPL teams at home. Same with Serie A and La Liga and Bunduliga. I would put TFC at anywhere around 90-110. 65-70 in Europe, about 25-30 in South America and Mexico and a handful elsewhere.
I get your point, and to an extent it's certainly true. we're probably not in the top 100 just because there are a lot of good teams around the world and some decent teams at the bottom of the top 5 leagues that are better than us still.
But have you seen the quality at play in the championship recently? or even Poland or Japan or Egypt like you mentioned? I was in Japan a couple years ago and caught a game between Kashima antlers, who are perennial challengers, and a team called Omiya Ardija, a sort of wigan type team that just got promoted. The game was barely USL level. We would mop the floor with them either of them. I can't imagine even the better African leagues putting up anything better. Their best teams like TP Mazembe or Al-Ahly or Kaizer Chiefs could maybe hold us to a draw But even then I really doubt it.
I'm really not convinced the best teams in south America countries (excluding the obvious two) are obviously better than us either. If Luca Cavallini can light up your division it doesn't speak well to the quality of the league. Colo Colo would probably beat us. I'm trying to think of any other teams that are up to par with us.
If I'm going through a mid level championship squad there are a lot of guys I'd rather have from us. getting any of Bradley, Altidore, Seba, Vazquez, Delgado, Mavinga, Morrow, Bono and maybe Beita would instantly make a team better in that division. We might not be as deep but our starting eleven can go up against anyone in the championship.
This is obviously subjective just from what I've seen. outside Brazil, Argentina and most of the teams in the top 5 European leagues we would hold up pretty well. Championship teams for instance may have much bigger budgets, but they still suck most of the time. It's not our fault they're paying guys millions for a job that a guy Delgado could do for 2000k a year.
That's just my perspective on having watched a lot of different leagues. MLS is top-to-bottom probably the eight or ninth best league in the world. And us being far and away the best in our division we could certainly challenge many teams in leagues above us.
Yeah, I'm assuming it's taking into account Dallas winning the Supporter's Shield and US Open Cup last year, and reaching the CL SF as a major factor. TFC is obviously better this year, so even if we give TFC Dallas' record that puts us at 184, which is in line with what several people have said here
Lets be realistic, if someone earning less than 500k on TFC could improve a club from a B league where the average wage is 1 million than they would be gone. TFC are behind every EPL, La Liga, Serie A, Bundesliga team. That is just short of 80. Then you take (conservatively) the top 5 from B leagues like France, Holland, Turkey, Portugal, Belgium, Russia, Switzerland thats 35 more teams. Then there's the top teams from the Euro C leagues from ukraine, Poland, Austria, Greece, Romania, Denmark ... . That's another 30 teams. So nearly 150 and haven't ventured out of Europe yet.
See that's the thing. I'm not totally convinced teams like Cluj or Panathanaikos or Copenhagen are obviously better than us.
The reason the league's seemingly underpaid players don't go to Europe is because they basically can't. It's extremely hard to get a work visa. IIRC the big point of contention on whether or not you get to go to Europe is either A) having an EU passport or B) played in 75% of international matches over a specific - a think it's a year- period of time. There are tones of half decent players in this league who can't go overseas because they're unable to get a work permit.
Last edited by molenshtain; 08-22-2017 at 05:43 AM.
^You may be right about Romania and Denmark. We may have passed Scandinavia. Places like Romania are hard to gauge because the top teams there are feeder systems to Germany and Italy, no one stays long enough for the team to gel.
Greece, no way. The top teams there are much, much deeper, top to bottom. Those are big clubs.
Last edited by ensco; 08-22-2017 at 05:37 AM.
"There are some people who might have better technique than me, and some may be fitter than me, but the main thing is tactics. With most players, tactics are missing. You can divide tactics into insight, trust, and daring." - Johan Cruyff
mmm maybe. Olympiakos are the only ones who sort of made it out of their economic crash reasonably unscathed. Panathanaikos and AEK and the rest of them have taken a serious downturn since 2011-2012. Even Olympiakos aren't what they used to be.
anyway. My overall point is we're no worse than the typical team that comes fourth in their champions league group. maybe with a little luck we could come third. I don't think we're really giving our front five enough credit. certainly talented enough to compete with some bigger teams.
Knowing French football, TFC could beat any Ligue 2 side, and could compete with the bottom feeders of the Ligue 1 table. Top teams would beat TFC.
I've included these teams in my idea....they'll always be in the top half of the big 4 even if they miss out on Euro tourneys in a given year.
Same with Mex and SA teams....I though of those already....but even all of those only make up 50-60 teams.
But its so subjective anyways....personally, I rate the top end of MLS on par with teams in Saudi Arabia, China, and Japan.
I think that anything after 100 would be interchangeable for any given month or year, depending on form.
Until things like distance, weather, a rubbery salary cap, politics (see Serbia), and corruption get involved.
Its impossible to put every team/league down in a sealed environment where there are no variables beyond the quality of the players.
So what we are talking about is the eye test, which is also liable to hype.
Last edited by OgtheDim; 08-22-2017 at 09:25 AM.