ClapWe don’t care what anyone says: pre-season is important. Sure, it may take up the holiday time of a lot of players, but who cares? The nature of the MLS schedule means that you’re going to be taking part in pre-season during the winter time anyway, so you should probably be focusing all of your attention on that as opposed to anything else.
It also gives teams a chance to embed new players into their system and style of play, too. It isn’t always easy bringing a series of big names across the pond in order to compete in an entirely different league, because despite the assumption being that things are easy over here, that doesn’t always wind up proving to be the case.
Battling the best
Of course, that isn’t the only pre-season we’re referring to, because the majority of Europe get ready for their seasons during the summer time. Whilst that can be pretty awkward for the MLS faithful, with ESPN.com reporting that they’ll have to face Atletico Madrid at some point in late July or early August, there are some interesting (and very different) ways of looking at this.
As reported by MLS Soccer there is an entire pre-season for the actual MLS teams to go through, so why should they have to even entertain the idea of catering to Europe’s finest? It’s simple: money talks. There is an awful lot of cash involved in these type of games, and if you think otherwise then it just feels like you’re fooling yourself a little bit.
The MLS is doing well, or so it seems, from a financial standpoint, so if you don’t believe in that side of things then think of it this way: there’s a certain pride involved with wanting to beat some of the best that Europe has to offer, because that’s where all of the big dogs play and that’s where most of these players in the MLS want to end up.
Proud roots
However, in the next few years, there’s a very clear direction and aim for Major League Soccer to take over as one of the primary leagues in which players want to come over and compete in. That obviously isn’t going to happen overnight, but that meaning is hidden not so deep within the realms of games like this one.
If you take a look at where the MLS was just 20 years ago, and perhaps even 10 years ago, it is virtually unrecognisable in comparison to where it is today. There is a growing respect and appreciation for what is going on over here, and you don’t get that through luck. You get that, as we all know, through hard work and determination.
We really do believe that the MLS All-Stars could give Atletico a really hard-fought game, and if there’s ever an expansion on this series, we believe that the American faithful would give the EU representatives a bit of a shock.
P.S: We really like the idea of a Zlatan/Rooney/Vela all-stars force.
