The Blue Board

I'm not sold on it being a game changer. Everyone on Barca is getting old, and Neymar is still a couple years away from becoming dominant

I would LOVE to hear about how everyone on Barcelona is getting old. I have all guns loaded and locked on for this convo.

Personally I think Neymar is better than Robinho but not by a country mile. I think much like Robinho he will have very undulating, sometimes spotty scoring records unlike Messi. I think he will take time to adjust to tiki-taka. I think he should have joined Madrid last summer. That's coming from a guy has cheered for Barca since 1997.

Robinho isn't a bad comparison, but he's become much more consistent than Robinho over the last year; 43 goals in 47 matches in '12, 6 goals in 7 matches so far this year. Robinho never came close to that, even at Santos.

Plus Messi is going to take some of the pressure off him. He's not going to have to be brilliant from the beginning so he can take a little time to adjust.

Yep, that was my point on page 1, last time Brazilians actually bothered to buy non domestic jerseys they were ronaldinho, having their best player on the best team is gonna open the floodgates for merchandising.

Yes, having the best player on the best team has been great for Barcelona. Adding an exceptional supporting player will let them get back to the top.

To say that the competition he plays against in Brazil is poor is simply a fallacy now. Is it as good as EPL, La Liga, Bundesliga, no. But this is also not the 90's and early 2000's anymore when Brazilians were getting picked left and right by european clubs and all the talent was leaving. Brazil has been able to keep a lot more of its talent intact than the previous two decades. If Neymar scored 43 times in 47 matches playing in France, Portugal or Italy no one would question his skill as a player. Brazil is near equal to those leagues now, especially now that Italy has fallen a bit.

Brazilian soccer is a hard one to compare. It's structure is so unique given the dualism between the state leagues and the series campienotos.

It's definitely very top heavy talent-wise compared to the MLS, but technically it's not even close. I attribute that to the culture of soccer in Brazil and the fact Brazilians stay and play in Brazil at a higher percentage than Americans in MLS. Americans don't have a culture of soccer and those that do play haven't reached the potential of technical skill nor have a national identity of play.

One thing MLS does have better though is parity and financial structure. Most of league falls in the 12000-18000 attendance, ~$60M value etc.

In Brazil, you'll see Santos or Corinthians go from playing in their home stadiums to playing a small club with an attendance of like 500 some times and a budget in the five figures US.

Copa libertadoras has a very storied tradition, I don't see them combining with the CONCACAF CL unless it gets to a point where they're just turning down a bunch of money. Not to mention Europe is roughly the size of the US so the CL makes sense, having home and home ties in Chile doesn't make sense yet.

My dream is when the MLS finally opens up to some form of relegation system. Charleston Battery is always competitive in the US cup and I don't think we can truly form a soccer culture until we get a grassroots community feel for the teams instead of having 1 league only playing major markets.

Sadly it will be a long time.

The way the MLS is set up and their coziness with the USSF, they have ZERO incentive to change the system.

It will at least take time to have the original investors in the league to fully recoup their losses (probably by 2020).

Or if its just an hour flight on the edge of space with the players able to do far more than visualizing success as they are taken through extravagantly accurate, life like, simulations of the game so as to prepare for the real thing.

Oh I'm aware, they have the market cornered and have no short term incentive to change. The EPL gives out parachute payments to relegated teams, that would be a good start to getting the original teams on board. With the advantages that the MLS teams would have going against all the USL teams and such though it would be hard to imagine those teams not earning promotion back immediately anyways.