It's the football offseason here in the United States and if you are like the IMOTGP blog, you are well connected to all going on in football in the U.S. That means that you follow all of the key Tweeters for your MLS gossip and you get Tweets like this:
The final match of the #MLSCombine is underway. Hofstra' Joe Holland among the players looking to cap a strong Combine: pic.twitter.com/ZID2TFDWHg— Ives Galarcep (@SoccerByIves) January 12, 2017
This isn't to criticize the great Ives Galarcep, who does a fabulous job, but it is to be highly critical of a match between 'Chaos' and 'Tango' having any shred of importance in the U.S. football universe. What next? U.S. Soccer will start scouting yours truly in the 35 and over league?
What is the MLS Combine? According to Wikipedia, the "Major League Soccer Player Combine is a four-day annual showcase, occurring every January in Fort Lauderdale, Florida's Central Broward Regional Park, where future Major League Soccer players perform physical and mental tests in front of coaches, general managers, and scouts."
In case you didn't expect MLS to try to fleece every dollar out of you the football fan in the United States, here's another great nugget from Wikipedia: "Fans may purchase tickets to attend the six games that occur during the combine."
Granted players who are "stars" in MLS like Tesho Akindele and Joao Plata shined in the combine and made it to the league. Of course, this speaks to the fact that the United States has no idea how to develop top footballing talent.
Actually, that last part isn't true since many clubs are seeing success through their academies; the obvious way to producing top football talent since that's how the rest of the world does it. But leave it to MLS to not highlight that work and instead trumpet some ridiculous equivalent of the NFL combine to appeal to American fans.
Even dumber is to charge to watch these mediocre matches, especially when you can watch The Phantom play an equivalent brand of football for free in the summer. How silly is it to charge admission? Yours truly attended a UEFA Youth League match with real prospects with no admission required. That's how football relates to the average person worldwide as opposed to here where they are money-hungry to the point of making you pay to watch players who aren't even good enough to reach this mediocre level.
This isn't to insult the players on trial except to say if you are dreaming of playing at the MLS level, you have already failed. No one dreams of playing baseball for the Calgary Outlaws or basketball for the Liaoning Scale Industry Flying Leopards unless you are from Calgary or Liaoning. Bottom line: The MLS Combine, while having some value to the actual clubs, is crap. Don't give it any attention.
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