MLS vs. Jurgen Klinsmann heats up

Jurgen Klinsmann just doesn’t understand that building the MLS is the best way to build his national team.

US men’s soccer team manager Jurgen Klinsmann has stayed firm on his belief that American players should avoid the MLS and go to Europe so they can improve against better competition. And that does not sit well with the MLS owners.

Essentially, the top figure in American soccer just said the MLS is far from a legit league and just doesn’t have quality talent on the ability to grow and develop young stars. Whether it is true or not doesn’t really matter, the MLS owners are building a very good product that many feel is on its way to becoming one of the elite leagues in the world but when these things are said then it’s a major blow to Major League Soccer’s credibility.

The two sides have different goals in mind. Klinsmann wants to build a World Cup champion and to do that he has to get the best players in the world and to do that he needs to have his best players play for the best clubs in the world so they are practicing and playing at an elite level against elite talent. The owners, though, want to make money and to do that they want to attract the best players so they have the best products and therefor get fans watching games.

But what Klinsmann fails to realize is that the best way to get the best players is to make soccer a major part of American culture, like it is around the world and that is done by making America’s pro league elite.

America is building an incredibly national program but they aren’t going to win a World Cup overnight, it’s going to be a slow build. America has to work on its home product first, it needs to have young athletes interested in soccer from a young age, perfecting their craft early in their lives. We see little kids looking up to basketball players, football players and baseball players and that is why USA is the standard when it comes to those sports on an international level. But MLS is still working off a niche audience, not a national audience and in order to build a national audience the MLS needs to keep their homegrown stars.

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Corey Johns

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You could say Corey was born to become a sports journalist. His father won a national championship coaching college soccer. His mother is a baseball fanatic who hasn't missed seeing an Orioles game since 1983 (literally, sometimes it's annoying). His great uncle was a big-time boxing promoter and his maternal grandfather was once a department head at the Baltimore Sun. Basically, sports and journalism run through his blood. He played just about every little league sports there was when he was a kid and was a multi-sport athlete in high school; even playing in the first-ever high school sanction Rugby game in the country. Eventually he retired from sports as an undefeated Maryland state Rugby champion as a high school senior. Perhaps lack of athletic talent has more to do with the retirement, but he will tell you that it more had to do with a great desire to jump right into media. Upon his graduation from University of Maryland, Baltimore County as a triple communications major, Corey started the So Much Sports network and has continued to grow his websites and continues to work to make them premier sports media outlets.

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