Covering Soccer 104 with Grant Wahl

Let’s talk American Soccer.

Sure.

Let’s start off with MLS. Where’s the direction you see the league going?

In general terms, it’s moving in the right direction. I mean this was a league that 12-13 years ago looked like it was going to go under. And there is no concern that MLS is going to fold.

They’re adding teams and are now getting pretty big fees up to $110 million for expansion fees. They are building stadiums for soccer across the country. They’re developing American players. They’re getting TV deals.

MLS is doing all these things that the NASL didn’t do or didn’t do very well when it was first around. So that all is good but there’s things MLS can do to improve. Attendance is at an all-time high for games but TV ratings are still extremely low and haven’t gotten better.

Why is that?

I don’t know. That’s another thing, as I’ve gained experience, I have more comfortable saying that I don’t know than I used too. If I had to guess, part of it is that it hasn’t had a national footprint which is getting better now that they’re getting teams in the Southeast.

I think part of is that there are 70-80 games on television in the U.S. per week from around the world and MLS games, the quality isn’t as good as the other leagues. MLS games are pretty good, better than what I think they get credit for but it’s not the Premier League.

I think MLS is forced into an extremely competitive environment to raise the quality of its play to compete on television against those other leagues. In general terms, I feel pretty optimistic for what MLS is doing.