Since its conception in 1993 and its official start in 1996 the MLS was always looked at as a lowtier, stat padding, unserious league. A place where players just go to retire or try to magically slingshot their career overseas. Fast forward to now and the MLS is no joke. But how, especially in the last 5-7 years, did this league in America start to get all this buzzing? The MLS has been singing absolute legends from overseas for the last 20 years or so. The players have not only up’d the play and skill of the MLS but also the viewership.
The first wave had the likes of Thierry Henry and David Beckham enter the stage of the MLS on the near end of their careers. Henry who played with Barcelona and a world-cup winning french national team. David Beckham brought over great skills, good looks and the iconic catchphrase “bend it like Beckham” to the MLS and who doesn’t love a good catchphrase?
(Lori Shepler / Los Angeles Times)
In later years after a few expansions in the league players from Serie A, the Bundesliga, The Premiere league and la liga started to make their way over to play their last few years of soccer on American soil and give the American fans a little taste of what they were doing overseas. People like Wayne Rooney, Andre Pirlo, Robbie Keane, Tim Cahill, Kaka, Frank Lampard and David Villa to name a few. The MLS was still at that time nothing to take serious but as more stars came over and started to embrace the American league and viewers more eyes were on the US and with it brought more potential for other players to play here.
Courtesy NYCFC
Fastforward to 2022 when apple tv signed a 2.5 billion dollar deal with the MLS to exclusively stream all MLS matches with them. We had the money and with it more players from over seas were here. The likes of Zlatan, Giroud, Bale and Chiellini were playing with newly expansion teams and winnig and bringing more eyes to the beautiful game. All these players helped bring so many eyes to the MLS but we were still missing that key BIG player that could rocket the MLS into a serious conversation and start to make this league a contender for playing in.
Enter Lionel Messi. After his Historic world cup win in Qatar he took his sights to the MLS and with it millions upon millions of fans of him, his play style and the game to the MLS. David Beckham a former MLS player now turned owner of Inter Miami FC was the perfect candidate to do what a lot of us thought was impossible. He did it and now the MLS is bigger than ever getting more higher league players to come here and play like Son, Marco Reus and just recently James Rodriguez.
Getty images
So now with soccer becoming the 3rd most viewed sport in America surpassing Baseball recently the question i ask you is, who can’t we sign? A lot of homegrown players that started in the MLS have now moved to play in some of the big leagues some even come back after a few years. Could we get the other Goat Cristiano Ronaldo form the saudi League? who knows but with the world cup being hosted in north America and a bigger tourney than before. Its safe to say that since the world cup was here in 1994. 30 years later I think this world cup is the MLS’s redemption arc.
