Vorsprung Durch Technik

Match preview and some other stuff coming up, but first...

The reaction of most people to the MLS-Bundesliga partnership has been a yawn. That's not surprising, but it may be misguided. One of the things we've written about before is the lack of knowledge transfer between teams in MLS. The methods for success by one front office do not seem to be distributed to other teams, despite the single entity structure. To me it is the single most simple way for MLS to improve all aspects of its performance: Share non-competitive best practices. Marketing, Community Outreach, Fan Service... all of that should be a source of constant communication among MLS teams, not just within MLS teams.

The Bundesliga partnership, if nothing else, perhaps creates a chance for this to occur. If MLS Front Offices, especially those that seem particularly inept, won't listen to their peers, perhaps they'll listen to Europe. If so, the league as a whole will benefit, and this will be one of those events that seemed less important at the time than it really is. If, on the other hand, certain MLS Investor/Operators remain so convinced of their own genius that they feel they don't need to learn from anyone, then it'll just be more of the same. I hope that the former situation, for the good of the league, takes hold.

More on all sorts of stuff later.