re: Where would you rank the MLS amongst other leagues around the World?

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Which is actually pretty surprising since Bundesliga has risen up the UEFA standings mainly based on their clubs taking Europa League play more seriously than other top leagues.

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But it's apples and oranges of course, since clubs are almost entirely playing in their own confederation.

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Here is an interesting debate from a few years ago between Greg Lalas and Allen Ramsey on whether or not MLS is a top 10 league in the world.

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Oh lawd. We definitely weren't there a couple years ago.

I think we're top 15 now, though. We'll be top 10 within a couple of years if we raise the salary cap.

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1.england
2.spain
3.italy
4.germany
5.french
6.dutch
7.turkish
8.brazil
9.portugal
10.argentina
11.russia
12.greece
13.mexican
14.belgium
15.MLS
16.denmark

eta:
17.scotland
18.japan
19.ukraine
20.swiss

and all the rest i have no idea

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This pretty much looks like what I would think as well the only caveat being a lot of leagues-- like Ukraine-- have clubs at the top that are a step above MLS's top clubs but have less depth and there's probably a lot of lower ranked leagues that are weaker than MLS as a whole but do have more top level young prospects.

I actually edited my post thinking about the rankings. The real hard thing is how you rank the leagues in weighing:

1) depth v strength of 1 or 2 top clubs
2) depth of talent v some actual younger world class players

MLS is a bit of an exception in how it's set up to regulate depth of team strength more than other comparable leagues that have super teams and no one else.

I think 7-11 are all pretty close where the rankings don't matter and there's a bit of a drop off from there. I may have Portugal and Russia higher but it's really so close between all those leagues.
Czech Republic and Romania have some pretty decent sides too but doubt they have much depth though I really don't know.

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all you need to know is that mls is the league that all the world's washed up players migrate to instead of outright retirement.

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Not nearly as many as get fat and go back to Brasil.

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SenorPablo

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Thanks for your list. That was kinda what I was thinking, but a little closer to top 10.

Hopefully it will only get better, and rise through the ranks.

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11. Turkey

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not for long...the league champion got caught fixing matches and paying other teams to lose. Team presidents have been arrested and coaches fired. It won't be long before they sell off their best players. In the long run, it won't affect MLS much, but the "Superliga" won't be close to a top 10 league soon.

I'll link a couple articles, but let me clarify first, the Turkish top flight league is called "Süper Lig" and the Greek top flight league is called "Superleague"...a minor difference but they are both going through similar problems and I can confuse the two.

Turkey

Greece

Also, I'm nowhere near an expert on either of these leagues, I'm sure there is someone else here that can give more in-depth info. I've really only been following it on the Fox Soccer news, but if the top teams like Olympiakos actually get relegated, I don't think either of these leagues would be better than MLS.

[quote] The problem is that most leagues in Europe have a few good teams that are unbelievably good, so they make the rest of the league look really good by default. I think the Spanish league is a perfect example. /quote]

I completely agree with you on this point. I'm also not sure that if you threw out the top 4 that Bundesliga and Serie A aren't the top 2 leagues if you're only considering teams 5-18 or at very least there's certainly no longer any gap in the top 4.

However, I still don't think MLS comes anywhere close to competing with the French. Portuguese, Dutch, Russian or Brazilian and Argentinian leagues even all the way down the line.

MLS sides could probably compete well in the mid to lower tier of some of the other leagues that I ranked above it but those are ranked higher because of precisely the Shaktar Donesk ilk clubs at the top and the amount of world class 18-20 year olds that are about to move on the top 4 leagues sprinkled throughout.

I really never watch the Mexican league but is MLS better?

EDIT: I really ranked these leagues without tons of knowledge of a lot of the ones after the top 5 just to bump this thread since it seemed to be the only interesting one going.

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I really never watch the Mexican league but is MLS better?

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It seems like the Mexican league is usually better in the CCL.