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Real Salt Lake vs. Tauro: Your Running Commentary

CCLLogo

Real Salt Lake hope that home-field advantage will change the club's CONCACAF Champions League fortunes, as the 2010-11 tournament finalists look to bounce back after dropping their group opener.

RSL welcome Panamanian side Tauro FC to Rio Tinto Stadium for a key Group 2 battle (10 p.m., Fox Soccer Channel). RSL dropped the group opener to Herediano in Costa Rica, placing even more of an emphasis on capturing three points in this match to avoid falling into an 0-2-0 hole with just a road game and a home game remaining in the abridged group play under the new tournament format.

The MLS club has lost four straight games in all competitions, only scoring two goals in that time. Making matters more complicated is that the Western Conference contenders will have to turn to a second-choice central defense pairing while overcoming an injury to Jamison Olave and a suspension to Nat Borchers. Tauro had mixed results against MLS competition last season, going 1-2-1 against Toronto FC and FC Dallas in group play.

If you will be watching tonight's match, please feel free to share any thoughts, opinions and some play-by-play in the comments section below. Enjoy the action.

Comments

  1. Keep in mind that in many cases teams in Europe are not intended to make any profit but are just toys for their wealthy owners. Does Abramovich or some arab sheikh care much about profits from their teams? Had anyone heard of Anzhi until about a year ago? Now, their owner is spending money freely on the team that produces practically no revenue on its own. How likely is something like that in the US?

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  2. chris,

    your argument would make sense if MLS had a hard cap. But MLS is already allowing teams to spend 15mil a year on wages. Thats what NY Red Bull spends..but they spend 13 mil of it on just three players.

    what good is the cap? NY Red Bull would have a much better team if they spread that money throughout the roster. But MLS won’t allow that. They’ll only allow teams to spend $$$$ on DPs. Hell..they’d probably have a better team if they spent half that and spread it througout the roster.

    getting rid of the cap wouldn’t all of a sudden make teams over spend. Their wage budgets may increase but probably not by much. The big thing it would do is make it so teams have a balanced roster of players rather than 2 DP’s paired with players that would be lucky enough to get a game in League 2.

    there is absolutely no need for a salary cap.

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  3. Because tv ratings are low, sponsorship money is awful and tickets are much cheaper. High attendance does not mean spending money. Youre lucky if you cover stadium operating costs let alone taxes

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  4. This was retaliation for an earlier incident that likely would have drawn a red if the ref had seen it. One of the Tauro players fouled Beckerman and then kicked him when he was on the ground. So Beckerman went after him a few minutes later. No excuse for his behavior – RSL will really miss him in Panama for the next game – but it wasn’t a random foul.

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  5. Of course some owners want a salary cap because it means they have to pay less in salary. Especially since the ones who profit the most from a salary cap is the owners. FFP is to slow down wage inflation. There is a lot more cases of professional leagues going under with a salary cap then without.

    Also, MLS is in the top 10 in the world in attendance. Why shouldn’t they be able to financially compete with top 15 leagues in the world.

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  6. If MLS wants to quickly improve it should invest heavily in their youth/reserve system, sell the top talent being produced and use portitons of the transfer fees to gradually increase the cap among other things. Not a blind removal of the cap.

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  7. hahaha managers and owners have been calling for a salary cap like system for years. FFP is basically a weak salary cap. Look at spain, teams are threating to boycott games because they want to pool TV revenue, a system ingrained in American sports for years. If im ignorant because im open to outside buisness models that promote steady growth and competitiveness then by all means im ignorant and i dont give a f*ck. Its a given MLS competes with other leagues, whats your point? No MLS team is anywhere near being capable of competing finacially with the Top 15 Euro leagues let alone the prestige of playing in Europe. Getting rid of the salary cap would have a minimal effect given that MLS pays the players instead of the individual clubs and still only a handful are near profitable. Does no one remember the NASL? Ask them how no salary cap worked out for them

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  8. Beckerman straight red. RSL missed him 2 years ago in the decider when Suazo scored to win this tournament

    pretty icky foul tho

    2-0 win RSL

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  9. also..there is no european system. Euro leagues do it differently as well. The Bundesliga is run differently than the EPL, Serie A is run differently than La Liga etc etc.

    Not one league on the planet has a salary cap. The reason is doing so would severely weaken their league.

    there is zero need for a salary cap in MLS. I’ve ever heard a good argument for one.

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  10. chris,

    try to comeback without the same old BS EuroSnob nonsense. You didn’t use the word eurosnob but its the same kind of silly thinking.

    soccer is not the NFL. This is ignorant thinking. The NFL is not the global game. It’s a closed off league from the rest of the world. MLS competes with other leagues.

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  11. The European system is flawed but, it has lasted for over a hundred years. The NFL system is so successful because football is the biggest sport in this country by far. And in football we aren’t competing with the rest of the world since we are the only country with this level of passion for the sport. In soccer we have to be competitive on a global market and the salary cap limits teams from doing that successfully.

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  12. I get what you are saying. Yes, it would be much better to have the DP money spread to improve the entire roster instead of a few players. In the case of RSL, the DPs are not paid too much anyway (400k, 477k). I don’t think the overall spending of the club would change much. Just my opinion though.

    Losing the cap will improve the quality of our league overall, but small markets will have similar rosters as they do now.

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  13. And where does this new money come from? You do realize only a couple of teams are profitable right? But no, Europe does it like that so thats the only way it can be done. There is no room for experimentation because who cares about steady growth debt free when your winning. I’d much rather stick to the competitive NFL model that has made it the most profitable and highest attended league in the world despite being an American centric sport over a flawed European system where half the teams work way outside there means just to be competitive

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  14. the salary cap prevents a balanced roster.

    how much could RSL afford in wages?

    right now they are forced to fill a roster with the 2 million salary cap + DPS.

    They would field a much better team if they were allowed to spread 4 or 5 million throughout their roster. Not 2 million on 15 players than a couple players at 2 million each (i don’t have their roster in front of me but hopefully you’re understanding my argument)

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  15. if it wasn’t for the silly salary cap MLS teams would dominate the CONCACAF Champions League.

    the salary cap needs to go yesterday.

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  16. Are there 20 fans there? Terrible. Does Rio Tin to even have a supporters section? I’m not seeing one from the feed. Kreis is going to have some splaining to do.

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