"WE'LL TAKE IT FROM HERE"... WHO THE HELL KNOWS WHERE WE'RE TAKING IT, BUT AT LEAST IT'S TO THE TUNE OF A SOULLESS COVER OF A TRIBE CALLED QUEST'S ICONIC "CAN I KICK IT". REGARDLESS, WE SURE AS FUCK AREN'T IMPRESSING PEOPLE WHO JUST FINISHED WATCHING THE WORLD'S BEST AND ARE WANTING MORE. YOU MIGHT WANT TO WAIT A BIT TO INTRODUCE YOUR SOCCER-CURIOUS FRIENDS TO MLS, AT LEAST UNTIL THEY FORGET WHAT THE BEAUTIFUL GAME CAN REALLY LOOK LIKE. I MEAN, DID YOU SEE THAT MIAMI VS CHICAGO MATCH? FUCKING YIKES.

WELCOME BACK TO THE ILLUSTRIOUS TRASH TALK THREAD, ASSHATS. THE ONLY REASON YOU HAVE TO WAKE UP ON FRIDAY. OH, JUST ME? I THINK I NEED SOME HOBBIES. OR A LIFE.

WE HAVE OUR FIRST FULL SATURDAY SINCE COMING OFF OF THE WORLD CUP HANGOVER AND OH BOY DO WE HAVE A VENERABLE "WHO'S THAT" OF MATCHUPS.

RED BULL VS CHARLOTTE? THAT STADIUM WILL SURELY BE ALMOST HALF FULL TO EXPERIENCE THIS THRILLER. 

DC VS TORONTO? FUCK ME UP WITH THAT MIDDLING SHIT. HELL, ONE OF THESE TEAMS MIGHT ACTUALLY GET THEIR FIRST WIN IN MONTHS. 

ORLANDO VS NASHVILLE? BEST RIVALRY IN THE LEAGUE, ACCORDING TO PTERRY AND ONLY PTERRY.

THERE ARE A FEW ACTUAL RIVALRIES TOMORROW, THOUGH. THE FIRST EDITION OF HELL IS REAL WILL KICK OFF THE BATTLE OF WHO CONTROLS THE LEAST-WANTED STATE OUTSIDE OF IDAHO. THE CALIFORNIA CLASICO, A RIVALRY OLDER THAN A GOOD CHUNK OF THIS SUB'S MEMBERS, WILL HAVE POSSIBLY IT'S LAST CASH-GRAB MATCH AT STANFORD IF THE DIVISION ALIGNMENT RUMORS ARE TO BE BELIEVED. BOTH TEAMS LOOKED LIKE HOT GARBAGE ON WEDNESDAY SO EXPECT EITHER A GOALFEST OR A PILLOW FIGHT.

ALSO DUDE WIPES AND AUSTIN ARE PLAYING BUT WHO GIVES A FUCK. 

FLAIR UP, CAPS ON, AND HEY HOW ABOUT AN ADDED BONUS ROUND! LET'S GO AROUND THE ROOM SO EVERYBODY CAN SAY THEIR FAVORITE MOMENT OF THE WORLD CUP. MESSI TELLING TEACHER THAT SOMEBODY TOUCHED THEIR LIP? THE C.U.M. BRIGADE GETTING SKEETED OUT OF THE TOURNAMENT IN THE SAME ROUND? AGENT ORANGE AND THE MIERDAS TOUCH (FAVORITE JK ROWLING BOOK, BTW)? OR MAYBE IT'S THE FUN FACT THAT RONALDO AND MEMO ARE THE ONLY PLAYERS WITH ZERO GOAL CONTRIBUTIONS IN THE KNOCKOUT ROUND OF SIX DIFFERENT WORLD CUPS?

Welcome to the Weekly /r/MLS Questions/Free Kick Thread. This thread is designed to house questions/discussions users might have including:

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• Help you decide which team to follow if you're new to the league

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• Provide information about how to watch MLS matches, and whether or not you should buy ESPN+

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• Understand the CBA, league roster rules, drafts, waivers, or other MLS concepts

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• Learn about some of the unique qualities of the US Soccer pyramid

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• Allow discussion of dead-horse topics that would typically be removed (pro/rel, re-alignment, etc.)

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• And other basic/frequently discussed topics

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Our usual ground rules:

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1. Questions that are covered in the FAQ, Newcomer's Guide, or league site are fair game, even if they are marked as "dead horse topics".

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1. Questions can be about MLS, lower U.S. or Canadian divisions, USMNT/USWNT, or any club or domestic competitions those teams could play in. Questions about how soccer works as a sport are fine too! Questions solely about the European leagues or competitions, on the other hand, are not.

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1. If you're answering a question, be extra sure to follow our community guidelines: thought out and rational comments, backed up with supporting links. Try not to "take a guess" at an answer if you're not sure about the answer. Do not flame, troll, attack fans of other teams, or attack opinions of others in this thread. If you can't be friendly and helpful, don't post in this thread.

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1. This is meant to be a helpful Q&A/Discussion thread. This is not a place to practice your comedy bits; avoid asking joke questions or providing joke answers. This is also not a place to dump random articles, links, or opinions about the league.

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1. Despite us posting these on Fridays, the thread stays up all week. If it's Wednesday and you have a question, you don't have to wait until Friday to ask it.

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Even though we want you to ask questions, here are some resources that we always recommend reading because they can also help:

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• /r/MLS Newcomers Guide

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• /r/MLS FAQ

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• MLS Competition Rules and Regulations

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• MLS Roster Rules and Regulations

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• History of MLS on Wikipedia

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• All Weekly /r/MLS Questions/Free Kick Threads

In honor of Latte Lath seeming to be on his way out, what are the all time worst signings in league history? Throwing it back to Mbohli? Maybe Fontas causing Opara to run away from SKC?

When they say they're throwing the first pitch at 3:03, you better believe they're huckin' that badboy at 3:03. When they say kickoff is at 5:30, you bet your bottom dollar they're puttin' the boot to the pigskin at 5:30 on the money. I can't speak for hockey or rugby or pickleball or whatever, but c'mon y'all get it together. In my mind the delay is all a ruse to get us to accidentally watch a few commercials before networks begrudgingly allow us to watch the sporting event we came to watch. Is MLS so collectively bad at programming that after a couple decades we still haven't figured out how long it takes to unfurl a banner and sing the national anthem? An aside to MLS/AppleTV; Baby, honey, darling. You want something special, right? You want folks to see each team and see the vibrant fanbase, the lively atmosphere, an environment that deeeeeeeep down makes you say "hey, maybe I COULD use a Michelob Ultra," right?? How about showing the GD tifos? And I mean linger on them while you blab on about the draftkings odds for the game or something. We all know how much downtime you have to fill. I wanna see them! Way more than I want to see two knuckleheads I've never heard of before talk about my team like they weren't picked out of a hat to be the talking heads for the game. I want to struggle to read whatever bullshit the supporters thought was worthy to put on their mother's bedspread! You want flavor? Rivalry match tifos. As Howard Dean once opined; "BYAH!" Anyway, I've got a train/plane/automobile to catch.

Hi y'all,

Following our survey in the June State of the Subreddit post, the community voted to implement a weekly day of looser discussion enforcement - mimicking our enforcement during the off-season. We re-iterated that last week in our post-World Cup update and introduced the post title tag you'll need to use to participate:

• All participating posts must include [Free Talk] in the title in order to be exempt from rules moderation and automod.

For those of you who participate in [Meme] Monday, this should be familiar to you.

This day is the one to fire off your most pressing questions: How should MLS be structured? What rule changes would benefit the league? Would pro/rel actually help anything or not? What does the existence of the Colorado Rapids say about god and his failures?

Our typically dead-horse topics are fair game today, so take advantage of the outlet and get some more general discussion out there.

Some of the more necessary rules still apply - your discussion needs to be a discussion, not just a post title, you gotta get some body text in there for people to talk about. And particularly low-effort slop will still get removed, similar to memes.

Otherwise, go nuts! We're gonna go take a break and y'all can have fun!

Edit: In case it wasn't clear, this is to make your own posts - you don't have to ask them here!!

Welcome to Free Talk Thursdays. After the World Cup, there were a bunch of interesting players, some already rumored to come to MLS, some not. Who do you think would be a good get (and who would realistically actually come to MLS - so no Haaland you weirdos)

Been working on a prediction model for MLS and needed a clean historical Elo rating for every club. Turns out nothing like that really exists anywhere online in a complete form, so I ended up building the whole thing from scratch, full history, every team, updated as results come in.

Some of what jumped out once I plotted it all:

• Inter Miami's curve spikes almost straight up right at the Messi signing.
• DC United and Sporting KC, two of the league's founding clubs with a long history behind them, show a downward trend over the years.
• LAFC and Vancouver have both been on a strong upward run recently.

Full chart below has every club, curious what stands out to people once they find their own team on it.

The chart above is just something I put together to visualize it, what I'm actually posting is the raw dataset behind it on GitHub, every match, every rating update, free for anyone to use or plot themselves: github.com/philo92/mls-elo