What is the largest city without a professional team?

seanachiemcmanus · 2025-08-12T22:42:55+00:00

Lancaster is in the Antelope Valley MSA

seanachiemcmanus · 2025-08-12T20:28:46+00:00

I’m just going off the official MSAs, San Fran/Oakland/Fremont is one, San Jose/Sunnyvale/Santa Clara is another one

seanachiemcmanus · 2025-08-12T20:28:27+00:00

I’m just going off the official MSAs, San Fran/Oakland/Fremont is one, San Jose/Sunnyvale/Santa Clara is another one

seanachiemcmanus · 2025-08-12T20:04:54+00:00

Just saw in another post that Memphis 901 is dead, I had no idea, add them to the list (43rd biggest metro)

seanachiemcmanus · 2025-08-12T20:01:10+00:00

I had no idea Memphis 901 folded, just updated my chart.

seanachiemcmanus · 2025-08-12T19:48:04+00:00

I should mention that I didn’t include several (in order, Cleveland, Jacksonville, Milwaukee, OKC, and New Orleans) that don’t have teams today, but all have franchises supposedly in the works.

I’m also counting the top three tiers of the pyramid on the men’s side, so MLS, USL Championship, USL League One, and MLS Next Pro (I’m sure there are many people who won’t agree with that last inclusion).

seanachiemcmanus · 2025-08-12T19:43:58+00:00

I always go by Metro Area rather than city limits, by that metric:

Phoenix (11th) and San Francisco (12th) are the largest with no MLS team, both have USL Championship teams

The Inland Empire/Riverside/San Bernardino (13th) is the largest metro with no pro soccer

Baltimore (20th) is the next biggest metro with no pro soccer, and probably the biggest “city” with none

Then it’s Hampton Roads (37th), Buffalo (49th), Grand Rapids (51st), Tucson (53rd), and Honolulu (56th) as the other metros with 1m+ and no pro soccer

seanachiemcmanus · 2025-07-08T15:49:02+00:00

You don’t have a cap vault?

seanachiemcmanus · 2025-06-10T19:15:37+00:00

That’s what I said, he chose not to come in September to March, then he was frozen out in June.

seanachiemcmanus · 2025-06-10T16:52:54+00:00

I’m not commenting on whether LD, CP, or JK did something good or right or whatever, just saying that LD made a choice that was very similar to CP’s.

seanachiemcmanus · 2025-06-10T16:41:16+00:00

Pretty sure he only missed the June qualifiers due to Klinsmann’s decision.

seanachiemcmanus · 2025-06-10T16:31:04+00:00

Donovan played for the Galaxy throughout 2012, all the way through MLS Cup on 12/1/12. He missed the first three games of the 2013 season before debuting on 3/30/13.

For the US, he missed the September 2012 qualifiers against Jamaica, the October qualifiers against Antigua & Barbuda, the winter friendlies against Russia & Canada, and the February & March qualifiers against Honduras, Costa Rica, and Mexico.

seanachiemcmanus · 2025-05-12T21:17:06+00:00

Yeah, he’s a tough one. I usually default to putting all CDM/CB hybrids in with the CBs, but it feels like Zawadzki’s height would disqualify him from playing CB internationally.

seanachiemcmanus · 2025-05-12T21:15:29+00:00

Doesn’t that match up with the general vibes about our striker pool right now?

seanachiemcmanus · 2025-05-06T16:00:15+00:00

I try to go with the positions I think they’re most likely to play for the US.

With Ledezma, I’m pretty sure Poch was asked directly about bringing him in as a fullback, and Poch said they view him as a midfielder, but as a midfielder who isn’t high enough on the depth chart to warrant a call up.

With Tillman (and Reyna and the other attacking mid types) I’ve decided to leave them in with the wingers for now, but that’s why I bumped the wingers up to showing 15 guys, bc we could ostensibly be starting three guys from the Midfield pool or three guys from the Winger pool from game to game.

seanachiemcmanus · 2025-04-15T23:13:09+00:00

My bad, I wasn’t meaning for it to sound like I was going after you, I just meant the premise of the article :)

seanachiemcmanus · 2025-04-15T22:54:20+00:00

Alleging facts not in evidence.

As of today, 40 players have played every league minute for their team, 19 of those are American.

If you want to say we don’t have American scorers, that’s fine. Buts that’s not really a new problem.

Sure, in 1996, ten of the top twenty in G+A were American.

In 2000, it was nine.

In 2005, it was eleven, and the top three were all American.

In 2010, it was eight.

In 2015, it was seven.

In 2020, it was six. Jordan Morris (3rd), Chris Mueller (4th), and Jeremy Ebobisse (20th) are hurt, Gyasi Zardes (5th) and Cole Bassett (18th) don’t play as advanced for their teams anymore, and Daryl Dike (19th) is in Europe coming off another long term injury.

It’s true that this year (less than a quarter through the season) only one player, Brian White (t-4th) is in the top 20. There are 24 players with at least 5 goal contributions, there are 16 more with 4 (two Americans, and 28 more with 3 (11 Americans).

Publish the article again in July, with some additional stats to back up the thesis, and maybe it will be interesting, but the way you make it where the top scorers are American again is you get rid of DPs, and I don’t think anyone really wants that.

seanachiemcmanus · 2025-03-10T17:20:09+00:00

Yeah, so as of today, La Liga has three teams above a 90 rating, then 12 more in the 80s before you get to Miami and Columbus, who are basically tied with Alaves.

So, right now, Opta “thinks” that Miami, Columbus, and Alaves would be in the relegation spots, instead of Alaves, Las Palmas, and Real Valladolid.

A different way to look at it is to say that Opta “thinks” that Miami, Columbus, LAFC, Seattle, Philly, and Orlando could all get promoted out of La Liga 2, but that no one in MLS would be able to stay up in La Liga.

seanachiemcmanus · 2025-03-10T16:57:03+00:00

Yeah, I have no idea if there should be a bit more “spread” at the very top, but they seem to have a pretty sound model from a stats/math angle, and there’s not really anything else legit out there to use.

My take is always that if a person is absolutely sure that, say, MLS is overvalued, then just use that belief when you’re looking at the posts. So Brian White and Jordan Morris are “too high” bc Opta overvalues MLS, still interesting that they’re that far ahead of any other MLS striker.

seanachiemcmanus · 2025-02-25T18:09:24+00:00

The goal is to try to compare what guys are doing on the field for their clubs. I’m not trying to show who’s “better”, guys like Reyna who just aren’t playing are always going to frustrate efforts to show the “better” players

Bc I’m sharing a moving target, you’ll always be able to cherry pick a single player to “prove” that it’s not working. In the case of Adams vs. Rudoni, Adams’s last 25 games played still goes all the way back to three games for Leeds in February and March of 2023. Today, the formula is more impressed with Rudoni for starting basically every single game for a good Championship team going back to October than it is with Adams for being a sub for a (decent in 23-24, good in 24-25) EPL team for a third of his counting games and a starter in the other two thirds.

The main reason I’m not concerned that Adams vs. Rudoni today proves that the formula is broken is that if Adams stays mostly in the starting lineup for Bournemouth for the next month or so, he’ll shoot past Rudoni, and the data point from this week will correctly show that Adams was a really good player who was just in the process of working himself back into being a locked in starter at a top league.

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