America has accepted that the MLS will never be as popular as any league in Europe. The first division in Hungary probably has a bigger following than the MLS. This was accepted. Just let Europe have soccer and we will take everything else.

The recent acquisition of Josh Childress by Olympiacos Piraeus in Greece finally made the major American sports fan wake up. Europe with its strong Euro is a major sports destination. It is not just the simple economics of the dollar versus the Euro, the continent has been catching up for years and building leagues that have thrived.

Players like Juan Carlos Navarro, Tiago Spitter, Carlos Defino, and now Nenad Krstic have chosen Europe for more reasons than just the money. Fans over hear forget quickly about names like those because they are not native. It sounds awful, but it is true.

The leagues over there have been getting better and better. A nice little reminder of that is the recent struggle by the Americans in basketball. The European game and the European leagues are much, much better than when the first Dream Team first saw them play.

Fans looking for Celtics tickets or Lakers tickets do not need to be worried that all o the sudden their teams will be stripped of talent. Fans just need to finally notice that sport has a new grand option, Europe. The NHL has known for years that Europe has been developing into a sportsman’s paradise.

The league stopped drafting so many Russians long ago when the Russian Super League was able to convince their country men to stay. The Russian Super League has disbanded, but its replacement, the Kontinental Hockey League fired the first shot across the Atlantic when a team tried to sign Evgeni Malkin from the Pittsburgh Penguins. He turned them down, but after looking at the contract several respect veterans expressed interest in moving over to Europe.

The trend is extending to basketball now, slowly. This is a reality as the world grows smaller and the free market principles start to even things out. All of the sudden the Detroit Red Wings are not necessarily the best hockey team on the ice or the low level teams like the New York Knicks might be worse than a European team from a major league.

The time has come for America to realize that its leagues are no longer automatically the best. This does not mean that they need to torpedo other leagues, just accept the global phenomenon of sport has caught up to its own. Maybe the leagues could set up a true World Series between leagues in all kinds of sports.