DeRosario in All-Star game

[RS]

There's no way MLS can break for the Gold Cup (especially this one, which shouldn't even be played). When are they going to recoup that month lost? December?

International dates are another story, although I can see both sides of the debate having stood in freezing temperatures in Columbus and here in Toronto in the early and late season MLS games.

[dpetzz]

quote:Originally posted by Rudi

There's no way MLS can break for the Gold Cup (especially this one, which shouldn't even be played). When are they going to recoup that month lost? December?

International dates are another story, although I can see both sides of the debate having stood in freezing temperatures in Columbus and here in Toronto in the early and late season MLS games.

an easy way to get rid of the late season games is to combine the conferences in one league...get rid of the playoffs and be like the top professional leagues in europe. This way you don't have team playing that deep into our fall

[RS]

quote:Originally posted by dpetzz

an easy way to get rid of the late season games is to combine the conferences in one league...get rid of the playoffs and be like the top professional leagues in europe. This way you don't have team playing that deep into our fall

I don't think a league in North America will ever not have playoffs. It's just far too ingrained in the sports culture here, and if the league is ever going to grow to its potential it needs to tap into the sports fan as well as the soccer fan.

As for combining the conferences into one league, they already overlap as it is, and if teams were to play each other home and away they'd end up playing more games than they currently do (not right now, but when Vancouver and Portland join the league will be at 18 teams, thus 34 games per team).

Fitting MLS' schedule into the Euro-centric FIFA calendar is going to be a slow process that may never be totally compliant.

[BringBackTheBlizzard]

No playoffs would be a recipe for disaster in the absence of relegation to provide an incentive for teams at the bottom of the standings and qualification for CONCACAF competition and the Superliga as a prize being seen as a prize worth striving for by the teams in the middle unlike in Europe with UEFA club competitions. It should be easy enough to respect FIFA's calendar (with the possible exception of the Confederations Cup) once every team has an SSS or control of its stadium by moving some games to midweek and starting the season a couple of weeks earlier and/or finishing a couple of weeks later. The obstacle to that is that the fanbase is not dedicated enough yet in many American markets to show up in the same sort of numbers they do on summer weekends.

[RS]

quote:Originally posted by BringBackTheBlizzard

No playoffs would be a recipe for disaster in the absence of relegation to provide an incentive for teams at the bottom of the standings and qualification for CONCACAF competition and the Superliga as a prize being seen as a prize worth striving for by the teams in the middle unlike in Europe with UEFA club competitions. It should be easy enough to respect FIFA's calendar (with the possible exception of the Confederations Cup) once every team has an SSS or control of its stadium by moving some games to midweek and starting the season a couple of weeks earlier and/or finishing a couple of weeks later. The obstacle to that is that the fanbase is not dedicated enough yet in many American markets to show up in the same sort of numbers they do on summer weekends.

Agreed. Outside of Toronto (and possibly Seattle, but their only midweek game was the first ever match so it's not a true gauge), midweek games are a box office disaster.

Even here, midweek games are generally not as well attended as weekend matches (although the TFC attendance record was set at the last midweek home game against NY).

I think MLS will try to avoid midweek matches as much as possible, until the market shows that they will not be throwing away as much money as they do now by scheduling them.

[Duane Rollins1555362254]

quote:Originally posted by dpetzz

an easy way to get rid of the late season games is to combine the conferences in one league...get rid of the playoffs and be like the top professional leagues in europe. This way you don't have team playing that deep into our fall

Why are so many people obsessed with getting rid of playoffs? MLS isn't the only league in the world to have them you know. The World Cup is essentially a two-year long playoff.

There is no "right" way to determine a football championship. I've heard Euro lovers claim that crowning the regular season leader champion is somehow more authentic than using an end of year playoff. It's faulty thinking. There are a ton of factors that can result in a team winning the regular season that isn't the "best" -- injuries, changes to the roster, weird scheduling blips, whatever. Of course there are downfalls to using a playoff too -- like a lower seed team can win (I guess that's a downfall, although I've never seen it that way). But, ultimately, as long as everyone is playing with the same understanding of what the champion needs to do to win...it's all good.

MLS is never getting rid of the playoffs. There is a greater chance of a big European league adding playoffs than MLS scrapping them.

Manchester United v Tottenham

Arsenal V Everton

Liverpool V Fulham

Chelsea V Aston Villa

Think that would have made any money last May? Uh-huh. And more to the point, think it would be compelling football. I'd sure as hell would have watched.

[Cheeta]

^Don't have a big problem with the playoff format typical of NA sports. Should also be mentioned there are plenty of knock-out cup tournaments played by the European leagues every year both domestically and internationally so they get their fair taste of "playoff football".

[dyslexic nam]

I tend to agree that playoffs are fine for MLS. My view is that we are growing soccer here in NA, so the kind of excitement that NA sports fans are used to as a result of playoff runs will be beneficial to the growth of soccer. While I love watching some of the Euro leagues, my goal for MLS isn't to try to be another EPL or la Liga. MLS needs to find its own identity, and having a differentiating factor that works for local fans seems to be a good idea.

I do understand the argument that season-long performance may be the best gauge of the best team. And MediaGuy, I somewhat disagree with one of your points - if a ton of factors (such as injuries, etc.) can result in a lesser team winning the regular season, I think that possibility is magnified in a playoff format where a single game can end it all, so I think that consideration supports a more european format. Having said that, I also like the excitement and buzz that a playoff run brings (I am of course extrapolating here given TFC's playoff history...). Also, there is something anticlimactic about a team being awarded a title based on a result in another game (ie. the second place team loses a must-win), or worse still, a team wins the championship with 2 or 3 games left to go in the regular season. The most exciting seasons are those that have the title come down to the final matchday, and it is this buzz that is recreated during a playoff final match, and guaranteed to happen every year with a playoff format.