NASL Shortens 2014 Spring schedule to accommodate the WC

[Red and White]

The North American Soccer League is going to shorten its spring season next year so fans can watch the World Cup without missing league matches. Clubs will play a shortened 10 game spring season, which I assume will be 5 home / 5 away for everyone. We better get FCE in Ottawa

I get the reasoning of breaking for the World Cup, and I suppose this is the best way of being off from June 12 - July 13 next summer. It beats the days of MLS running during the tournament, which looked a bit like a joke (this coming from someone who wants to see the league gain international legitimacy). At the same time, I don't know if NASL is doing itself a service by having such a short spring season.

Definitely mixed feelings for me, but its good seeing NASL not only attempting to recognize the FIFA calendar, but also realizing that they are not big enough to compete with international FIFA events. This is one of the advantages of having the split season, the ability to adapt to major events happening world-wide.

http://boxscorenews.com/nasl-confirms-midseason-break-to-accommodate-fifa-world-cup-p58916-68.htm

[Olympique_de_Marseille]

Assuming there are 11 teams in 2014 (no Puerto Rico), how would this even work? "10-*break*-10" would make sense but if you have "10-*break*-20" you just get a weird half-season before the World Cup.

We better get FCE in Ottawa

I also hope for the pre-World Cup season we do indeed get to host Edmonton.

[alberta white]

Assuming there are 11 teams in 2014 (no Puerto Rico), how would this even work? "10-*break*-10" would make sense but if you have "10-*break*-20" you just get a weird half-season before the World Cup.

I also hope for the pre-World Cup season we do indeed get to host Edmonton.

I have a suspicion their going for an A-league triple match up schedule, where someone get double home ties that reciprocate the following season. Personally not a fan but at least everybody plays everybody else.

[Red and White]

I have a suspicion their going for an A-league triple match up schedule, where someone get double home ties that reciprocate the following season. Personally not a fan but at least everybody plays everybody else.

Do you think they'll make up the uplayed home games the following season? Based on what I've seen, they'd just go back to the home and away fixtures for both the spring and fall 2015 season.

As Olympique de Marseille eludes to though, we're going to end up seeing serious fixture congestion as more teams are added. If we end up with 20 teams down the road, that's 38 spring and fall matches for every team, plus V's Cup, USOC, friendlies, and so on. I think NASL has plans of changing the format at some point. Either continue with the current split-season format, but have teams play one set of home and away matches with one champion decided in the fall (so no spring champion), or finding other means of integrating a split schedule. At some point, NASL will have to say something about this.

Next year's spring schedule will be slightly unfair, in that teams who are either poor on the road or strong at home won't face everyone in those settings.

[alberta white]

Just wait till they try it with Qatar in the winter of 2021/2022:D

Actually if they do go 20 teams It wont be a problem I can't see the twin season continuing post 16 teams as that a straight 30 game season anyway. In the case of Edmonton that would see them fitting in 15 games in a year. Keep the hot summer break and your good to go!

[amacpher]

I get the reasoning of breaking for the World Cup, and I suppose this is the best way of being off from June 12 - July 13 next summer. It beats the days of MLS running during the tournament, which looked a bit like a joke (this coming from someone who wants to see the league gain international legitimacy). At the same time, I don't know if NASL is doing itself a service by having such a short spring season.

Yeah, but with or without a World Cup break the same main problems would exist. 11-teams is just a tough number to work with when you have an apertura-clausura format. Two 20-game seasons would be a bit much. Even without the A-C format, you'd still pretty much be forced into a 30-match season which means getting home advantage against half the teams, and away-disadvantage against the other half.

[alberta white]

Yeah, but with or without a World Cup break the same main problems would exist. 11-teams is just a tough number to work with when you have an apertura-clausura format. Two 20-game seasons would be a bit much. Even without the A-C format, you'd still pretty much be forced into a 30-match season which means getting home advantage against half the teams, and away-disadvantage against the other half.

So like in Australia the following season you have to reverse the fixture list... Like they do in the Six Nations Rugby. Its the closest thing you get to balancing the season with erm, balancing the season. Actually if they do it 10 2014 and 2015 well its probably fine in that respect as its balance over 2 years. Only problem comes when adding Expansions. Do you really want to hold a team out so that the schedule balances...

So glad I don't have to be the one that on that discussion.

[Guest ClaytonA]

http://www.indyweek.com/triangleoffense/archives/2013/07/29/nasl-commissioner-bill-peterson-responds-to-criticism-over-2014-regular-season-format?utm_source=NASR&utm_medium=twitter

...

“We basically have a window to play that begins on April 1 and ends around the first or second week of November,” Peterson said. “Anything outside of that window begins to be real sketchy up north … You start getting outside those windows and you’re really risking the reputation of the game. And if you try to squeeze too many games in that window, then you play a whole bunch of midweek games, which I don’t think we want to play too many of those.”

...

While the possibility of midweek games exists given the compressed 10-week Spring Season, Peterson said scheduling will take both the Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup and Amway Canadian Championship midweek competitions into account, along with Mother Nature.

“We’re going to do a little bit better job than we have this year to help the Canadian teams. We’ve got the Amway dates already, and we’ve also got to keep them out of the north. It gets kind of tricky keeping them out of the north for the first couple of weeks of the season, but yet they’ve got to play Amway. Last year, I don’t think we paid enough attention to it. We have to be a little bit smarter, I hope, when we put the schedule together.”

...

“They’re fans—they’re supposed to be fanatical, and they got fanatical over this,” Peterson said. “But you have to think through, what are the things that fans told us up front? ‘We want this to look more like it does in the rest of the world..’ Well, we have a single table, although we’re not going to play single season with this amount of teams, it doesn’t make sense. ‘We don’t want you playing during the World Cup—that’s disrespectful.’ Well, we’re not going to do that. ‘You’ve gotta have a balanced schedule, you can’t have an unbalanced schedule.’ OK, we’ve got that. ‘We don’t want playoffs.’ OK, we don’t have playoffs. We’ve answered everything they’ve asked for, and none of them stepped back and went, ‘Why did these guys do this? Because, they’ve done everything we’ve asked them to do.

[Red and White]

Great find! I love the last quote you posted.

So what the 2015 season looks like: 14 teams (one new addition or the PRI), balanced home/away schedule, retain the spring and fall champion. Its essentially what a lot of Europe looks like, except you break and award a Champion halfway, before beginning a second set of games against everyone in the league.

This goes on until 16 teams are in the league, then they look at conferences and a small playoff at the end of the seasons.

I was wondering what they'd do after too many teams exist for the current format. Good to see they've released some info this early.

[amacpher]

" .... and that’s when you’re going to introduce playoffs because you’re going to want to have those to determine who wins the season. But, it’ll be a limited thing—it’s not going to be like these other leagues where everybody gets in the playoffs. That’s just ridiculous.”

I love this guy!