Everything you just said is absolutely true, and is a compelling case for the Saturday match, originally scheduled for RBA, to be played somewhere other than RBA, possibly even somewhere other than northern NJ or the NYC metro area. It is a big jump from there to swapping matches. When Hurricane Katrina made the Superdome unusable to the Saints, the Saints home opener was played at the opponent's stadium. The rest of their home matches were played hundreds of miles from home. But at no point, in any of those games, was the *other team* penalized. Here, not only is the other team penalized, but NYRB has been put in a competitive standing better than they would have had in the absence of the storm. As an aside, I haven't heard yet if the league is planning on covering lost $ for the fans of each team that had already paid travel costs to away legs.
I am biting my tongue here, but to say the least it took me hours to cool down somewhat from this news. If we somehow lose this series and especially if this cluster******** plays a role...I will be incandescent with rage at New York and the league and even a bit at our front office. It should have been delayed or moved, but this "solution" is just infuriating.
Yeah, there's a lot of false dichotomy use going around right now. I can't believe I haven't heard "Dude, people died" yet.
***unless you are a RB fan, in which case your convenience is more important than the competitive advantage that DC earned.
MLS, why do clubs play 34 games? That's right, to get the best seed possible to compete for the MLS Cup in your joke of a playoff system.
Bingo. It sucks for the folks there and life is not always fair as mentioned in other sporting events, but to give a club an advantage because of such an event is garbage. There were other options available and should have been investigated by Sunday. I mean, if New York was the 4th seed, do you think they'd give that up home field to the 5th seed because of this?
Using the line of argument could as easily be stated why it "sucks for RBNY to play both at RFK, play one leg at neutral site, delay match, play in front of 4K, etc." No one is denying this whole situation sucks, but this does not make it right.
All I know is if the league and the powers that be aren't catching any crap from these people bringing up the deaths and the damage; for continuing to play the game and simply changing the venue, why should people catch crap for complaining about it? Call me insensitive, but I really don't think you can have it both ways here, either don't play the game out of respect for the situation or don't get upset when people start expressing displeasure with the outcome of things. If it's just a game, then it's not so important that it can't wait until power can be restored to those areas of NY/NJ. Just seems funny how I don't seem to be seeing anything from people harping about "perspective" with regards to the league when all they did was move the game 96 hours away.
Screw the moral high ground. We earned the right to host the second game. Red Bull Arena has power. Harrison had some minor flooding, and was NOTHING compared to what hit the coast and what hit New York http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/30/hurricane-sandy-damage_n_2047194.html From that link - 38. Flooding from the Passaic River occurred in both Newark, N.J. and Harrison, N.J. Most of Newark, including a hospital, was without power.
As far as I know, power did not go out in Harrison, NJ, or it has been restored. My father's first cousin lives in Tom's River, about 10 miles from Seaside Heights. His power has been restored.
I'm also pretty f**king sick and tired of MLS bending over backwards to give the team formerly known as the Metro*Stars advantages over and over and over again. Why not just cut to the chase and announce that they're league champions already?
To be fair, what I'm hearing is that the issue wasn't electricity, but that it's not feasible to move large numbers of people to/from the stadium without PATH, and PATH won't be up and running for another five days. Mind, to me that sounds like a solid argument for having the match somewhere other than RBA. But it's a long jump from there to swapping the legs.
The league needs to put out a presser and list what options were discussed. As I read their announcement, the league "requested second seeded D.C. United and the third seeded New York Red Bulls alternate home dates in their upcoming Eastern Conference semifinal series." Sounds to me there was no thought given to any other option. Thx, Jay!
I haven't read the whole thread but I'll weigh in on my stance anyway. I understand that some people who already made some plans to go up are going to be pissed. I get that. I also understand Jeremy's point a couple posts before me. However, I can't get too up in arms about this. The home 2nd leg has never been much of an advantage in MLS. Indeed, let's look at the actual numbers since DC's last MLS Cup. Since the 2005 playoffs, the lower seeded, first game at home team in the 2-legged series has won that first game 13 times. Of those 13 times, 2 times they have won by more than one goal (both times by 2 goals). The two times that home team has won by 2 goals, they have won the series outright (no pks). In the other 11 situations, that lower seed won SEVEN of the 11 .... 5 of them outright, and 2 times by pks. But overall, the lower seed winning that first game has won the series NINE out of 13 times. I simply look at this game as an opportunity to get ahead in this series, which has proven to be the winning position. The truth in MLS is that the 2nd leg hosters in MLS have a winning record all-time over the 1st leg hosters not because they are hosting the 2nd leg ... but because they are generally the better team (which led them to being seeded higher in the first place). But recent MLS history tells us that the best position to be in is AHEAD after the first game, not home for the 2nd. No, the two aren't mutually exclusive, but we have a better shot at the first if we are at home for it.
I get why people are pissed. I get that the league may not have done the same for the DC if the situation is reversed. I think this was the right thing to do, but should have been decided yesterday. IF the situation was anywhere near as bad as it must be to do this. This will hurt attendance a lot at both venues. 12-15k average. If we had known this from last Saturday, I think we could have sold out a weekend game. People will move heaven and earth to go to an NFL game (and will probably have to this weekend). They won't move off their asses to get to a Red Bulls game. In this case, anyone who wanted to go to the game would have had real trouble getting there because of the metro and PATH. It sucks, but its the right thing to do for the league.
Anybody who thought MLS would adhere to it's own rules and/or the basic concept of fairness as opposed to the New York franchise hasn't been paying attention to this league for the last 16 years. PS. I called it in post #77. What do I win?
So what happens if/when NY can't host the second leg? If NY didn't have a contingency plan before, WTF are they going to do the second time around?
From what I heard, the problem isn't the stadium itself, which is essentially fine, but rather that there's no way to get fans to the stadium (that is, highways are flooded, the PATH and NYC subway are dead.) They will presumably have that sorted out next week.
Should have delayed the game or found an alternate venue. Marketing for next Wednesday and letting people buy tickets and then changin the date is not a solution. It is a pain in the ass, not only for us but the team has to now run new ads with the changed date. Also, lets not get ahead of ourselves and think sandy was actually a bad hurricane.
You people complaining about the change in home date from Wednesday to Saturday do realize that DC United are offering refunds if you can't make the new date, right?