News on next year's Championship format. . @CanadaSoccerEN president Victor Montagliani details changes to the Canadian Championship in 2014: http://t.co/Ydy14xnf0X— Major League Soccer (@MLS) April 29, 2013 With Ottawa entering next season, it sounds like they'll make the NASL teams play off for a position in the round robin tournament, then hold the tournament as usual. They're looking forward to incorporating the D3 Canadian teams as well down the road. So what are your thoughts? Does the fact that one of the two D2 teams won't get to participate make the tournament better or worse? Is the tournament format as it stands worth preserving at the expense of greater participation (at least for the time being)?
I can't think of any other way to run a five team tournament. Both NASL clubs will still get their fair chance. The other way to run it would be a full round robin, but it would have to be single game against each team, home and home would not be possible.
A play in round is not unusual in tournaments like this. It's certainly not elegant or desirable, but it may be the best way to go in practical terms. Do you have a reference for this?
I suppose another possibility would be to do an unbalanced, east-west split. Toronto, Montreal, and Ottawa play a home and away round robin. Vancouver and Edmonton do the same. The eastern and western winners play in the finals. It means six games for teams in the east and only four for those in the west.
I would prefer a single group where every team plays each other once, either home or away (2 home total, 2 away total). The fixtures to decide who plays who can be determined by the MLS schedule and travel considerations. For example, if we had 5 teams this year: because VAN is home to TOR in the MLS, TOR host their match in the ACC. Likewise, MON host VAN in MLS, so VAN host MON in ACC. As TOR host 2 matches against MON and MON only hosts 1 of the games, MON will host TOR in ACC. So for traveling: as TOR hosts VAN, TOR travel to EDM in ACC; As TOR now has 2 away games, they host to OTT. As MON travels to VAN, they host EDM; MON now has 2 home games, so plays away against OTT. And the final three fixtures can be decided at random... So, we could end up with a fixture list like this (not I have each team playing alternate home/away. W1: MON v TOR; OTT v VAN W2: VAN v EDM; TOR v OTT W3: OTT v MON; EDM v TOR W4: TOR v VAN; MON v EDM W5: VAN v MON; EDM v OTT If format requires 5 match days (1 more than current) and each team plays 4 matches: 2 home, 2 away (exactly the same as current format if a team wants to win the cup). Sorry for the long post, I wanted show my reasoning for the selected fixtures.
That's the way I'd like to see, but note that there may be more than 1 MLS match between two Canadian MLS clubs in a given season. For example TFC only plays Whitecaps once this year, but will likely play them twice next year. A more appropriate way would be to alternate the home and away NCC matches. For example, if TFC plays their ACC match agaisnt Whitecaps at BMO this year, then they'd play next year's ACC match at BC Place.
Toronto and Vancouver only play each other once each season under the current season, because they are in different conferences. Same applied to montreal and vancouver. Toronto and montreal could only play twice a year, but because of the rivalry, i suspect they will keep playing three times each year. Alternating each year is a good idea too, that is what happens with the canadian teams in the MLS ie: in 2012 we had: VAN v MON; TOR v VAN; MON v TOR (as the 3rd match) in 2013 we have: MON v VAN; VAN v TOR; TOR v MON (as the 3rd match) So if the MLS keeps with the current system and alternating each year, ACC can do the same for a more balanced system for each season. Of course, when team 20 joins the MLS or canada gets a 6th team, anything can happen
This is more along the lines of what I'd like to see happen. I understand that the MLS teams are always going to be favored, since they're the most stable and they're the biggest draw. But I think it's a shame that the new format will necessarily keep one of the NASL teams out for scheduling reasons alone. Hosting an MLS side can be a big deal for NASL teams. It lends the team and the league legitimacy, and it will likely help improve their level of play (as all opportunities to play strong opponents do). It's also an opportunity for MLS to expand their footprint and their influence. A fan in a different market who dislikes your team is still better for your franchise and your league than a fan in a different market who know/doesn't care that you exist. Oh, and more competition is always better from a fan perspective.
The problem with all the proposed alternative scenarios (including mine) is that they aren't really workable as the tournament expands in the future. I imagine the CSA is looking for some sort of format that they won't have to redesign again in a couple of years when, say, Hamilton gets an NASL team. If the Canadian Championship is going to expand, probably eventually as far as including D3 teams, it is going to have to embrace the concept of teams entering at different rounds. I suspect the CSA is simply choosing to bite that particular bullet now. As I wrote earlier in this thread, the play in solution is probably the most practical.
Let's cross the additional teams bridge when we come to it. Seeing as there aren't any more in queue after Ottawa, the soonest we'd see a sixth team in the tourney is 2016, and that's if they announced a new club this summer. That said, no matter how they run it now, they can always re-config again if need be.
Has anyone heard anything about Hamilton for NASL in the last few months? A team to be owned by the Ticats owner was mentioned in all the early news releases about the new PanAm Games/CFL stadium. It was supposed to be for the 2015 season and provide a second tenant for the stadium. Recent articles on the subject haven't included any references to a soccer team, however.
So according to my maths... the final seedings for next years cup are fixed: 1. Montreal 2. Vancouver 3. Toronto 4. Edmonton 5. Ottawa That leaves Edmonton and Ottawa playing a "quarter final" (over 1 or 2 matches? format not announced). The winner will host Montreal in the semi-final first leg. That leaves Vancouver/Toronto in the other semi-final.
There has been no word recently but I keep up pretty good with the CFL and the Ti Cats as an organization have had there hands full this year with setting up the temp stadium and then getting Tim Hortons in place with the naming rights and then thoughts of home playoff games. Could be a one thing at a time type thing. A good guess is that Tim Hortons would be the main shirt sponsor so they also are currently working on the CFL team right now. But with synergy of Hamilton CFL Ticats, NASL team, and TIM Hortons sponsor could be a pretty nice steamlined operation with tickets and promotions. I would think the CSA would like to see it but it would need an academy situation in place as well which also takes time