I thought MLS Rules were in place to prevent "the NASL scenario"

there's no need for a salary cap with so many leagues around the world. If MLS fully integrates into the international player market, MLS players are not all of a sudden going to get huge contracts and lead to teams bidding their salaries up. Outside of superstars players and some of the ridiculous transfer fees, the soccer player market is very stable.

What chance would there be of "financial hell" if MLS got rid of the salary cap, implemented free agency and set a hard cap of 5 international slots? Unless you think the top 30 players are gonna all shift to MLS then there is absolutely none.

 

Except there's a difference between "players available to MLS" and "American domestic players." If you restrict foreign player spots, you create a separate market for American domestic players.

If you say there are dozens...name some American domestic players "just like" Beckerman who could replace him in a cap-free league.

 

Here is the piece you're missing. Most soccer players in most leagues in most of the world--including most American soccer players--are not part of an "international player market." They are part of a separate, domestic player market. Or, because of EU regulations, at best a "European player market."

Most leagues strictly limit the number of foreigners (or non-Europeans) who can play in the league. With the exception of a few top leagues--and not even there to the extent most people think--domestic players make up the vast majority of most soccer teams in most countries.

 

LA was hands down the best team in MLS over the course of the final months of the season. Hands down.

Its not their fault that Saunders went to drug rehab and their star defender missed half the season with busted knee.

And with the restrictive salary cap, the drop off from starter to reserve is so severe, that the regular season doesn't always reflect who the best team actually is.

Basically what you are saying is that you want to see the team that stays the healthiest during the season be rewarded as the league champion rather than see the best team in the league be rewarded.

If you don't understand the dynamics of the league salary structure and the effect that has on the quality of roster depth, then you have no business having an opinion on how the league crowns its champion.

 

Good, are you a lawyer? Because MLS's lawyers and the courts have made it fairly clearly that the lack of free agency supports the single-entity argument MLS used to justify its business decisions in court.

i'm not saying free agency won't happen because the owners don't want to spend the money, I'm saying it won't happen because it would open up a path for the players to sue the owners in court and break the single-entity model.

 

So you're just choosing to ignore my earlier post? And you want us not to think of you as a troll?

 

bingo.
And the assertion that players signing with MLS aren't paid market value is not factually correct. If there is a market for a player outside of North America, that player has every option to sign the deal. The fact is most of these players have only one market. In that case, as in any business, without increased demand the supply curve sets the price fairly low. Now the argument that there is no free agency within MLS is accurate, so you could argue MLS teams could pay more for those players but from a single entity perspective they would be bidding with themselves.

 

San Jose clinched the Supporters Shield the night before it played game 33 of 34.

 

Try explaining that to guys in Columbus who missed the playoffs by 1 point. I'm sure every single one of them can think of one single goal in March that would have given them a point or a win and put them in a position to be in the playoffs.

In fact, with the exception of three or four teams that were absolutely dreadful, every single regular season game had meaning for just about every team as their were several teams fighting for those final playoff spots and a chance at a championship.

Conversely, the La Liga race looks to be down to 2 teams before Christmas. Same with the EPL. Now you can sit here and argue that the rest of the teams have something to play for because of Europa league spots and relegation, but that's a bullshit argument.

We're talking about championships. Everything else is just a participation trophy.

And as far as the American sporting culture is concerned, most American fans don't set their best case scenario expectations at finishing 17th and then still come out to games.

Why would anyone on earth give a shit about the other 7 games that day not involving San Jose or Kansas City? As a marketing gimmick it is a gigantic fail because you have created a market where 78% of your product is an exercise in meaningless competition that serves no purpose other than to round out the regular season schedule.

I get it. You don't like playoffs. You have strong opinions about playoffs. That's fine.

But you are in the gross minority and you clearly demonstrate a complete and total ignorance of the sporting culture, not only in this country, but in this region of the world.

All of the major sports leagues in Canada, Mexico and the United States crown their champion via a playoff system. That is what fans want. That is what fans care about. And reinventing the wheel, going against 100 years of sporting culture in three countries just to more closely resemble how a percentage of leagues in Europe decide their champion is the very definition of stupidity.

 

It would have "gone down to the last day" for San Jose and Kansas City. But there are sixteen other teams in the league.

On September 3, there were six teams already mathematically eliminated from the title race, most with 7 or 8 games left to play. No teams were mathematically eliminated from the playoffs (though Toronto was close).

On September 23, there were eleven teams mathematically eliminated from the title race, with most teams having 4 or 5 games to play. Only two teams were mathematically out of the playoffs, and only three teams had mathematically clinched playoff spots.

On October 7, with 2 or 3 games to play, there were only two teams still in the title race. But there were still twelve teams in playoff contention, only six of whom had clinched a spot.

For all people complain about the playoffs making the regular season "meaningless," that's about 20% of games that are rendered "meaningless" if the only thing to play for is the Supporters' Shield. Games that teams need to sell tickets and TV ad time to somehow. Do you have any sugestions?

 

Rename MLS to "EPL" and hope the public doesn't notice they're not actually going to games in the England.

 

ENB Sports - I think that it should also be pointed out that playoffs are so ingrained into the sporting culture of this country that US Senators have entered the fight to force FBS college football to adopt a playoff system.

Those cries were so loud that the NCAA has finally relented and will be going to a playoff system in the future.

The anti-playoff crowd talks about playoffs diluting the integrity of the game. Those people clearly don't understand the sporting culture in this country. The BCS is a perfect example of this. For the overwhelming majority of sports fans in this country, NOT having a playoff is considered to be a system that lacks integrity.

 

OK, seems its time for this (all information sourced through wikipedia, for better or worse):

Every top non-Caribbean league in CONCACAF:
Canada & United States - MLS: 10 make playoffs out of 19
Mexico - Liga MX: 8 make playoffs out of 18
Belize - Premier League: 4 make playoffs out of 12
Costa Rica - Primera: 4 make playoffs out of 11
El Salvador - Primera: 4 make playoffs out of 10
Guatemala - Liga Nacional: 6 make playoffs out of 12
Honduras - Liga Nacional: 4 make playoffs out of 10
Nicaragua - Primera: 4 make playoffs out of 8
Panama - Liga: 4 make playoffs out of 10

So MLS has the most playoff teams, but it has the most teams and plans to expand (which none of the other leagues do except Costa Rica to get back to 12). Every top league uses a playoff.

Every top league in CONMEBOL:
Argentina - Primera: Split-season winners play final game for championship (with questionable importance)
Bolivia - Liga: 8 make playoffs out of 12
Brazil - Serie A: Single-table
Chile - Primera: 8 make playoffs out of 18
Colombia - Primera: 8 make playoffs out of 18
Ecuador - Serie A: Split-season winners play final game for championship
Paraguay - Primera: Split-season with single-table
Peru - Primera: 2 make playoffs out of 16
Uruguay - Primera: Split-season winners & top-combined point team make playoffs out of 16
Venezuela - Primera: Split-season winners play final game championship

So only 2 leagues have no plans for any games beyond the standard regular-season. 3 have full playoffs, a 4th can have up to a 3 team playoff, a 5th has a 2-team playoff. 3 have their split-season winners playoff for an ultimate championship.

 

Another data point for the claim that playoffs make the regular season meaningless.

In this other thread, I looked at Premier League betting odds around the halfway points of this season and last season. This year, with less than half of the season gone, there are already five teams with a less than 10:1 shot at a Champions League spot and a less than 10:1 chance of relegation--in other words, with, in practical terms, nothing left to play for.

That's 105 games out of the 380 the Premier League will play this year that are "meaningless" for at least one team. If Stoke City plays West Brom, and we already know, realistically, that neither team is going to Europe and neither team is going down, why isn't that a "meaningless" game?

 

Sorry, typo, fixed.

Tomato, tomato, the point is the same. They split their season into two halves and have the champions from each half play.

Except nobody, even Wikipedia, considers the Charity Shield a champion yet the Wikipedia articles specifically call the winners of those games an ultimate champion. Specifically Uruguay (where teams sometimes have to play multiple times to determine the champion) and Peru (where the playoff is 1st place vs. 2nd place, not the winner of the two leagues).

So even if you dismiss the split-season/two leagues games you're still looking at half of CONMEBOL that uses some sort of playoffs plusall of CONCACAF outside the Caribbean (and that's not getting into playoffs outside the Western Hemisphere). So take your "real soccer experience" and shove it, because there's plenty of "real soccer" that use a playoff system.

 

As an alleged statistician, do you really think that's a conclusion you can draw when you compare weekend games to weekday games, or games sold months in advance and included in season ticket packages to games scheduled on less than a week's notice?

MLS is one of the few soccer leagues in the world where the championship is always decided on the final day of the season, which of course is the day of the MLS Cup final.

How can you say that a "real soccer experience" means deciding the championship on the last day of the season, when last year the Bundesliga was won by 8 points, La Liga by 9, and the Scottish Premier League by 18 (clinched with 5 weeks to play--talk about "meaningless games"!) Juve won Serie A by just 4 points, but still clinched with a week to spare.

Winning the title on the last day of the season isn't the rule in international soccer; it's a rare and exciting thing. One of the major benefits of the playoff system is that the championship always comes down to the last day, and the two teams with a shot always play each other on the last day. When's the last time that happened in any major soccer league?

 

Convenient for you to leave out that these were midweek games, which have always been a difficult ticket for MLS to sell.

Also convenient for you to leave out that this game had to be moved at the last minute due to Super Storm Sandy.

But why let small details like that get in the way of your baseless and incorrect argument.

How is this an advantage?

This exists in other US sports as well.

This exists (on a larger scale) in every other league in the US.

Last time I checked, players in MLS are allowed to transfer to other leagues. If your gripe is with how players move from one team to another within MLS, then that is a completely different argument than the one you have been trying to make this entire thread.

The only thing missing in MLS that restricts player movement within the league is Free Agency. And if there is one thing we've learned from every sports league everywhere in the known universe is that free agency inevitably leads to overinflated salaries that puts undue financial strain on a league and on individual teams.

MLS plays in a country that is the size of an entire continent. There is NOTHING fair about a balanced schedule where one team like an LA has travel requirements that far exceed those of say a Philadelphia.

Relegation to where genius?

It already is. Its called MLS Cup.


It seems fairly clear that you just want MLS to be exactly like the EPL, ignoring the sporting culture in this region of the world. That's fine. People like you will never be a fan of MLS because you will always have an excuse as to why it isn't exactly like England.

Guess what?

MLS doesn't need you as a fan. They don't. MLS is the 7th most attended soccer league in the world. They are doing something right.

And here is where the argument really begins and ends.

The Liga MX is far and away the most popular soccer league in the United States. Here is a list of things that the Liga MX has.

HAS:

• Playoffs
• Unfair schedule (because the season is split into two halves, crowing two champions, a team can win a championship while playing all the top contenders at home)
• Restricted internal transfer market (even though it isn't a single entity, it is a well known fact that there is a gentleman's agreement amongst the owners to not start bidding wars over players)

 

So wait, you're for a "true soccer experience" when the champion is determined ont eh final day of the regular season, except when you aren't?

And you won't count the games in Argentina and Ecuador os playoffs, but you'd be OK if MLs did a playoff of the same type to determine the champion?

And we're at the crux of the real issue. You're OK with playoffs, as long as the favorites win. When there are upsets you have issues with playoffs. Pick a side, either be against playoffs across the board (inn which case you should pretty much check out of most Western Hemisphere soccer) or accept playoffs means the underdog wins occasionally (which is really the point of playoffs) and enjoy it.

 

Quoted for truth. Championships in a single table format are almost never won on the final day of the season. Its an anomaly when they are.

 

Mexico is the only Copa Libertadores participant that uses Apertura only for Copa Libertadores qualification.