The next ten years - MLS 3.0

No, I'm saying that having a result that isn't really a result allowing a team to benefit in the long run is crappy. 17 draws ? Joke. That's literally half a season of games in which your sum is zero ... yet you get rewarded for it.

How many points would you award for a win on penalties?

That's not the conversation I'm having

So you would punish a team that DID NOT LOSE the majority of its games?

In a hypothetical twenty game season, are you honestly saying that a team that wins ten games and loses ten games is better than a team that went UNBEATEN to earn 36 points off 8 wins and 12 draws?

I'm questioning the tie itself. To me, it's a fabricated results as opposed to the intended outcome of a competitive game.

That "UNBEATEN" team ? Can't exactly say they deserve to be better than anyone right ? I mean, they weren't good enough to win games the vast majority of the time. How exactly is it right to say that they get rewarded for not being good enough the vast majority of the time ?

What a minute. Having two teams that happen to score the number of goals before full time is blown is a fabricated result; but arbitrarily extending the match or declaring a winner by kicking penalties instead of playing football isn't a fabricated result?

Didn't they invent the PK shootout because they wanted a fabricated result that was more fair than drawing straws?

I admit I was being extreme by fudging imaginary numbers to create a team that hasn't lost any games while only finishing a few points clear of a .500 team.

But I still don't understand why you can be happy rewarding the team with more LOSSES just to avoid letting a team be happy with a draw. If you were saying that wins should be worth more than three points or that a draw should be worth zero points just like a loss, I might be willing to agree with you. But you aren't. You are just saying that ties are bad because you don't like ties. A team that draws its way to more points than another team that has won more games must clearly and decisively lose fewer games. A tie is a result. A tie is better than a loss. A tie is possible in any sporting competition that decides a winner.

Show me where I've ever stood behind this stance. In fact, when RichardL asked about it, I didn't bite there either. This isn't, at all, what I'm saying. Quite the contrary really. In a separate discussion a while back I made my stance clear. I think they should play ...

I should be a bit more clear about "fabricated." At least, how I'm intending it. Awarding anything for a tie, to me, is fabricated. Neither team accomplished the point of contesting the game yet they're both rewarded simply for not losing. I actually do feel that a tie shouldn't be given points, or if it will be awarded something that a win should be regarded more than it is.

Using the examples I gave, I have no issue rewarding the team with more losses ... if they're also the team with more wins. The point, is to win the game. That's competition. That's the reason you play. You don't play to not lose, or to be as good as the other guy. You play to beat them.

Soccer is the only sport where an actual end result is a tie, is a common thing.

FWIW, I posted about it earlier but the old Soviet Elite League went to the PK's after the draws in 1973. It lasted only that one year.

In 1976, they tried a split season. I thought it brought more excitement into a rather dour competition.

Come to think of it, screw pro/rel. I am for the split season now!

Won't that be too Americanized since a lot of baseball leagues have that?

Some minor leagues do, yes.

But people in the NASL forums (Whitestar especially) are chumming the wonders of their decision to go split season.

A lot of things have been tried. They didn't work. That's just the way soccer is. In the end, this "games need to have a winner" meme is just more of the crap sports writers dreamed up in the 70's to excuse their bigotry. It will eventually end up in the dust heap of collective memory along with "soccer is a communist sport" which I haven't heard in twelve years. Don't worry about what your friends say. They will either like soccer or not. Until then they will always have some excuse. There's no point in pandering to them.

Erm, it wasn't made up by any bigot sports writer ...

... it's the definition of an athletic competition.

Really. Then, in your opinion, Rocky I must be the worst film in the series. Seriously speaking, many, many people (I would say the vast majority of the world) have managed to accommodate ties in their definition.

that's purely a product of low scoring.

Loads of other sports allow ties, even if they are rarer. In fact, outside the USA, allowing ties for league competitions in any sport is probably the norm.

In many ways I think many would a agree a tie is an imperfect outcome. It's just felt by many that having an artificial tie-breaker is worse, which is why it only happens in knockout competitions where a single winner is completely necessary.

Ah, a guy from England doesn't like it when matches go to pens, that's a surprise

Oh good lord . . .

Why ? Apollo won 2-1 on the scorecard.

Accommodating ties into your lexicon for your sport is one thing. That doesn't change the definition of what something is.

I agree with that. There's a thread around here somewhere on these boards where I actually discuss with many people (you included I think) that very thing.

The real Don gives a few hints on the MLS' ten year plan "to become one of the top leagues by 2022". Choice quote:

This is very interesting to me. Until now, I wasn't sure that there was such a plan or that Garber was doing much more than rhetoric. Obviously, he really couldn't go very public with the plan until he got the alignment needed. I'm assuming that he now has alignment and he is now willing to proceed and publicize the plan.

So here are some details I've gleaned out from the Q&A

Measurable goals

• Quality comparable with the rest of the other leagues
• Passion of our fans: have a fan base that rivals the fan bases in England or Spain or Italy or Brazil or Argentina
• Relevance of our clubs: Are our teams from top to bottom important in their communities?
• Value of our enterprise

In the end it's all about snagging those TV contracts
Starts with vision go down to strategy, break out on players and marketing and come together with Soccer United Marketing.

We are running full speed ahead at SUM with a private equity partner in Providence.

There's going to be hard work on improving Refs
Refs: We as a league need to work much harder to eliminate all this dissent and negativity so we can have our PRO plan put into place and start doing this right from the bottom up. And I'm very confident we'll be able to achieve that. Peter Walton is smart. We've invested in our plan deeply, and I absolutely believe the changes will come, though it won't be overnight.

Rebranding next year!
We'll be launching soon on our rebranding of the league and tapping into the real supporters culture that exists.

More TV strategy

• The good news is our ratings are growing, albeit off a small base.
• We need to grow scale.
• We need to get more people to pay attention to our league nationally.
• To achieve that we need to continue to invest in our player pool and have the kind of players that people care about,
• have the style of play on the field that will be exciting to people,
• have the right environments with our stadiums that will look good on TV,
• have the right schedule with our broadcast partners and on-air promotion from those partners,
• and hopefully have the ability to break though a very cluttered marketplace.

Supporter culture is key
One of the key drivers of the increasing popularity of MLS is the growth of the supporters movement.


Very little said about salary caps or player purchases and development. Although that may be the last thing MLS wants to make public.

I wondered what he means by "comparable quality." Does this mean MLS teams winning CCL? Joey K. Eurosnob declaring it to be so?

The other three goals don't usually fall into normal definitions of "quality." That's cool, though. Gotta be flexible enough that he can declare mission accomplished in 2022.

Not enough info to figure that out but it's more than we had before. Remember, Garber says that there is a very professional high quality plan making the rounds with the bigwigs. There are some very real measurables in print. He just won't tell us straight up what they are.

Fair enough. I'll reserve judgement until the big reveal.

It'll most likely be fairly fuzzy, though. I don't expect him to put real numbers on viewership, attendance, international championships won, etc. That's just not realistic for an organization like this.

League revenue should probably be a easy one to shoot at. I've heard a couple of places saying that MLS should focus on beating NHL instead of matching EPL, Serie A, La Liga and Bundesliga. However, in revenue, NHL is on par or better than those four. So that seems easy enough and will be significant world wide and in the US.

just for the sake of context, how many times higher would MLS' revenue need to multiply to reach those levels?

http://www.boston.com/sports/hockey...ckey-season/00deeoUDLnIB0Q2Nwzd8xN/story.html
By IRA PODELL
AP Sports Writer / November 24, 2012


Yet they locked out the players.
Remember the NHL has 30 teams the EPL 20, so Revenue per team, the EPL >> NHL.

3.3B/30 = 110 Million per team.

While UEFA is trying to get player salaries below 66%, NHL is trying for 50%, it is great to not have competition for players.

And to think the NHL gets their players trained for free (High School and College) while European/Latin American/African/Asian soccer teams have to pay for it with the money left over (35% if UEFA rules do stick around).

How can people argue that the American business of sports is not better for the owners? Specially when you have basically the only league in the world for that particular sport. (yes I know the Russian league, but they are not even close yet, lets see in 20+ years if they can compete with the NHL)