The Premier League Problem

Discussion in 'MLS: Commissioner - You be The Don' started by chapka, Jan 4, 2012.

  1. holiday

    holiday Member+

    Oct 16, 2007
    i don't think this makes sense. the problem with a playoff system in soccer has nothing to do with the difference btwn 3rd division and national championship.

    playoff system in soccer runs up against a simple fact of the game itself: given that there isn't a lot of scoring, a there's a considerable probability of a game ending in a tie. in a single table format that's fine. you get one point each and move on. at the end of the season you add up the totals. but in a playoff format a tie is a real problem. when you must have a winner you can't have ties. so you have to play extra time, which is usually dull because players are too tired to play well and also no one wants to take risks. then you go to pk's which are a bit of a crap shoot. that's the problem with a playoff system.

    however...
    the biggest tournaments in the world of soccer are playoffs. uefa cl and fifa wc are playoffs. world champions have been crowned on pk's. and it's hard to see why playoffs would be ok for lower tier promotions, not ok for national championships, and ok again for european and world championships. that way of drawing lines does nothing more than take a snap shot of the way things are and adding, without any real justification, 'and that's how it ought to be.'

    it's interesting, btw, that soccer has struggled over the years to solve the built-in problem of tie games in knock-out tournaments. those old enough to remember the 1968 euro championship may recall that the ussr and italy played a tie in a semi-final. after extra time the game remained tied. the two captains and the referee headed to midfield, shook hands, and proceeded to a coin toss. not, however, to see who kicked first in pk's. they tossed a coin to see who advanced to the final. italy won. in the final against yugoslavia the game again was tied through extra time. this time, they replayed the game two days later (italy winning). there were no pk's back then.
    not to mention more recent experiments with 'silver' and 'golden' goals.
    so yes, playoff systems aren't ideal in the sport of soccer (btw, hockey triple ot games are pretty brutal too). but it has nothing to do with the system being appropriate or not to this or that competition.
     
  2. Achowat

    Achowat Member+

    Mar 21, 2011
    Revere, MA
    Club:
    New England Revolution
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    It's definitely not the worst generalization the Germans have ever been involved in
     
  3. jond

    jond Member+

    Sep 28, 2010
    Club:
    Levski Sofia
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    I'm someone who doesn't hold back in my criticisms of MLS and areas I feel it can improve, but the playoffs are a non issue. Seriously. If you want to talk about giving the higher seed more of an advantage or maybe re-seeding after the regular season, that's a good discussion, but the playoffs themselves have nothing to do with the success of the league.

    Actually, if MLS cancelled the playoffs and went to single table, most points wins, I'd be pretty pissed and not watch nearly as much. When you get to the four best MLS teams left that's pretty exciting. As it is in the NFL, NCAA tournament(final four), NBA playoffs, UCL, FA Cup, Copa Italia, and numerous other playoff type competitions.

    There's other ways to improve MLS(reserves, better coaching, flatter and more balanced rosters, etc) which has been talked about in other threads but the playoffs are an asset to the league. While regular season games might not be as important as they are elsewhere, regular season games elsewhere aren't as important as playoff games either. Man U doesn't have a home and home to continue their season in the EPL or play a on off game to win the league. They do however need to do that in UCL to continue and guess what, people everywhere soak it up.
     
  4. HailtotheKing

    HailtotheKing Member+

    San Antonio FC
    United States
    Dec 1, 2008
    TEXAS
    Club:
    San Antonio Scorpions FC
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Wait, what ?
     
  5. chapka

    chapka Member+

    May 18, 2004
    Haverford, PA
    Club:
    Philadelphia Union
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Just checking in, a year later...and it's worth noting that, while some teams within this group have underperformed or overperformed, still, with four or five games remaining:

    • The seven "contending" teams are in the top seven spots in the league, and
    • Every other team in the league but one has been mathematically eliminated from England's six European berths. (technically, Southhampton could tie for the last Europa League spot if Southhampton win out, Spurs lose out, AND Man U gain no more than three points from their last five games).
     
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  6. BHTC Mike

    BHTC Mike Member+

    Apr 12, 2006
    Burlington, ON
    Club:
    Toronto FC
    Nat'l Team:
    Canada
    Explain the "problem" again?

    I'll make a prediction: 1 of 19 MLS teams will win MLS Cup. A different one will finish last. Might as well cancel the season since it's all so predictable.
     
  7. JasonMa

    JasonMa Member+

    Mar 20, 2000
    Arvada, CO
    Club:
    Colorado Rapids
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Really? You really think your statement is at all equivalent to @chapka's point?
     
  8. BHTC Mike

    BHTC Mike Member+

    Apr 12, 2006
    Burlington, ON
    Club:
    Toronto FC
    Nat'l Team:
    Canada
    No, but I think deciding that the effect he's pointing out is a "problem" doesn't fit with the evidence based on people's continued and increasing desire to watch the league globally.
     
  9. Jewelz510

    Jewelz510 Member+

    Feb 19, 2011
    Bay Area
    Club:
    San Jose Earthquakes
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    FYP, as the cool kids say.
     
  10. chungachanga

    chungachanga Member

    Dec 12, 2011
    To be fair, no one in Nepal probably gives a f*ck about Green Bay Packers or Memphis Grizzlies either. Stricter regulations and parity doesn't necessarily make a league an international hit.

    Hulls matter to their local communities and ticket sales. So it's obvious why the EPL lack of parity might seem like a problem to an MLS fan. MLS is all about growing local revenues and local fans, and parity and a chance to win is a major selling point to those local fans. MLS is a young league, it's still trying to establish itself in a lot of communities and it's focused on local revenues at this point of its life.

    But I'm not so sure that it's a "problem" for the EPL, a league that's trying to compete for international market. Fans in Nepal aren't going to have time to care about every team anyway. There are so many sports TV products and soccer TV products available today. A casual fan will have time for a game or two a week, likely even less, and some of those will be Champions League games or international soccer. The rest of that casual fan schedule can easily be filled by 5-7 EPL teams fighting mostly each other or a mixed schedule from several leagues.

    And I think that viewing structure wouldn't change all that much regardless if the league had more parity or less. A typical fan can only watch so much. And he will gravitate towards glamour teams with the biggest stars and history. So in terms of selling the product to casuals and especially casuals outside of England, a handful of teams with concentrated world class star power makes sense. If EPL doesn't provide that in Manchesters, Arsenal, Chelsea and Liverpool, a foreign fan might flip the channel and watch Juventus, Napoli and Milans intead.

    MLS has a different target audience and goals, however.
     
  11. holiday

    holiday Member+

    Oct 16, 2007
    part of the epl problem is also chelsea in the ucl semifinals.
    part of the mls solution is also mls teams getting slapped around by mexican clubs in the ccl.
     
  12. Potowmack

    Potowmack Member+

    Apr 2, 2010
    Washington, DC
    Club:
    DC United
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    I'm not sure how these two points connect. There's a lot more incentive to win the UCL than the CCL.
     
  13. holiday

    holiday Member+

    Oct 16, 2007
    i was comparing quality, not incentive. just making the old 'other side of the coin' observation.
    i don't think you'd claim mls teams don't win ccl because of 'incentive.'
     
  14. Potowmack

    Potowmack Member+

    Apr 2, 2010
    Washington, DC
    Club:
    DC United
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    For both MLS teams and Mexican teams, the CCL is a distant second to success in their respective domestic leagues. There simply isn't enough financial incentive to change their business models to be competitive in CCL. The difference is, Mexican teams already spend a lot more money on their players than MLS teams. It's inevitable that they are going to do better in CCL. If MLS teams spent the same as their Mexican counterparts on players, they would be competitive in CCL. But, there's no real reason to do so. Bankrupting themselves for a secondary competition like CCL would be a dumb move.

    Mexican teams do well in CCL as a byproduct of their domestic success.
     
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  15. BHTC Mike

    BHTC Mike Member+

    Apr 12, 2006
    Burlington, ON
    Club:
    Toronto FC
    Nat'l Team:
    Canada
    If you're into complete misrepresentation, yeah sure.

    And yes, things are terrible in Hull: local fans are so bored by the lack of parity at the top of the Premier League that their attendance is at 96.4% of capacity and is probably higher than at any point in their history. Must be disappointing having made their first ever FA Cup final. They might not even be able to open a Nepalese Hull City Supporters Club.
     
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  16. chapka

    chapka Member+

    May 18, 2004
    Haverford, PA
    Club:
    Philadelphia Union
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    The point is not that some teams are doing well and some are doing badly.

    The point is that which specific teams are doing well, and which ones had no chance at doing well, was correctly predicted by William Hill before the previous season had even ended. That is not something you can say about MLS.

    I think the choice you're talking about does affect the domestic fan more than you give it credit for.

    I care about the U.S. national team. When they're playing nearby, I try to go and see them play, even if they're only playing a friendly. I'm happy if they win and depressed if they lose, even if it's only a friendly and has no effect on anything beyond that one game.

    But it's more fun to watch them play in a tournament, with a larger prize on the line beyond just what score gets printed in the newspaper tomorrow and who gets an extra 2.047 FIFA points in the next month's ranking. Best of all would be seeing them play in a World Cup, for the biggest possible prize.

    Under the current system, teams like Sunderland and Fulham are essentially playing a season full of friendlies. That doesn't mean their fans won't still come to the games, enjoy the wins and be depressed by the losses. Of course they will. Perennial mid-table teams sell tickets for the same reason international friendlies sell tickets; because a soccer game is fun for a fan to go see, even if there's no larger meaning.

    But by catering to those Nepalese fans, you're taking away something from the Sunderland and Fulham fans. Friendlies are good--they're good enough to attract fans to these games. But competitive games are better.

    Even abroad, superclubs may be fine for the casual fan tuning in on Saturday morning to see who's playing this week on NBC. But you lose out on some fans as well. I was a soccer fan before there was an MLS, but I could never bring myself to "pick" a Premier League team. Either you're picking a perennial front-runner, like the guy in Nebraska with Yankees and Heat stickers on his car, or you pick a team that will never win and root for a Russian oligarch to buy it.

    I think that's one reason there are so many American Arsenal fans...it's because they can read Nick Hornby and feel like underdogs, even though the team hasn't had a losing season since 1995 and have been in the Champions League every year since 1998. The Yankees are the only American sports team that even comes close to that kind of consistent success.

    Clearly the Premier League is a good league, and people like it. But that doesn't mean it doesn't have its flaws. And one of those flaws--one I don't want to see MLS copying--is that for fans of many teams, the entire season is, for all practical purposes, just a series of friendlies.
     
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  17. Potowmack

    Potowmack Member+

    Apr 2, 2010
    Washington, DC
    Club:
    DC United
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    That's a very good way to put it.
     
  18. chungachanga

    chungachanga Member

    Dec 12, 2011
    There are many reasons why MLS won't adopt that model.

    But at the same time what may look like a problem to an MLS fan also looks like a key driving force behind current financial success of the EPL.
     
  19. JasonMa

    JasonMa Member+

    Mar 20, 2000
    Arvada, CO
    Club:
    Colorado Rapids
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    "A series of friendlies" is a bit unfair. There is the relegation threat to avoid.
     
  20. jond

    jond Member+

    Sep 28, 2010
    Club:
    Levski Sofia
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    #570 jond, Apr 15, 2014
    Last edited: Apr 15, 2014
    No, it's not.

    And pretending Sunderland or Fulham fans are just playing matches equivalent to friendlies is quite a warped point of view.

    But this is an interesting perspective being thrown around here, that essentially if you're not competing for the title then you're playing matches which essentially are friendlies. Just about about every league and every pro sport has its favorites/heavy weights and those who are out of the race by the mid-point of the season. It's common in American sports, whether college sports or the NFL/NBA/MLB. Are most Raiders games just friendlies? As a fan I know they're not winning the Super Bowl and that's pretty clear 4-6 weeks in. How about as a Sac Kings fan? Pretty much out of any playoff race by Christmas. So, they're pretty much playing friendlies too? I could pick a number of MLB teams in the same boat.

    You could easily argue that across American sports, there's a number of teams not playing for anything, yet they're also not battling any kind of a relegation threat as we see in a league like the EPL, which most certainly adds pressure and puts meaning into games. Some here may not like single table, pro/rel, may not like the EPL, may prefer the MLS system, which I understand, I prefer the playoffs we have here too and it fits our culture, but acting as if because you're not in a title race you're basically playing friendlies is twisting reality. Not pointing out that same premise can be applied to our sports landscape in insincere.

    Yeah, there's EPL clubs out of UCL/title contention as well as the fear of relegation, but there's a number of teams in the top 4 American leagues out of the championship race early on as well and not playing for anything. Welcome to sports. We've got probably 10 NBA teams tanking for a top draft pick this year, not even pretending to take winning seriously. If the NBA theoretically had pro/rel, they wouldn't be nearly as comfortable. And I'm not proposing pro/rel in American sports, won't work here and if it ever happens for MLS it'll be decades from now, but less competitive games/matches with less meaning are normal here across American sports, the EPL, Serie A, or any number of leagues around the world. If one is going to apply some "friendly" standard to those matches/games, then that standard applies almost everywhere to an extent.
     
  21. JasonMa

    JasonMa Member+

    Mar 20, 2000
    Arvada, CO
    Club:
    Colorado Rapids
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    There's nothing friendly about a Raiders game. ;) I agree with your general point that just because there isn't a shot at a championship it doesn't make the game a friendly. But there is a difference between being out of it 4-6 weeks into an NFL season (which is about 25%-30% of the season) and being out of it 4-6 weeks before the prior season ends (which is essentially what the betting odds @chapka posted represented). Essentially what those odds said is that regardless of how good an offseason the other 13 teams might have, they still had no shot at winning the championship. That's not something you see in most of the American sports leagues.
     
  22. chapka

    chapka Member+

    May 18, 2004
    Haverford, PA
    Club:
    Philadelphia Union
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Baseball is a non-capped league with no serious parity controls, and as a result it shares some of the same problems as the Premier League. But even in MLB, there are only three teams who have gone longer than ten years without a postseason appearance (the Royals, Blue Jays, and Mariners).

    The Raiders are in a slump, but they also played in a Super Bowl a little over ten years ago. And as recently as 2011, they missed out on the playoffs in a three-way tiebreaker on the last day of the season. The Kings had a streak of eight straight playoff years from '99 to '06, including two division titles. A Raiders fan can walk into the Coliseum for the first day of the season and realistically hope his team will make the playoffs. A Kings fan can at least show up hoping the new draft picks will be the start of a turnaround.

    They can also look at history, and know that slumps end, and every dog has its day. In the NBA, the longest any team has gone without seeing the postseason is ten years. In the NFL, it's 14 seasons for the Bills, the longest in any American league but baseball. (In MLS, if you were wondering, it's Toronto at 7, followed by Chivas USA at 4).

    The last time Sunderland finished higher than seventh in the top division was 1955; their last top-flight title was in 1936. Fulham have never, in their 116-year history, finished higher than seventh in the top division.

    What are the Sunderland and Fulham fans hoping for on opening day, beyond entertaining games? They know they won't win a title; they know they aren't getting a Champions League spot. The only positive they can expect out of their season is that maybe, if everything goes well and the cards fall right, they might end up in the next year's Europa League. They can watch the new players the team is bringing up and wonder if some day they'll be superstars--but they know that if they are, they'll be playing for another team, while their team cashes the transfer check and stays sitting in the middle of the table.

    Yes, there are possible negative consequences to the season; they can get relegated. In which case, the next season, they will have a realistic and achievable goal--to get back into the Premier League before their parachute payments run out and they go into administration. If I tell you, "In the next 90 minutes, I may hit you with a baseball bat, or I may not hit you with a baseball bat," do you get excited at the possibility of not getting hit with a baseball bat? That's the "excitement" of relegation in a league where your team has no chance at a championship.

    There's a reason a bad season in an American league is called a "rebuilding year"--because even the worst team is at least trying to build towards a goal, and given enough time, that goal is achievable. There are dead rubbers in both systems, but only in the Premier League and leagues like it can you say confidently before the season even starts that the only thing most of the teams can realistically hope for is not to get hit with the baseball bat of relegation.
     
  23. owian

    owian Member+

    Liverpool FC, San Diego Loyal
    May 17, 2002
    San Diego
    Club:
    Liverpool FC
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Even if you ignore the fact that they are playing to stay in the division (something to play for) still disagree.

    The best comparison I can come up with is College Football. 120+ teams and at the start of the season you are looking at what 6-7 with a realistic shot at the national championship. Yet people still turn out. Ole Miss averaged almost 60,000; Kentucky same thing, Tennessee 95,000. Those teams weren't going to win the SEC let alone the National Championship. Penn State 95,000, and they couldn't even play in a bowl. Michigan lead the country in attendance and they haven't won a national championship since 1997, and weren't realistically in the mix this year.
    So would you say all of those people are just watching glorified friendlies?
     
  24. KCbus

    KCbus Moderator
    Staff Member

    United States
    Nov 26, 2000
    Reynoldsburg, OH
    Club:
    Columbus Crew
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    That might be the best analogy to describe pro/rel I've ever heard. You win the internet.
     
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  25. jond

    jond Member+

    Sep 28, 2010
    Club:
    Levski Sofia
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    #575 jond, Apr 16, 2014
    Last edited: Apr 16, 2014
    I agree with much of this post. Your description of the American pro sports structure compared to a league like the EPL is correct. However, that's different than what you said earlier, that Sunderland and Fulham fans are basically watching a season full of friendlies. That part isn't true and that's the part I took issue with.

    I actually spend some time on both Fulham and Sunderland forums. I see little evidence they would agree with your statement. They take every match extremely seriously. But other than that I do agree with you.

    I'd also say however, that a chance at winning the title is not the only reason to follow a team/club. There's history, tradition, proximity, the feeling of this is my team which represents my city/town, there's various connections to team, etc.. When you talk about the "only positive coming from their season is that maybe, if everything goes well and the cards fall right, they might end up in the next year's Europa League" is largely an opinion based on your perspective, growing up in a culture where playoffs and draft picks to rebuild are the norm. That in no way means Sunderland or Fulham fans would see Europa League as being the only positive.

    NCAA basketball and football are incredibly popular, yet many follow for reasons other that winning it all. Tradition, family ties, it being your Alma mater, etc, all play a role. My family has deep connections to Syracuse football. Whether the team gets into a big time bowl game or the national championship game is hardly my family's meter for positives or success. They know they aren't Ohio St or Michigan. And I think comparisons to NCAA sports are closer than American pro sports in regards to comparing fandom to the EPL as most schools have no chance at ever winning a national championship and there is no draft. Yes there's recruits, but generally the top recruits go to the top schools, just like the top Euro players go to the the top clubs. And no one in my family would say a Syracuse game is anything near a friendly, just as I haven't seen anything like that when reading Sunderland/Fulham forums, or Bolton for that matter.

    You might be right that the consequence of certain games is roughly equal to a friendly(which would be true for American pro sports leagues as well, as whether the Raiders are competitive again in 3, 5 or 10 years, this year their games were pretty meaningless) but many fans don't see it that way. That's where I mainly disagree with you. Fulham/Sunderland fans might look at our way of doing things and think that's not any more exciting. Neither is right or wrong. People watch/follow for different reasons and where you grew up and the environment in which you became a fan weighs heavily.
     

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