Given Don Garber's latest, a lot of people are talking about how a European-style schedule might work. But, since the U.S. isn't a European country, I wanted to take a look at another option. Most leagues in the Americas play an apertura/clausura system. If our goals in changing the schedule are to avoid (1) the worst of the winter weather in northern cities, and (2) the sacred FIFA tournament dates in June and July, it seems to me that we could do worse than adopt that system. Here was my first thought: + Two 17-game seasons, running from February through late May or early June and from mid-to-late August through early December. + The spring season ("clausura") would probably be shorter (15 weeks or less) in order to avoid as much of February as possible. + Playoffs would take place as soon as possible after the Spring season, with a World Cup break in between in World Cup years and possibly Euro years (see below). One way in which this might work: + 4 divisions of 5 teams each + Play each team in your division home and away (8 games) + All teams in a division play games against one other division at home (5 games) and a second other division away (5 games) Repeat in the fall season, with different home/away pairings. The result is: + All teams in the same division play an identical schedule + Each team plays each other team every year + Each team plays each other team at home at least every 3 seasons (1 1/2 years) That would give you eight division winners for a year as your eight playoffs teams; if a team won their division twice these teams could either be replaced with the team with the next-best overall division record or they could "draw themselves" in the first round and get a bye. The All-Star game could be played as east vs. west in the winter in Hawaii, Pro Bowl style, or it could stay in late August with the current all-stars-vs.-big-Euro format. Drawbacks: + Games in February. In World Cup years, this is pretty much unavoidable, as the "clausura" needs to be done by June. Cheating into June in non-World Cup years and compressing 17 games into 15 weeks lets teams skip most of February. + Unpredictable playoffs. The season ends in May and the next season starts in August. The best time for the playoffs would probably be, for example: 2014: July (after WC) 2015: August (after Gold Cup and Copa America) 2016: July (after Euros) 2017: June (before Gold Cup) Switching the Gold Cup to every four years, or playing it at the same time as the Copa America, would let the playoffs come in June or July every year. Better yet, CONCACAF could switch the GC to the same time as the Euros; that would make a combined break in 2016 make more sense, help market the MLS playoffs and avoid future conflicts with the Copa America and WC qualifying. That's my brainstorm, anyway. What's yours?
I think using non-English names for seasons for sports leagues based in a primarily english language country is fucking stupid.
It will get an English name when it exists in an English speaking country. Until then...Deal with it. As for the merits or Romeo himself, I think it's a nonstarter. There's nothing wrong with it, but it's pretty foreign to the North American sports imagination and it doesn't really solve scheduling issues or weather issues in the North. It's a solution looking for a problem.
I assume MLS would get its marketing geniuses on the problem and rename them if this actually happened (which of course it probably won't.) I used "apertura" and "clausura" in the post because people know what those terms mean, and communicating meaning to others is kind of the point of using words. Would you prefer if I made up a couple of words and used them in the post title so as not to offend your delicate sensibilities? Personally, I like the schedule we have. But if MLS does eventually decide to play a schedule that avoids June and July, as Garber just gave lip service to, we would have to switch to something unfamiliar to the average US/Canadian sports fan--either an apertura/clausura or a season where the offseason happens in midseason and the league jumps right from the championship game to next year's training camp. Basically, everyone who is overreacting to Garber's announcement is assuming that it we changed the schedule we'd do it like Russia does, instead of the way the rest of the Americas does it. Besides, the apertura/clausura system is familiar to most Latino fans, who are about 1/3 of the MLS fan base. I thought it was at least worth thinking about how an American apertura/clausura (sorry, "Fall First Blood" and "Spring Final Conflict") system would work.
This kind of season is already done in minor-league baseball. In the smaller leagues, the first half (apertura) winners play the second half (clausura) winners for the championship. February might still be a little early for the northern teams to start, but it might work. But trying this fall-spring would be absolute suicide.
Try explaining the latter to a sports fan who doesn't know much about MLS. It could be good to reward clubs for winning the division twice so clubs have an incentive to try their best both times, but does anybody know a league in any sport anywhere in the world with playoffs where the number of playoff teams is not known at the start of the season?
Could just translate it to English. Opening=Apertura Closing=Clausura Opening Season Closing Season Makes enough sense.
you could do it the way Mexico does--2 short tournaments, 2 short playoffs (double the $$). And the one innovation-- in order to get an overall winner for the year have the spring tournament winner face off against the fall tournament winner unless 1 team already won both tournaments. March, April, May, June playoffs; August, September, October, November playoffs; One off between Spring tourney champion and Fall tourney champion on Thanksgiving weekend. It's cool but it would be a hard sell to the american public though...
"What might an MLS Apertura/Clausura look like?" A massive, incredible failure. So rather than go against just MLB for a majority of the season and the NFL, NBA, NHL and college football for a third of the season, you'd rather go against the NFL and college football pretty much throughout their existence, and toe to toe with NBA and NHL during their entire season. For a league that still has a number of teams that can't even get to 15,000 for most games. Yeah, let's do that - let's make it impossible to succeed in the first third of the season, and highly challenging for the rest of the season, just to appease the way the rest of the world. And for the cherry on top, let's also shut down during FIFA windows, even though only a percentage of teams have enough players for it to really impact the game.
Well, lets just say they went with this format, wether somebody here likes it or not. I think this could lead to an opprotunity to appease some other complaints. What if one season had a regular season champion and the other winning in a play-off? You can have a certain amount of games played for the Supporters season lets call it between august and december. how about every team faces everybody else once in 18 weeks? Get an equal amount of home and away games (I suppose in a league with an even amount of teams one team won't be played against, unless, the league is okay with having one more away game than at home) and who ever gets the most points wins the first half of the season. Then in Febuary to May There can be a more division orientated league leading to a championship. I'm not even going to try to make those divisions or bother with the playoff format save for one detail, but the league will figure it out for the teams that exist. But the one thing I want to come out of this second season would be that the SS winner faces off against the Playoff winner for the championship.... Besides coming acustomed to all of this and the risk of having a perpetually random playoff format(which can end up happening anyway) I think this can work
Say with a straight face that you think this change would help places like San Jose, Colorado, Dallas, Kansas City, etc., get to 20,000 a game. I want you to even try to do that. What is the point of appeasing complaints when all it will really do is send MLS the way of WUSA?
I wasn't saying that I wanted the league to switch to this format, I was just trying to think of a way that could work as far as league structure goes if they did. I notice alot of people saying they want to go to a regular season champion format like in Italy, but of course that won't happen, Garber and a majority of fans(including myself) like playoffs. However, I was thinking that in the Aug-Dec/ Feb-May format there can be an opprotunity to do both in a way that could work, thus appeasing those who complained about the prior playoff system. If somebody thinks of a better way please do, I was just throwing that out there,it was an incomplete structure I was making anyway. And yeah reading the post now it was a mess As for wether or not this sort of thing would hurt the league I don't think it would end the leagues existance. If they saw it was an utter failure they'll simply return to the spring- fall format and it would never be done again. Would it help teams like KC, Sj etc? I think so if there are more rivalry games to play, which should boost attendance if only due to away suppport showing up. But once again if you have a counter-argument by all means say so.
off JAN-FEB we play MARCH-APRIL-MAY-JUNE off JULY-AUG we play SEPT-OCT-NOV-DEC ================== Avoids the dead of winter AND the humid summer. Leaving summer open allows gaps for World Cup and Gold Cups etc - We are approaching the fact we control our own stadium dates. Yes, we may conflict with other sporting events in the USA, we always will. But we won't have scheduling-venue conflicts. - With our 20 team league 38 game, 19 in first session, 19 in second session I like it when the ENTIRE season is within the same year, not split over 2 years...If my team visited you in the first session, your team comes to my place in the second session etc... Records make more sense - I like MLB for this reason. = basically, instead of a winter or summer season, we still only have 1 complete season played completly within the same calender year. We simply take "weather breaks"
There are numerous deficiencies to work out in order to do a 2-stage season in the US, but one aspect I like is it helps align MLS to the international transfer windows. I hate seeing good players sold mid-season.
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkC7dcxZ5_Q"]YouTube - Juggalo News[/ame] Not even remotely safe for work.
As I listed in another thread, to appease the Northern Yankee and Canuck soccer folks and avoid the blizzard cold, MLS HQ and in the past the NASL HQ have elected to go with a baseball sched. and run right over the small matter of the big FIFA International events in the Summers that even luke warm soccer fans dig on. Thus, here in 2010 we finally got a Summer Break from Don and Co. It was long awaited and IMHO all that needs to line up MLS with what works up and down our Americas is having a continued Summer Break to go along with our traditional Winter Break. So indeed, I back a Apertura/Clausura set up Chapka. If anything, since The Don is wanting to EXPAND the playoffs in MLS, one could always have two playoff tournaments to generate, you guessed it folks, twice as much revenue. Personally, I would stay with what we have already had in the U.S. and Canada with the Conference rivalries and play the Opening Season (take your pick if that be Fall or Spring m-kay) with strictly Conf. home and home. Then the winner of the East plays the winner of the West for a League Cup one off on today, the second Sat in December. Then the Closing Season is strictly Inter Conf with the playoffs seeds determined by overall table standings that incorporate both Opening and Closing Seasons grand total points race. This allows Don and MLS HQ to keep the Conf thing they want and as well save face with dropping the current MLS playoff format all together to get it correct with a strait table 1-10 (or whatever they want as we grow) to crown MLS Cup Champions in early June. Yes of course Corky, for it is painfully obvious that words in Spanish like Apertura and Clausura are light years from the words in English like Aperture and Closure. You speak on non-English names as it was suggested in fuc{ing Chinese. Dang! Spanish is the language of association football in our side of the planet anyways...even the Brazilians, the masters of the game, they look to be humble and adjust by speaking a Portunol dialect.
With all threads currently advocating the "EPLizing" of MLS, this format actually embraces our traditions. Argentina divided it's season in 1990/91 and Bolivia did the same soon after, followed by Mexico in 1996/97. Today, at least 17 leagues in the Americas use the split season format, including every major league in CONCACAF save MLS (Mexico, Costa Rica, Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador). (Brazil, of course, has both a national league season and a state league season, which is somewhat different). Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apertura_and_Clausura Clearly, it's the typical format of CONCACAF, but what's less well known is that the American Soccer League -- one of the first fully professional leagues in the world which paid some of the highest wages of the day -- changed to a split season with playoffs in 1927/28, with the top two teams from the first and second seasons advancing to the playoffs. The ASL continued to have some version of the split season format for it's remaining years, and it's also proven to be a popular format in minor league baseball (which perhaps has given the format a "minor league" connotation in the United States, which is unfortunate). Still, while I'm not sure I'd advocate change simply for the sake of change, I'd much rather MLS consider a "Spring" and "Fall" season -- and that terminology too is our tradition -- than some of the other ideas on offer (single table, play through the winter, etc.). The split season format doesn't require MLS to play in bitter cold: The Spring season could be played in March though May with an early June playoff, with the Fall season in August through October with an early November playoff. Take a six week summer break until the end of July. Perhaps the start in March is two weeks earlier than now, but that's not impossible. So, what would a split season do for MLS? Several good points have already been noted regarding the transfer windows (especially regarding the mid-season arrival of many DPs) and avoiding the worst of the summer heat. But more importantly, when coupled with a playoff a 15 - 17 game season keeps teams in contention longer. Even the most dreadful teams get a fresh start in the fall and have an opportunity to adjust their rosters before the Fall season. Once the season kicks off, however, teams have much less margin for error in order to make the playoffs in a short season format -- I think FMF games tend to be more meaningful as a result. Besides, soccer doesn't have to completely stop in July. It provides an excellent opportunity for the league to expand its relationship with European clubs in preseason who can tour and train with MLS clubs sharing MLS facilities. If MLS were to host a major preseason tournament in July, big name clubs might find that very attractive IMO. Even typical friendlies could enjoy the spotlight. For example, I can see the Fourth of July weekend being a wonderful opportunity for some of these games. Hard core MLS fans may cringe at these friendlies, but they make money for the league and they stimulate interest in the sport, so they are going to keep playing them regardless of the calendar. In this format, however, these friendlies wouldn't have to be played during the regular season and the stress of MLS rosters would be lower. Finally, perhaps most importantly, it further aligns MLS with the FMF, which will present future opportunities. That's where the future lies IMO. A joint All Star game in July, perhaps even a joint championship game -- all of that gets much easier to do if the schedules are more closely aligned. The calendars don't have to be identical, but it would be helpful to share a common summer break. Just to be clear, I don't view MLS as broken. I don't think the league has to change anything. But if they are looking at some changes, I would suggest MLS explore this format.
And to back this up again: I didn't start the thread to advocate for an ap/cl system or to argue about whether the current system is broken. Personally, I like the summer season fine. But I do think it's interesting that when people are looking to change the system, they go straight to Europe instead of looking at what basically everyone else in our hemisphere is doing. I just wondered, if we did have to change at some point, why wouldn't an American-style system (apertura and clausura) be an option?
Very interesting way to look at it. As an American soccer fan (and I only speak for myself), the idea of a Spring/Fall season is more foreign to me than the "European" way of doing it. I heard of the Spring/Fall format a while ago and I'm still trying to get comfortable with it. Are there any examples of other sports in the US that do it this way or even something similar to it?