Yawn...is there nothing about MLS that Toronto doesn't complain about? They're fast becoming the Joe Lieberman of MLS.
Move along. Nothing to see here. Another Eurosnob spending all his time with his hand in his pants watching the EPL.
Don't you love the misty-eyed columnists pretending that professional sports - in the US, Canada, England, Spain, wherever - is not about money? BTW, Derby County was mathematically eliminated from the Premiership title by their 8th game last year (October).
Awesome article. Relegation/promotion and single-table with no playoffs. Genius!!!! Why didn't anyone think of this before? ----sigh----
Not defending the author, but I think his point was that teams at the bottom still need to fight hard the rest of the season because of the relegation threat. Which, in his view, is preferred over a system whereby teams that are sub-par (NY) and teams like LA (who hadn't won a game for three months and still had a shot to make the playoffs near the end) have a chance to win it all. On a personal note, I think implementing relegation at this time is simply not feasible. And is not that easy to implement as the author seems to be suggesting. But I do understand what he's driving at. In his opinion, the Crew would be the undisputed champion of 2008. Can't say I totally disagree with that argument there.
Any point the author makes is lost in his seeming ignorance of the mechanics and logistics of soccer in this country and in his country. If you can find someone willing to slap down multi-millions knowing that the chance exists his franchise could end up playing in out-of-the-way towns in tiny stadiums totally off the sports radar, I have a map to Shangri-La I need to speak to this person about.
Ah, the old pro/rel makes late season games MEAN something argument. Tell that to KC, NY, DC, Colorado, and FSL. All of which had somethingt to play for throught he final minute of the final game this season, but would have been safe from any reasonable relegation for a few games before that. Pro/rel over playoffs shifts which games are important, it usually doesn't create a significantly higher number of important games.
Especially given that there is no division to relegate to or promote from. Other than that little detail, it should be a snap
Gareth Wheeler is less of a columnist and more of a late-night talk show host - literally. He hosts the "Casino Rama" Grill Room on at 11pm on SunTV and discusses sports and pop culture with his guests. He's supposed to be opinionated and slightly controversial.
Hey, problem solved: Relegate the bottom two teams, their cities and fans, to CANADA Promote the top two Canadian teams, cities and fans, to the United States.
We could just have the Canada Cup series winner play in MLS the following year and the two losers play in USL1. I'm sure BMO Field would continue selling out every game for USL1 action just like the Lynx did!
I think the biggest reason MLS will not shift to pro/rel soon is because of the franchise fee. Owners are coming into the league forking out 35-40 million to automatically be gifted a top-level US/Canada soccer team. Now wouldn't the owners throw a hissy-fit if that big bulk of money spent for their guarenteed top-level team would lose its guarentee and be possibly relegated. I am sure owners would not be forking out this much money for an MLS team that is not guarenteed to remain at top-level for at least the next 5 years. So stop complaining about pro/rel, and complain about single-entity.
If the article writer had been serious, he would have concluded by demanding TFC, Montreal, Vancouver, and Ottawa start their own Canadian D-1 league.
At least Toronto seems to give MLS some ink. I disagree about relegation, but the playoffs are pretty crap. I say have a Single Final, Best in East vs Best in the West. Both get into the CCL as do the US Open Cup winner and runner up. 2-5 get into Superliga. If there is overlap it just comes down the table.
To psychics perhaps. As bad as they were, nobody else would have bet too much on them getting a points tally that low at the time. Pro sports are driven by money. Professional anything is driven by money. That doesn't mean that making money is the motivation behind sports though.
Thats impossible, 8 x 3 = 24 even if Derby were 24 points behind the leaders after eight games (the leaders invariably being the only team to have won eight straight to gain the maximum points difference, which no team did last year) Derby would still have had 28 games left to stay up, 28 x 3 = 84, more than enough points available to mathematically stay up. They didn't get relegated until well into 2008 around April time.
Exactly. But that would require Canada to grow up. They could pull it off, as well. But why do any heavy lifting?
I think at the very least the MLS should stop rewarding crap teams by giving them top SuperDraft Positions. Either scrap the draft or have top draft to to the club that doesn't get into Superliga or CCL. So if team 1-8 get into those. The 9th place team gets first pick, 10th gets the second pick, 11th gets third pick and so on