Suspended for Leg 1: SKC Rubio Portland None Suspended for Leg 2 if they get a yellow: SKC Espinoza Portland Chara Ridgewell Flores Valeri
They say SKC has a 65% chance of making it into the MLS final, but only a 21% chance of winning it. But, we know anything can happen during the playoffs. https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/soccer-predictions/mls/?ex_cid=rrpromo
it's pretty much a certainty that espinoza will get another yellow there. it sure would be nice if valeri and chara got one as well.
Right now, would trade yellows for Espinoza and Chara, no hesitation. And I am a card carrying member of the Roger Appreciation Society. Even more than Valeri, Portland is just crippled when Chara is out. The 65% chance to move to the final seems about right. Portland has been a better match up for us lately. Indeed, would have given RSL a better chance to knock us out (which almost happened). As for the cup final at 21%, meh. It's a one game for all the marbles affair with quality on both sides of the ball. It's not like SKC are going to have a 'just an honor to be nominated' vibe. FWIW, would prefer ATL to NYRB.
Gotta remember that 21% is a conditional probability. If we make it to the final, that number goes up significantly.
Right... 21/65 = 32% -- shown differently -- 65% * 32% = 21% So right now, the model is saying we have a 32% chance of winning MLS cup if we advance to the final. The models are also calculating likelihoods for each remaining team on the opposite side of the bracket too. Once the opponent is known the 32% may go up or down depending on the strength of that known opponent.
Right. Meant that to be implicit in my 'meh'. More to my point - which I could have just stated - is that while either opponent will have a (potentially much) higher probability in the final, it's a one-off game and we can hang with them.
Yup, and New York has the higher perceived strength since they won the SS, so it'd move up a bit if we faced Atlanta and down a bit if we faced New York. Not significantly, but a couple of points.
Correct. And I don't want to hear about the red card. It was an earned red card, totally legit, and we took advantage. If they play the same way in the back line and we expose it again, coolio.
I did get the sense that we came out lucky in that match, though. Not that the red card was unearned or we got a cheap result or anything, just that Atlanta was the overall better team but it just happened to be our day. If we make it to the final, we're going to have to finish the season with a damn good 90 minute performance to lift any silverware.
The MLS playoff yellow card accumulation rules are just stupid. Five yellows to get suspended during the regular season, then two to get suspended during the playoffs. Either its always two or its always five. Why change the rules just to be more like a "European" tournament. If last Sunday's game was a regular season match, there is no way that Russell or Espinoza would have let RSLs goons (Beckerman and Mulholland) kick and foul Gutiérrez repeatedly. Portland are a totally different team without Chara or Valeri. I am no fan of Chara (another goon) or how he plays. If he gets a yellow in the first game, Portland have no chance in KC. So, do KC go to Portland and just try to bait Chara into a yellow? If I were PV, that would be part of my strategy.
I also hate the 2 yellow card rule for the playoffs. I can understand why they do it. The regular season yellow card total is wiped clean when the playoffs start. Since the playoff schedule is short compared the complete regular season, a lesser number of cards is probably warranted. I think 3 is probably a better number for the playoffs, but 5 is too many. My preference is to have all of their best players on the field against all the best for SKC and let the best team win.
I hate any kind of yellow card accumulation rule. There. I said it. Yellow cards are so insanely inconsistent from ref to ref, game to game, and play to play. And I've never understood why soccer is so willing or wanting to suspend players (especially on the biggest stages) in the first place. It's an incredibly harsh system of repercussion that I think takes away from the product on the field and the overall entertainment value. It's so easy to point to examples like Matt Besler missing the game against Mexico because of an Oscar-worthy performance by Joel Campbell. Hell, we shouldn't even need to look at the extremes. Even if you ignore the players who were hard-done by on insanely bad yellow card calls, why in the world do we think two tactical fouls to stop a counter over the course of 360 minutes played equals a suspension? That's INSANE. The intent of the rule is flawed. The intent it to keep guys like Diego Chara or Kyle Beckerman from playing bruisers game in and game out and being able to get away from it. I say: who cares? Soccer is a physical, tactical game. Breaking up play is a part of the strategy of that game. And these players will still always be limited on how hard they can push the limits with red cards. It's not like doing away with yellow card accumulation means Chara could just all of a sudden go HAM on every challenge or anything. I've never understood why it's a thing, why it's appealing, or why people stick up for it. It puts unreasonable expectations on players and referees, it keeps star players from playing in the biggest games, it forces players to play overly cautious, it detracts from the overall playstyle and field product, and degrades the entertainment value to viewers. Yellow card accumulation is stupid. /rant.
I believe your analysis of the rule is flawed in that while it may harshly impact an individual player (and I would prefer to go to a 3 card rule rather than 2), the real impact is preventing the team as a whole from playing too rough. If all 10 field players could pick up a yellow in game 1 without any repercussions if they all picked up yellows in game 2, the game could become very dangerous.
I agree the yellow card rule has a purpose, but changing the yellow card accumulation rule for the leagues showcase tournament is stupid. MLS allows plenty of physical play during the regular season, where it takes 5 cards to get a one game suspended. Then, on a dime, they arbitrarily change the rules back to 2 cards equals a one game suspension. It's dumb. UEFA Champions League uses a 3 card accumulation over the length of the tournament, with all cards erased at the quarter final. The 3 card rule would make more sense for MLS IMO. We all want to see the best players play in these games. Vividox has some great points about how arbitrary and inconsistent referees are with handing out yellow cards between games. Why should innocuous fouls like the 90 plus minute time wasting yellow, or Rubios hand ball, cause a player to sit out of a playoff match? Why do those yellows count the same as the card Beckerman gets after his 150th foul of the game? As Vividox said, the game is physical. SKC started running around like idiots without a plan around the 80th minute last week. That last 20 minutes was BEGGING for SKC to commit some hard fouls and slow play down. But we didn't, and I have to think one reason is this stupid tournament yellow card rule. Only Espinoza and Shelton committed a hard foul in that 20 minute near disaster. I have to think that under a different set of rules, our CBs (and Seth) could have delivered a few Beckermenesque body blows. All that said, PV could have just used his third sub to bring in another CB, but that's another story.
*raises hand and clears throat* I do. If the best a player can do is hack down an opponent making an offensive move through the middle (which is what you describe above with Chara and Beckerman), then that player deserves a yellow card. One could argue that persistent infringement is not called often enough. And if the defender does this so much in two games in a condensed playoff bracket, they deserve to miss a game. And I say this with full awareness that Roger is going to miss either the second leg or final after getting another yellow. He can't help himself. My fervent hope is that if SKC goes up then Vermes will make a move like bringing in another defender to hold back the Portland onslaught and not leave the midfielders so exposed. Regarding the tactical philosophy, Vermes was on 810 earlier this week with Petro and said something I found discouraging. He basically said that he only knows how to coach to win a game. This was a coach whose team coughed up two goal leads twice in the last game. I'm not sure if this was Vermes overreacting to the Moreno comments about 'juvenile mismanagement' or what. But I thought PV had some sense for tactical adjustments to augment defense and hold a lead. What happened on Sunday afternoon was really poor from SKC; damn near a disaster. Hoping PV observed that and is thinking about how he might approach things differently if we find ourselsves up by two games in second half of the return leg.
No one will miss the final due to yellow card accumulation. Only a red card in the second leg would lead to such a suspension.