S*it teams can get lucky and beat 'better' teams on any given day, look at the Chelsea v Burnley game last weekend! Are we supposed to believe that Burnley are a better team than last seasons champions? Yes they won a 'one off' game (it happens) but Chelsea will finish a long way above Burnley at the seasons end, Wigan won the FA cup by beating Manchester City and yet were relegated the same year! It is pretty obvious to all that City were by far a better team. You cant value the quality of a team based on just one game! Everybody plays everybody twice home and away, you can't argue with the final table after that!
Manchester City choked when they faced pressure. That makes them inferior according to most Americans. If you can't win in a must-win, you're not good enough, luck be damned.
Also, "you can't argue with the final table" -- yes, you can. Most Americans would say the champions in that situation have not been tested in a win-or-go-home situation and are not legitimate champions.
But they didn't 'choke' in the high pressure league games!?? Also Wigan lost a vast majority of games they played that season - they finished below just about every other club in the league! Are we seriously supposed to think that because they won a one off game they are the best team of that year!? It just doesn't 'wash'.
High pressure league games? Did they face any single game where if they lost they would have been eliminated? Americans would say that if you haven't won in that exact situation, you haven't proven yourselves. Also, Wigan won a whole bunch of one-offs in a row in the FA Cup, not just one game.
My point is not that the English or American way of crowning a champion is better or worse. My point is that the very idea of which team is "best" is defined by sporting culture and is not at all universal. Leagues throughout the Americas tend to decide their champions by some form of playoff. That's the sporting culture of the Americas, not only the United States: that the champions must be decided head-to-head on the field.
They most certainly did! Including a game that condemned them to relegation! Pretty 'high pressured' if you ask me! Are you seriously trying to tell me that Wigan were the best team that season! Better than the Premier League Champions, better than Man U, Liverpool, Arsenal, Chelsea and all the other clubs that finished above them in the league because they scraped a win in the FA cup final! Really!!? That is completely and utterly ridiculous! Chelsea won a record 30 of 38 games last season but are we supposed to believe that West Ham are a better team because they knocked Chelsea out of a cup competition!??
That's fair enough but the 'best' teams don't always in 'one off' games, if that was the case there would be no such thing as 'giant killing' in the FA Cup!
In the United States and in many Latin American countries, if you fail to win in a high-pressure one-off, you simply cannot be considered the best team. Teams that win the regular season and then lose in the playoffs often get even more ridicule than the team that finished last. Take the 2015-16 Golden State Warriors, for example. They broke the record for most wins in a NBA regular season, but lost in the final. When they won the 2017 title, it was seen as redemption for a failed 2015-16 season. The 2015-16 squad will be forever remembered as the only one in NBA history to lead the final series 3 games to 1 and then choke in three consecutive games to lose.
Oh, Jesus. I don't give a flying ******** who won Best Picture in '77 or '78. The point was it doesn't ********ing matter whether you "refuse to accept" something or not. It's a ludicrous proposition. Oh, I refuse to recognize this team as champion or Barry Bonds as the home run king. Who the ******** cares? Is it like refusing to recognize Taiwan? Do people cut off diplomatic relations with teams if they "refuse to recognize" them? Do they cut off trade with the Kansas City Royals because of Don Denkinger? Jesus.
Yeah there is. Our second division teams cannot make that jump in four months. They are not infrastructurally sound enough, would have to make instant changes to how they do business to be competitive and that's just for starters. But then, there's the counter-argument, which goes something like... Everywhere that doesn't have our fairly unique set of challenges. Everywhere that has done it for 100 years. Everywhere that small clubs matter to their hamlets. Everywhere the sport is much more popular than here Look, we are not making this shit up. "Economic reality" is actually REALITY. Three plus three is ACTUALLY six. You've yet to hear an argument why it wouldn't work? Have you been reading this ********ing thread for hundreds of pages? And who are they going to sell it to, genius? Someone who is willing to not only pay them "their investment back and more," (which in the case of the Krafts and the Hunts is hundreds of millions of dollars) but okay with the very thing you believe those "Boohoo" owners are afraid of? Just say, "Look, I'm European, this is what I'm used to" and be done with it. Stop trying to pretend no one has presented arguments based on economics, time, common sense and the tastes of the American sporting public, which you seem to know ********-all about. "Harming our soccer culture." That's funny. We had barely a soccer culture 20 years ago. Quiet as it's kept, we seem to be growing and doing okay. I think we'll be fine without you.
The title character in Braveheart was a Scottish patriot and a leader of Scottish armies in battles with the English in the late 1200s and early 1300s. He eventually was captured by the English and subjected to a particularly slow and agonizing execution. I think I have just recited everything in the entire movie that is historically accurate.
I said that I largely agree. I just find the Belgian system (which is also similar to Denmark & Costa Rica) an interesting alternative.
Hardly a surprise given that in a closed league system teams don't have control of their own destiny and cannot gain promotion by their performances on the field of play. Only when one's cartel membership fee has been accepted does it make sense for most teams to start doing the kind of investments that teams in pro/rel leagues often do prior to promotion.
Even teams in a league that spent years claiming it was trying to overtake MLS? I'm not just referring to Minnesota. Even before being awarded an expansion franchise, Minnesota was at the top of the NASL in terms of front office organization and infrastructure. If the whole league was trying to overtake MLS, wouldn't everyone in it have an incentive to invest? But no, they were instead spending their money on stupid publicity stunts like threatening to sue USSF over D1 status when they were still getting waivers on D2 requirements.
Which is a good indication as to how difficult it is to "promote" an entire league of teams as opposed to an individual team.
Gambling on promotion is what got so many Championship teams into $10s of millions in debt. I can't see American owners teaching those sort of risks. Anyway, San Antonio, Phoenix, Orange County, Tampa, Real Monarchs, Louisville, maybe Indy and others have built or are looking to build their own stadiums even without pro-rel.
Three things: -There's something of a difference between American-style playoffs and the FA Cup. Wigan Athletic would not have been in any American-style playoff that season. The FA Cup is a competition that features every single team in English soccer at every level, not just the eight best (or whatever hypothetical number you'd come up with) teams in the Premier League. Nobody's arguing that Wigan was actually the best team in English soccer that year, they wouldn't have even qualified for an American-style playoff...not to mention the fact that an American-style playoff would not have the best teams half-assing it early in the competition. It's not the same thing at all. -Has it ever occurred to you that the most exciting thing that normally happens at the end of a Premier League season is the relegation battle? There is the odd year where there's a battle for the championship, but it doesn't happen often. Whereas the most exciting thing to happen at the end of an American sports season is the playoffs, where the best teams over the course of the year face off. Is highlighting the sub-standard exploits of a handful of bad teams really better than a playoff between the best teams to decide the title? I know the counterargument is that it's not supposed to be about excitement, it's supposed to be about deciding who the best team is. But if that's the case, you're kind of saying that sports are better as a desultory slog, so long as we have a "true champion." That just doesn't make much sense to me. -Finally, to the point of needing a "true champion," there really is no such thing. To say that there's never a situation where you can ever question that the Premier League winner is the best team in the league is a touch ridiculous. You're telling me, for instance, that you're 100 percent sure that there's no way Manchester United might have been better than Manchester City in 2012-13? That 8-goal differential is completely inarguable to you? And let's pretend that the QPR defense didn't decide to start summer vacation three minutes early against Man City in that year's final game. In the hypothetical world where Man City doesn't win that game, knowing what you know now, you wouldn't have any creeping doubts that Man City might, in fact, be the best team in the league, even though United would have the trophy?
What you say is that American sport fans donot like competitions except knock out rounds. Well, I would say: "Cut the competition crap and put up a knock out system to decide the champion." In American eyes the "true champion" of the Netherlands would be Vitesse as the cup winner and not Feyenoord.