Game: FC Dallas vs Los Angeles Galaxy Date: Sunday, October 21st Time: 3:00 PM [CST] Location: Toyota Stadium, Frisco, Texas, United States of America Weather Forecast: Sunny/Windy; H 72, L 49 Competition: Major League Soccer Last 5 for Opponent: W-D-D-L-L Record & Standing of Opponent: 8-17-8 | 32 pts | 11th in the West (22nd overall) Live TV: KTXA-21 (DFW); FCDallas.com (DFW); Spectrum Sportsnet - Los Angeles (Los Angeles); Direct Kick/MLS Live (Out of Market) Radio: KWRD 100.7 FM [English]; KFLC 1270 AM La Voz del Pueblo [Spanish] It's all over but the crying.
I'm guessing that a team ahead of them will win and so even if FCD does the season is over. If so it will be the most disappointing season ever. Not the worst, just most disappointing.
Please let this be the last time I have to see this disappointment of a club this year. 3-0 LA? Is that even possible? It is this year.
Still, when you have to rely on an expansion team to get a road result, you have to examine what you did wrong earlier in the season. The win today was nice, but it was only FCD's second win in the last 15 games.
And one of them had very clearly shut it down after a certain point. BTW, Messrs. Followill and Davis made a very good point on the broadcast yesterday: How costly did that last second goal that FCD conceded in San Jose end up being?
I kept thinking about that too and remembered how bitter I felt after that garbage. Then I thought that's stupid to dwell on considering our form the last 3 months. The fact that a team with -21 GD had 2 more wins than us is absolutely unacceptable.
It's actually mathematically plausible. There are two ways to get points: wins and draws. So if a team has more wins and the same number of point, they've got fewer draws... a lot fewer (since you need to get rid of three draws for each additional win). BUT... The total number of games have to add up to 34. So if you increase the number of wins by one and drop the number of draws by three, you're two games in the hole, so you need to increase the number of losses by two in order to have the same number of points. So what this all means is that by giving the tiebreaker to the team with the greater number of wins also means that you're giving the tiebreaker to the greater number of losses. And when that's the case, it's pretty darn likely that the team with more losses is gonna have a worse goal differential. So yes, mathematically, MLS' "most wins" tiebreaker is actually also a "more losses" tiebreaker. And in our case: FCD had two fewer wins, four fewer losses, six more draws, and a 21 more goals in the GD.
I'm seriously not asking this as a bitter loser but what's wrong with having GD as the main tiebreaker? Isn't the point of soccer to score more goals?
The league wanted to incentivize wins. It's just that they either didn't think about unintended consequences or they didn't worry about them. BTW, FCD wasn't the only team that was caught by this: Atlanta (15-9-10, 55 pts., +30 GD) finished behind Chicago (16-11-7, 55 pts., +14 GD). Of course, there weren't as grave consequences because both are in the playoffs and will be hosting first-round playoff games this week as the #3 and #4 teams.
Even though this rule change really sucked for Dallas this year, it will probably turn out for the best for fans in the long run. Too many MLS coaches were content to grind out draws so the could “get something” from road games. Hell, San Jose fired Dominic Kinnear mid season after a 1-0 home victory over RSL. New hire Chris Leitch was told to go after wins aggressively and it backfired several times when San Jose burned out too early and got stomped. On the other hand, he finished the second half of the season with exactly the same PPG that Kinnear had the first half, but he did it with fewer ties and more losses/wins. He realized that a win was actually worth more than 3 ties. The Quakes have been a boring team to watch and play against for most of the Wondo era. They would spend the entire game just grinding out ties and low scoring victories. Colorado has been a poster child for this kind of play and even RSL was pretty bad before Mike Petke. If the rule change means more guys like Leitch, Petke and Tata Martinez are hired and less Dominic Kinnear, Mark Watson and Adrian Heath types, then all fans will win (and there will be less 0-0 draws and more wacky 3-2 wins in injury time)
Meh. Incentivizing ANYTHING through tiebreakers is a dumb idea, since almost nobody cares about the damn things until the last month of the season, and not a day before. Tiebreakers should be about establishing a fixed objective method for establishing who the better team is from two or more teams tied on points. The league's previous tiebreaker, head-to-head record -- which FC Dallas would've also lost -- was a much better tiebreaker. Goal difference, goals scored, those would've also been better. But breaking ties based on the number of wins or losses or draws will always be problematic, since they are not independent and they always have to add up to 34, and changing one necessitates the opposite change in the others to make sure that the number of points stays the same and the number of games remains 34, which leads to some unintended consequences. If MLS changed the tiebreaker to "fewest losses," then it would take the team with the most draws and fewest wins. But if the league wants to incentive wins, then do it with the thing that coaches and players care about 34 times a season: the point system. Make wins worth more points than three. Or hell, just get rid of points all together and rank teams on wins, with the number of draws as the first tiebreaker.
One of the very best tie breakers ever developed was the away goals rule on two legged playoffs. Much better than deciding on PKs and really opened up attacking soccer.
Any one of those goals would have qualified FCD for the playoffs. If all calls had been correct they might have had a first round bye. I believe Urruti especially had to be shaken by so many of his goals called back and it affected his confidence. He had to be wondering what he had to do for a goal to count.
On the flip side, some of the dumbassery that took place defensively cost FCD goals that would've put them in playoffs. One that comes immediately to mind was Hyka's last-second goal that turned a road win in San Jose into a road draw.
Sure. Anytime you miss out on a tie breaker any dumb play all year that resulted in a goal against or a missed goal would have changed everything. And oh boy were there a lot.
So what's worse: missing the playoffs on a tie breaker or losing the wild card game 5-0 to Vancouver?
This was by far the better fate, because not making the playoffs is a good way to get your attention that changes have to be made. I mean, if they had made the playoffs and gotten pantsed 5-0, then they could always say, "Well, we're a playoff team. We just need to do a little tweaking and we'll get it right" and not really make the changes that are needed, plus there's the whole "getting pantsed 5-0 on national TV" thing.