I'm not sure anyone is over-reacting. It was one game in a long season. My reaction based on watching the game is the same as yours, we should have won and given the circumstances we played well. But we can't continue to drop points against teams below us in the standings. Since our hot start we're 1-2-3 w-d-l and 1-1-1 at home. None of the teams in that 6 game set have more points than us and only The Revs are ahead on ppg. Playing well and "gutting out a tough road draw" will only get us so far. I know this team isn't good enough to win every time out. Soccer is a cruel game sometimes. I just don't see any point in painting this game in any other light besides that it was an opportunity not taken. It isn't the end of the world, but when you win 1 game in 6 against 5/6 teams out of the playoff race currently and only pick up 4 pts in 9 at home in that stretch, it worries me.
In a vacuum, sure, you take the point and go home happy. Having watched the game and seeing us destroy Seattle for the entire first half, including the 30 minutes we were playing 10v11, it's hard to be happy about it. It is a worrying trend, shut out in 3 of our last 6, conceded 7 in those games, scored 5. All against teams at or below us in the standings. Two more chances at home. I am hopeful we can right the ship and get the 6 points we need. Sunshine Brigade for sure. This particular result, I'm not happy about it.
It's a bad result and a missed opportunity. There is no two ways around it. The Sounders are objectively poor this season. Coming into the game they had been shut out 4 times in 6 games this season. Nicolas Lodeiro wasn't even in the squad. Just like you can't take separate the red card from the result, you can't separate those other things either things from the result. The past two years only 3 points has separated 2nd place from 5th in the Eastern Conference. You need to beat bad teams. And if two points is the difference in making the playoffs or playoff seeding nobody is gonna give Columbus extra credit for a draw with 10 men against a shit team missing their best player. These were points dropped, plain and simple.
I can see your point. Non soccer fans make fun of soccer for the diving, and I do dislike it. Even so, a part of me feels like if a foul wasn’t flagrant enough for the ref (who is human) to see, it seems like the league is being heavy handed to assess a penalty a week later. I know that probably sounds like weak sauce.
This is another thing that bugs me. It would be nice to have “rounds” each weekend like the Bundesliga. I realize that in MLS this can’t be because of scheduling conflicts. However, *three* games in hand?? It means you can’t really compare how teams stack up against each other in the standings. I mean, would it really be that hard to, say, set up the schedule such that, at the end of each month, the weeknight games resulted in teams having played a total number of games within one game of each other?
Games in hand are inevitable when teams are playing in other competitions. I don't think the rest of the league should take a weekend off because TFC had a midweek CCL game.
Well, the Bundesliga seems to do just fine when Dortmund and Bayern have midweek Champions League games. I can see one game in hand, maybe two for a week or two until that team’s schedule allows them to “catch up” midweek. But it’s not uncommon for an MLS club to have two games in hand for *weeks* at a time. I seem to remember someone had two games in hand on us for most of the end of last season. One could argue: was MLS making the schedule easy on TFC? TFC played two midweek games in Mar, yet did NOT have MLS games on three Saturdays in March and early April. THEN they wound up playing FOUR midweek games in the CCL during April and regular games on weekends Apr 14-May 4. Now, I don’t know all the intricacies of the CCL schedule; they keep changing the format around. (It seems that they should have more time between the semis legs and the finals legs, like they have in the past.) Even so, if TFC is an “elite team” (having won the Double), shouldn’t they be able to handle fixture congestion, like, well, everyone in the UEFA CL group stages on? And without scheduling help from the league?
MLS wants teams to do well in CCL. So they give them scheduling consideration. I don't have a problem with it. With 23 teams in the league, at least 1 will be on a bye every weekend anyway so there will always be an uneven number of games played until the end. Additionally, there are 2 teams this year opening new stadia so their schedules are unbalanced between early road matches and later home matches. The Crew are on the road most of 2 months for the fair and horse show but could take a bye or two then as well. There is a WC break to schedule around this season. It affects all teams equally but the remaining dates available might affect teams differently. Crew seem to want to drive down attendance so we get extra home games in cold weather, etc.
The Euro teams have no salary caps, so they can afford depth. They also play against a lot of crap in their domestic leagues.
Most of the top top teams in each league would be contenders with their second team. They kinda have to be to go though the punishing schedule they go through with the extra matches.