Here's my argument FOR playoffs in MLS: MLS, unlike most leagues in the world, uses an unbalanced schedule. It's not like other leagues where each team plays the other twice. In MLS, a team plays the four teams in its conference four times, three against four teams in the other conference and twice against the other team in the other conference for a total of 30 games. Just awarding the title to the winner of the regular season is unfair in this case. Again, whether or not eight teams in the playoffs are a little much is another argument, but MLS needs the playoffs. And my argument for promotion playoffs in the Football League in England: 1) With 24-team divisions, it makes the long regular season more interesting for more teams. 2) The third-place team tends not to win promotion while the lower seeds do, and not all promotion winners go straight back down. While the table might say one thing, the playoffs at least prove that there's definitely parity between the 3rd and 6th-place teams. They're both in the top 25% of the league anyway.
In Holland we have playoffs for promotion/relegation. The 1st division season is divided in 4 periods. Winning a period gives you a place in the playoffs. The playoffs are two groups. 2 1st division teams 1 Eredivisie team. Each group has 1 promotion place. All teams play each other home and away. Nr 18 of Eredivisie relegates, 1st Division champion promotes.
You seriously believe that anybody over here gives a toss how the MLS is organised?? You think that fans in europe gather around and debate how the MLS should be more like europe?? LOL get real..nobody gives a rat arse. You must be living on cloud 9 or something.
The closest thing in the States resembling a single table format is the writers and BCS determining the National Champion in NCAA Football. It's highly subjective and every year (for the most part) raises more question marks than answers. In America, we just live for the playoffs - the second season if you will, for those teams who played well enough in the regular season to earn that right. I agree with most that eight out of ten teams in the MLS playoffs is far too many, but with expansion, this number will more than likely stay the same but not look so unbalanced. The best team in the league, regardless how well it did in the regular season, must prove that they're the best when it matters most - during crunchtime. The playoffs in every major sport in America are what most sports fans here live for, and I imagine that one day it will be the same with MLS. Everyone just be very patient. We don't have to be like the rest of the world.
People, Why is this discussion taking place at all? There is one reason and one reason only MLS has playoffs (and why the playoffs are so ungodly long in other U.S. sports): $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ As for playoffs, the English system for promotion is the closest I've seen to being legit. The "winner" plays a maximum of three matches..... 3!
No, a championship being decided by a vote is the furthest thing from a round-robin single table format.
In and out popping stances (N's and Z's). Dearest diarist, Are we speaking of side-blotched lizards or Major League Soccer (M.L.S.)? Prehensible personalization is armoa of foe. It is not bad but good, if one considerably favours Europe. M.L.S. system works as well as others. It is much like Europeans with a twist of Americanization. Yes, only two whole teams are left in a semicoma, however; every game has importancy. Matter-of-fact league leans toward fans. You know. The ones especially verbiage of "I told you so!" Untapped wonderments such as domination by Spanish, Portuguese or Italians in cups. It is like a whistle in the dark. Furthermore everyone likes upsetters. American seedings thus intensifies magnitude of sports. Hence sixth standing team winning but still losing tutorial of interchangeableness. What more can be said about this? I'll say. I feel like a salesperson for an anti-virus software package company!
85% of the way through the season. The league winner is the team that finishes top of the table, with no playoffs. If this happened in MLS, you'd see a serious decline in attendance of lower ranked teams later in the season. People would say something like "We have no chance of winning the title, so why should I go see the team play?" I believe that playoffs in MLS are needed. After the league expands (maybe total of 14 teams within 2-3 years from now), they'll keep the top 8 teams qualifying for the playoffs, but have the bottom 6 miss out, rather than the bottom 2 now. MLS could go to the top 4/10 or the top 6/10 teams to qualify for the playoffs, but every game means more tickets sold and more chances for the league to be televised, which is something it needs at this time. And yes, there are rumors going around that the MLS offices are considering ending games after 90 minutes, unless a winner need be declared. As for American Football (NCAA), there's no good way to declare a champion, with more than 80 teams in the top division, and many regional conferences. What's more, is there's more than 2 major polls. You really can't do a points system, because each team only plays 12-14 games in a regular season. And that's a whole other discussion anyway.
Because everyone knows that performance in the postseason is VASTLY different than that in the regular season, and that's because it takes that regular season to be broken in, to prove one's mettle and test one's perseverance. The league season sets up the drama for the postseason.
Because in the league season, there is drama in itself as well. Is this club going to lose to that club again or do they have what it takes to pull the upset? Who will take the spoils from the occasional derby? What rivalries have begun to flare up over the years? How will the home crowd react when their beloved player, traded away in a front-office tactic, returns in the opponent's uni? There are stories made in the regular season that mean everything and nothing on the consequences for the postseason.
The season is meaningless if the games mean nothing, which in the example you give is very much the case. It's a bigger, more illustrious version of that old school ground favourite next goal wins.
The games mean plenty, both to local supporters in this respect, and to the league at large as clubs vie for playoff position. You want your team to be in a winning position in the regular season such that you have your second leg playoff quarterfinal at home, whether to make up goals on aggregate or build on them.
1. MLS will never stop the playoffs, period. 2. I'm ok with that, the American public lives for the big event. 3. In Europe teams can play for UEFA Cup and CL places, in effect, teams are trying to make the playoffs, just in a diffrent year. 4. MLS will keep 8 teams in the playoffs for a long time. Just wait for the league to expaind to have fewer teams as a percentage make the post season. 5. I would like to see MLS adopt a single table. Because they still cant find a fair way to seed team. (top 4 in each division or best 8 overall, but what if the worst team in one division is better than the 4th place team in another. Should East have one playoff and West another with winner meeting in the final? But what if one division is stronger than the other? etc.) 6. IIRC, most nations in the western hemisphere have some kind of playoffs. So its not a soccer thing, its a cultural thing.
That's another issue altogether. There is a need in the fourth largest nation in the world for regional rivalries that give rise to different styles of play that a single table doesn't show.
This entire thread started because someone reckons a tight, to the wire title race is a bad thing?? This is something I'd expect from someone who only started watching football at the last world cup.
Face it, the season is nothing more than a bunch of friendlies before the big cup competition takes place.
but it's still effectively like taking the first three from the Olympic 1500m final and making them run a separate 100m sprint to decide the medals. Surely the idea of a championship is to decide who is the best over a season, not just the best over one month at the end of it. Why should a team's form in the last month outweigh everything that has gone on beforehand? It'd be like winning a match 3-1, but the other team getting the points because they scored the last goal. Maybe they finished stronger, but the rest of the game has to count for something or it's pointless. I'm sure play-offs exciting, but it just seems to be a contrived way of giving the impression of a close contest. And it also devalues the rest of the season. That might not seem so bad for MLS, where the normal season is pretty short anyway, but being asked to prove yourself all over again after a 9 month hard slog of a season is taking the piss. It just seems contrived, purely for the benefit of people who want artificially introduced excitement rather than the real thing. Saying that though, I believe in single division leagues such as MLS the play-offs are needed as there aren't the other challenges that 'conventional' leagues offer. Also, for all the much-vaunted claims of parity that are often made, points-wise the league table there is just as lop-sided as most leagues in Europe. The best teams still average 2 points a game and the worst 1.
No, it's not just like when a team misses a penalty from a foul. That's just a kick in the balls for that game alone. The playoffs (in MLS) just (as others have said) wipe out the point of the season. Wipe out the effort needed to reach the top over the course of a 'long' season. It may be the pre-cursor to the excitement - but as we all know it's damn hard work to top the league - and it isn't being rewarded. The winner of the following cup competition is however. They are aessentially 2 different competitions with different styles of play - for example before the FA Cup kicked off this year, I wouldn't have said the best 4 teams in England were Arsenal, Southampton, Sheffield Utd and Watford. But that's what would be suggested if we suppose the FA cup is accurately reflecting the playoffs. That said - it works for the US. Support for teams is still incredibly shallow - the playoffs give people reasons to support your team until the end of the season, rather than be put off supporting them for the sake of it, because your given team won't win anything.
I will take it that you've reading nothing that I've written. Nonetheless, all sport is a series of friendlies that mean nothing except to itself and those that follow it. This isn't the cure for cancer. What greater importance can you draw from an artificial construct?
No, not really. I equate a regular season/postseason format to a marathon. You can have a great run at the start and even midway through the race, but if you're not in the lead pack down the stretch, it doesn't matter. Then it's up to those in the lead pack. They've done the first 25 miles, suffered draining fatigue and risked debilitating injury, who among them has what it takes to finish, and finish first? You can do great for that first 25 miles, but if you don't cross the tape, what's the point? Ideally, in a regular season, if you don't play, you don't get a chance in the playoffs. You have to position yourselves among the top in order to play beyond the regular season, and you can't do that if you don't rack up the wins. And then there's the postseason. Your players are tired, injured or both, that great new style of play of yours that dazzled the league has now been figured out by the rest of the field, and now you have the pressure of larger crowds and a wider television audience (which in itself is not a genuine reason for playoffs - if MLS were selling out in the regular season I would still favor the postseason). The question is does your team have what it takes to finish?
So, what if in this hypothetical marathon, the guy in the lead is ahead by minutes at the 25 mile mark, the race is stopped and the top 30 guys are all grouped together for a lap round the track to decide? So now we've got someone that can run a marathon in 2.5 hrs in the same group as someone that has 3hrs as his best time. The 3 hr guy, buy some stroke of luck has a good run (literally in this case), and is proclaimed the winner, and by definition meant to be the best - but he isn't. I simply isn't the fair and right, nor correct (in both senses of the word) way to find the best in the league. Of course, as before, that said, it's the only way the game is going to get a foothold in the US. And regarding the "this isn't a cure for cancer" comment - this sport is considerably more important than this suggests. In this country alone it employs many thousands upon thousands of people, it is a bona fide industry. A lot rests on a clear definition of who is best. I would expand - but I have to sort the flat battery in my car out.
To me that disproves your point rather than proves it. In England, with 7 or 8 games to go the 'lead pack' was Man Utd, Arsenal & Newcastle. Only those that are in the lead pack have earned the right to race for the title. The play offs, in the marathon analogy, would allow a whole bunch of runners who were nowhere near the lead pack the chance the re-join the race, all to create a contrived close finish. ps the award for the world's least exciting play-off race would go to the recently collapsed British Ice Hockey League. 8 teams qualified for the play-offs from a league of 8 teams. There are plenty of sports in Britain that have play-offs, but they are normally the ones who need some kind of attention-grabbing gimmick to get TV interested.