Friday, February 16, 2018

Just waiting for the season to start. With a slightly less exciting Pulisic to watch and McKennie being hurt I can only hope for more Tyler Adam like breakout players.

I’m sure I’ll be disappointed though with an even higher % of foreign players starting vs domestic compared to last year’s decrease.

 

A look at MLS parity compared to other leagues using the Gini coefficient
https://www.prosoccerusa.com/mls/mls-parity-compared-using-gini-coefficient/

This is why I love MLS - lots of change & parity leaves interesting uncertainty every season. Too often I look at the game listings for La Liga and EPL and think I know how the result will turn, sigh, and decide not to watch. Not so with MLS.

 

I'm in the 0.01% that likes the fact that different leagues have different systems. I like it all. What I don't want is every league in the world to adopt the exact same system, whatever that system may be.

 

This is an exaggeration. Chelsea recently lost consecutive matches to Bournemouth and Watford, and lost earlier in the season to West Ham. And Swansea beat Liverpool and Arsenal on consecutive weekends.

While the likes of Chelsea, Liverpool, and Arsenal are more likely than not to defeat the Bournemouths, Watfords, and Swanseas of the world, any given match is far from a sure thing. Relegation-threatened teams defeat championship contenders every year. So no one should forego watching a Premier League match simply because a big club is pitted against a small club.

The parity in MLS is certainly higher than in the Premier League; but that's not something to uncritically celebrate. In other words, there can be too much parity. You want a league to have an identity connected to its strongest teams. For instance, while Toronto is one of NYCFC's biggest rivals, and I want to beat them, I also want them to have several more good seasons for the good of the league, so that the league's identity can be to some extent tied to a consistently strong team. It's not bad if a league develops an "elite" tier, just so long as that group is not so exclusive that it never changes.

Think back to when you were a kid. Now, because I came to soccer only in 2004, and to MLS much later than that, my childhood references are to the other sports. When I reflect on my childhood in the 1970s, I think of a period in the American League when the dominant teams were the Orioles and the A's, later the Yankees and the Royals; a period when the National League was ruled by the Reds, Dodgers, and Phillies. The NFL at the time was the domain of the Steelers, Cowboys, Raiders, Vikings. If you move ahead to the 80s, you come to an NBA defined by the Lakers, Celtics, Sixers, and Pistons.

The point is that every league's identity is defined by its best teams during a given period. So, for that reason, I easily accept that the image of the Premier League is tied to Manchester United, Chelsea, Arsenal, Liverpool, and Manchester City. And if MLS were to have a sustained period during which it was dominated by three or four teams, I would not complain. Of course, I would like it best if my team were amongst that group of dominant ones; but, even if it were not, I would appreciate the elevation of the stature of the league that having a consistent set of dominant teams would bring.

 

The problem is that the "given period" of dominance by those teams is now 25 years and growing.

And yes, any given Sunday (or Saturday in this case) a relegation team can beat a CL team but be honest. If you were told at the beginning of the season you had to pick one EPL team to bet on to win every week (straight up) you would pick one of the big 6 and by the end of the season you would have won money. Now make the same bet in MLS. There's generally a good idea who will get you through the season but every year there's at least one team that falls on its face that should have been a top team and there's a team everyone writes off that gets a high playoff position.

 

You might, but I'd bet that the average fan would not. American sports fans typically expect their club to at least be able to challenge for a top spot every few years or so. When the team becomes a doormat they will typically go off and watch a different local sports team until that team becomes competitive or interesting again. Now, you'll have teams that buck that trend because of their local presence.

An example of that is the sports teams in Philly. The Eagles are the Eagles and they are going to sell regardless. The Flyers can withstand down years though because Philly is a hockey town and they are going to get 19k a game regardless (and, yes, Philly is such a hockey town that when they had an AHL team playing in the same lot as the Flyers they still led the AHL in attendance at 10k+ a game). The 76ers, however, don't have the same sort of pull. They have been garbage for years and were at the bottom quarter of attendance (or dead last) for several years. This year they have a team that is actually winning and they are third in attendance.

So, while it might be ok to have a team or two that is the best for a few years it would be damaging to most teams if the league was stratified like the EPL is. If a team like the Union continues for a few more years to be a bottom half team then attendance will drop for a bit until they start to win again. A team in the EPL. like Crystal Palace, can get away with being a 15th place team for years because the absolute best that fan base ever realistically can expect is a top half finish for the most part. A successful year for them is to avoid relegation. That kind of thought process just isn't in American sports. We expect that if our team is smart that they can rebuild and be competitive.

Even that is starting to die as well. Since Bayern/Dortmund in 12/13 there have only been 4 teams to reach the final and 3 of them were from the same country (Spain). 03/04 is the last time that a final didn't feature a team from Spain, England, Italy, or Germany (that was Monaco/Porto).

 

I agree with you big time. I won't agree with a game to game basis, but on season to season I agree as it is predictable to know which team will win the league especially for certain leagues for example La Liga. If it's a two horse race in certain league well gotta see which top two teams are dropping the most games and you got your winner for that league. Some league have just one top team and the others well they're battling each other. I enjoy MLS a lot and I can't pick out the winner each season which is great. As a fan I at least know my team will be able to win a championship at some point. I mean imagine being a mid table team fan what are you hoping for a championship or just good games to watch honestly your team isn't good enough to win it all, but good enough to stay mid until financial problems occur, because they're trying hard to keep up with the big money boys or heck 1% of the league...

 

The most important part of that article for me is near the end:

 

Well, not really. At the beginning of the Premier League 25 years ago, Chelsea were not one of the big boys. After Abramovic bought the club, we started hearing about the "big four". Man City then joined the elite with the purchase first by Thaksin Shinawatra then by Sheik Mansour. And nowadays no one would talk about the Premier League's top clubs without including Tottenham in the list. For the Premier League to go into each season with six legitimate title contenders is pretty darn good. And let's not forget the unlikely title of Leicester City from a few years ago, an event which reminds us that any list of the supposed elite can never account fully for the teams who can be champions of England in a given year.

Well, most fans of MLS teams are also fans of the league itself, are they not? I see plenty of posts here in which people get pretty worked up defending the league, not just their own teams.

Of course, you could say that what goes on in Big Soccer bears no relation to events in the real world. But I think it might in this case. A fan of an MLS team that doesn't contend for three or four years will nevertheless appreciate the elevation of MLS's stature that would be caused by its having a recognised set of elite teams for several years on end. This would not only be a point of pride for fans of the league, but it would carry a material payoff: namely, that, as the prestige of MLS increases, the league becomes ever more attractive to an ever better calibre of player, a phenomenon that would benefit all MLS teams.

 

Why don't you go test your thesis by polling some fans in Columbus about whether they are fans of the league as well as the Crew?

 

In some ways, the EPL is an exception. At the start of the season, I was looking at the betting odds to see how many teams it would take to beat the rest of the field. For example, I would rather hold Bayern to win the Bundesliga than all the remaining teams. For Italy, same for Juventus. For France, PSG. For Spain, you need both Real and Barca to get above 50% (way above). For the EPL, you needed 3 teams. I don't remember exactly, but I think it was pretty likely Man C, Man U and Chelsea. By top European standards, that very competitive, but still disheartening. Particularly since the only reason that Man C and Chelsea got into that group was by having a ridiculously rich owner.

 

Hold on, there. There's nothing wrong with that at all. Indeed, that's the right way -- the exact opposite of the lunatic ravings of the "against modern football" goofballs.

A club having a ridiculously rich owner helps everyone because this pushes other teams to keep up, thereby raising the level of the entire league. And if some team's ownership cannot keep up, it sells to an owner who can.

This is precisely how it should work. Ideally, all teams should be owned by ridiculously rich owners.

Of course, they'll all go up against the wall after the revolution. But, until then, let's by all means have them paying for our entertainment!

They don't have to have won the league already in order to be acknowledged as one of the league's best teams, and therefore amongst the top contenders to win a championship.

 

And what you're leaving out is that the original big 3 are still in the list. So in 25 years nothing has changed.

 

The Eagles were NFL champions previously, they were never Super Bowl champions. Drives me nuts that many people (mostly Steeler fans who are convinced that they have the most titles) ignore the nearly 50 years of NFL history that took place prior to the first Super Bowl.

 

Steelers fans have to ignore history, or acknowledge that they once rooted for the same team as Eagles fans.

https://www.behindthesteelcurtain.com/2008/9/17/616457/steagles-when-the-steelers

 

Couldn't agree with you more and anyway these parity figures are skewed.
How can they calculate MLS as a single table when it does not have a balanced schedule?
Some teams play each other up to 3 times from the same conference and only play cross conference rivals once.
So teams in the West only played the best team in the league once and some of the worse 3 times.
Also when there is an imbalance of quality throughout the conferences as there was 2017 with West being weak and East strong these parity figures only become less reflective of reality.

If there were a balanced schedule then it stands to reason Toronto would no doubt have accrued far more points playing weaker tams more often and the likes of Galaxy and Colorado far fewer playing stronger teams more often.

In short these parity figures are skewed and MLS has less parity than what is claimed though no doubt still much more than many top European leagues.
Not that parity over quality should necessarily be the yardstick of success for a league.
It is great that MLS does things different but that doesn't make other systems worse or better.
Vive la difference.

 

you should bet then

 

St. Totteringham's day occurred every year since Blackburn won the Premier league until last year.

Anyhow, more to the point... Let's see where MLS is in 10 years, when the average MLS team salary is about the same as the average salary of EPL teams. Now, granted, the top 6 EPL salaries will be above the MLS average, but, the rest will be below the MLS average.

The top MLS team salary is getting close to the bottom EPL team salary. Its getting close, but not there yet.