MLS Non-Sporting Discussion [R]

that was awful. as if seattle fans weren't insufferable enough already...

 

I didn't see that much in the game last night that led me to believe that SKC was that far away from either team.

 

me neither, which is why the mls cup playoffs are such a crapshoot, and why there needs to be more prestige for the supporters' shield. i mean, i view the "champions" to be whomever wins mls cup, but that's only because the league puts so much emphasis on it. they need to either reduce the prestige for the playoffs or raise the barrier for entry. the last two winners were basically garbage in the league for 80% of the season, and we're supposed to call them champions because they got hot at the right time?

i know that'll never happen. can't put the cat back in the bag. just sayin...

 

Believe me, I am the last guy here that would give Seattle any credit for anything, but their accomplishment has to be acknowledged. Once they barely snuck past SKC, I never expected them to get past either Dallas or Colorado, but they did. I never expected them to be able to keep Toronto out of the goal, but they did. Brian Schmetzer injected something into the DNA of the Sounders that kept them winning in the playoffs to the bitter end (and to see them win is really bitter for me). They did it without Oba and Deuce. They did it with a lot of the same determination and grit that SKC used to win the cup in 2013.
But, shouldn't the cup really belong to the top team in the league season? After all, the mark of the best team in the league is the one with a season long campaign taking on all challengers and coming out on top. However, the Supporters Shield winner is not the League Champion (as goofy as that may seem). Seattle ran the table in post season tournament and they are the Champions. As distasteful as it is, we have to live with it until next year when another team (hopefully SKC) can do the same.

 

Yeah, neither of those clubs were special in 2016 (or last night), but watching the start of that match reminded me that SKC has been mediocre in MLS play for the past few years and has been bounced in the first round of the playoffs without much of a fight. OK, in 2015 it was a PK goal by Kwarasey and 2016 was a questionable call. Still, we didn't advance.

I also realize that I get jealous when other MLS clubs seem to try to find that missing piece. Toronto signs Bradley and Giovinco. Seattle loses Oba and Deuce, but they nab Lodeiro. Us? We lose Nemo after one season, but no replacement.

Thankfully, we are not Fire-bad.

 

Didn't watch. Went to see the Nutcracker at the Kaufman. Sounds like it was a good decision.

Funny about Lodeiro, he was a fringe player at Boca Juniors even if he starts for Uruguay, finding a talent like him sitting on a bench somewhere in the world shouldn't be that hard.

 

I seem to be agreeing with you a lot lately, Viv.

I don't think Seattle fans will be particularly obnoxious about this win. In years past, when they thought they the had God's gift to the league of a team, winning might have made them annoying. But, mirrored nicely by Sporting fans in 2013, a lot of their hubris was swept aside by an unconvincing (by the stats, the most unconvincing ever) win by decision.

 

This X1000. 3 is a consequence of 4. I know international breaks and all, but for the love, figure out how to compress the season or something to get the playoffs done in 2/3 the time and before the depths of the arctic cold sink south. It may require some compression of the regular season and dropping the all-star game. As it stands, by the time the playoffs get half over, everyone except the fans of the teams involved and the die-hards have lost the plot.

 

Toronto is a hike from KC. Maybe that's what I was thinking!

OK, I was in my basement with a space heater watching the MLS Cup, drinking my Barbancourt rum and feeling down about SKC. I missed the final home game on the 23rd (I was at the Chiefs), so the last match I attended was LA back in September. It was hot that day, Donovan, etc. Damnit, I was down watching Toronto and Seattle.

 

I haven't been crazy about this idea in the past, but I am warming up to it. Because some of the pundits on SiriusXM have been talking it up. But I think the league should look into reengineering the season. Let it run from August to May. Take a break starting where MLS Cup is now, and finish in May with MLS Cup on the same day as the Champions League Final. The break would run from mid-December to around where the NFL pro bowl is or was.

The advantages are pretty good. We would be more in line with the European Transfer windows. The most important game of the season won't ever be played on a tundra, and we'll have one less reason to have a bad game. MLS Cup wouldn't have to compete against football. And when the season restarts in February we're pretty much up against College Basketball, NBA and NHL which is doable.

 

That would be awful. The more of the season that can happen between March and October, the better. Mid-July games might suck for the heat, yeah, but at least there's less injury risk, less awful cold match soccer, and none of that possibility of weather preventing fans from even making it to the game. I used to be all "whoa, get in line with England!" and then I realized that the benefits don't outweigh the damages, at least from what I can see.

 

I truly hate the idea of a fall/spring season. I'd rather have the heat than the cold. I'd also rather not have a 2ish month break in the middle of the season.

 

You could rig the schedule to avoid the cold areas. Not much difference between the odd cold game in Feb and what we have in the playoffs now.

If you actually look at it, it wouldn't be much colder than it is now when you consider that they would schedule around the cold weather venues in Feb. Before you know it, it's March.

If we went to this, CCL would work better and MLS teams would go play friendlies someplace warm during the break just like the German and Spanish teams do.

 

So you're saying that the colder weather cities, which are more than half the league, won't see a home game for the duration of the break and dates around it too, as they give the matches to the warmer cities? Are you fine with Sporting playing all their home games between August and October and then March and May? That's inane and it will wreck every team's ability to play with any consistency. We need to see fewer games played in late November/December, not more games played even later. In my opinion, to protect the playoffs, the league could shorten the season by a couple games per team (it's all fairly arbitrary anyways, and changes every other year with expansion), start the playoffs sooner because of that, and let in maybe a couple fewer teams into the playoffs themselves. All these will diminish the regular season a bit, which would suck for a larger proportion of teams than now, but it would preserve both the viability and momentum of the playoffs better.

The only problem with the current calendar is the CCL. This used to bother me, but really, I'd rather see a better league here and less concern with all that.

 

I'd rather play regular season games in NOV/DEC than the big ticket playoff and championship games when we should be seeing the best soccer and the best TV Ratings.

This idea seems to be intriguing to TV types so it must be getting toyed around with. MLS ratings are still terrible and the networks are interested in changing that since they are stakeholders.

I never said anything about November and December. I would only weight towards warmer cities in Feb.

And yeah, I'm ok with it if we had a season that was less affected by international breaks and more in line with the rest of the planet. It would open us up to a better class of player and make us more competitive in North America's crowded sports calendar.

Right now most of our highest paid players basically disappear to an intl tournament just about every summer and MLS carries on as if nothing else is happening. Fans deserve better than that. Might as well make June and July the preseason/offseason.

CCL is a joke even though it shouldn't be. I think that realigning things might make it better and gives us more quality soccer to watch.

 

Yeah, like Jimmy Conrad and Eric Wynalda. They are actually some of the biggest MLS Kool Aid drinkers out there. You don't have to be a euro snob to see that season is basically broken.

At least they are considering revamping the playoff format for 2017. There are lots of ways to mitigate a playing in the winter and not many good ones. Fortunately the benefits outweigh the bad options on the other side.

 

Yeah the extended road trip around the winter break is dumb to me, it unfairly punishes teams in cold weather markets who may not get to host a game for 4 months, cramming all their home games into a shorter period of time which will surely affect attendance due to fan fatigue (we saw it here with our extended home stand in 2011). Wynalda has been on the schedule change train since he ranted at the NSCAA convention here, I can't take him seriously.

 

I can't take Kartik seriously. I had to unfollow that tool.

 

When did the entire month of February become four months?

 

You're talking about taking a break for December and January, but then if you have the cold weather cities end the first half of the season and begin the second half on the road so combine that and you're basically up to 4 months.