So when Wigan Athletic won the FA cup despite suffering relegation over a 38 game period they were the 'best' team that season? I just can't accept that!
And many Americans equally cannot accept a champion that didn't have to prove superiority in a win-or-go-home situation.
Where's the proof? That wasn't what you asked. You asked "what would have happened had we not had pro/rel?" which I answered. It seems what you're now asking is "What if promotion to Division 1 had arbitrarily been scrapped between Chelsea getting relegated and 1984?". In that case, I agree. Assuming there was no mechanism for Chelsea to move into Division One, obviously they wouldn't have won it. You can't say they wouldn't have won the FA Cup though. You NEVER KNOW. The thing is, nobody is advocating scrapping pro/rel in England. That wouldn't make sense at this point. We're discussing the different systems, not what would happen if you scrapped pro/rel in a nation where it is established.
It's not always the best team that wins anything, in any sport, ever and it has been that way since forever. Here in America, we accept that. There are no St. Louis Cardinal fans sheepish about winning the 2006 World Series despite having the 13th-best record in baseball and there are plenty of Seattle Mariners fans chagrined about the 116-win team in 2001 getting smacked in the ALCS. We do playoffs. You don't have to. We don't care. Yet Euros and Europosers insist that we have to do it their way. We don't. We don't care what you think. We have done playoffs in this country since the 1880s. We don't do the metric system. We drive on the right hand side of the road. We don't care.
You don't have to. We officially absolve you of the obligation to do so. I cannot accept that Annie Hall was the best picture of 1977. Yet Woody Allen has that Oscar. Why don't some English people get this? We do things differently than you do.
He was gifted state assets for loaning the government money and backing Yeltsin's reelection. Strangely enough Yeltsin never prosecuted him. Nor did Putin, with whom Abramovic is said to be close. The only oligarch ever prosecuted was Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who had publicly fallen out with Putin.
That's not entirely true. The Premier League and professional cricket are the exceptions in English sports when it comes to playoffs.
I see the eternal wheel that is the pro/rel thread has rehashed Chelsea and has moved on to the US playoff systems. The cycle continues
To the theme of Sir Elton's Circle of Life From the day we logon to bigsoccer And go to the pro - rel for-um There's more crap you can read than can ever be seen This debate that will never be done Some love the open system Some want some real parity But all are agreed as they join the stampede Read too long and your eyes start to bleed In the circle of shite It's a form of torture It's the stale debate And we've lost all hope We can't leave this place Though we find it grinding In the circle, the circle of shite You had a good point on the topic Some useful info to impart But it all got lost in the background To 8 pages of ill-tempered snark Barroldin-ho and M are sniping Over atten-dance num-bers they found USRufnex implies that the mods take sides Bigredfutbol just had a breakdown In the circle of shite We like the concept Of the pro/rel scheme Except Dan Loney Still there's not a trace Of anything exciting In the circle, the circle of shite It's a form of torture It's the stale debate And we've lost all hope We can't leave this place Though we find it grinding In the circle, the circle of shite Yes we find it grinding But at least there's , no Ted Westervelt
I have said repeatedly i KNOW you like to do things differently, see some of my previous posts. I have NEVER once suggested you need to implement pro/rel there, I do insist however that my experiences with my team IN THE UK have most definitely been enriched by pro/rel, make of that what you will.
I tend to agree, though there is one somewhat compelling argument... You can win by being a flat track bully. If you tend to be crap against the top teams but trounce the rest of the league, you can win the title that way. Like I said, Belgium mitigates that somewhat by having playoffs between the top six. Those six go into a group taking a percentage of their points from the regular season with them, play each other twice, with the team that tops the group becoming champions.
It took me a while to wrap my head around the concept of the "regular" season being the whole season when I first started following Euro soccer. And even now all these years later I still think there's something a tad anticlimactic about the system, especially when the winner wraps things up early. Funny how ingrained a sports culture can be, but then again I am a huge hockey fan as well, and in the NHL the two time defending President's Trophy winner is widely considered a laughing stock for their playoff flops.
First, Rocky won in 77, though Annie Hall was out and being watched in 77, so that must be what you mean. Beyond that, seriously? You're gonna say Star Wars, the Goodbye Girl or the ballet movie was the best picture? Crediblity dip. But yeah, dumping playoffs in a US sport league would be a massive problem for a league. Is it a better system, or a worse one? No, it's just the US system and that isn't changing.
The US system named Dances with Wolves, Titanic, the English Patient, Braveheart, Gladiator and Argo as best pictures. It needs a major overhaul.
It's also that 38 games are not always a large enough sample size to determine an objective "best" with strong statistical confidence. If two teams are tied for first on points and one team wins the title by being +1 better in goal difference, then that team deserves the trophy for accomplishing what it needed to do to according to the defined rules of competition, but their margin of victory might really be due to a fluke goal or a bad referee decision or an untimely injury. They haven't separated themselves enough to establish that they are the "best" with some kind of Platonic certainty. And that's fine. It's a game and everybody's trying to win and somebody does and that's fun.
Don't get me started on Braveheart, a fictional movie based largely on a known, intentionally fictional poem about William Wallace, accepted by a disturbing number of moviegoers as an historic account. Oh and Titanic, where one of the real life heroes of that tragedy is fictionally depicted as shooting a passenger in a moment of panic then immediately shooting himself out of remorse. Then there's the complete rewriting and effective omission of Molly Brown's own heroic deeds. I get artistic license and that you ultimately make choices that better serve the movie, but those felt unnecessary (I mean another boat does go back in the movie). Though I actually liked Titanic more than I thought I would.
I'd just like to circle back to this. It seems to me that when an individual is a billionaire (or just wealthy in general), there seems to be this tendency to disregard any negative outcome for them. If a club raises ticket prices to maximise their revenue, nobody says "What, we should limit how much money the club makes because some fans won't be able to afford it? Boo hoo. Find another team!". In fact, if anyone did, they'd be vilified for it. Yet when you've got a group of people who have poured literally hundreds of millions into keeping a professional soccer league alive in the US, suddenly they're the bad guys for not implementing a system that would expose all they've invested and worked toward to considerable risk. I know we've often said "build a rival D1 and implement pro/rel there" and that argument frequently falls on deaf ears, or is dismissed as "too difficult" or "unrealistic". Well let's talk "realistic" - or more accurately "reality" - for a second. As mentioned above, the MLS owners have poured unspeakable amounts into the league just to get it this far. Hundreds of millions or more. If you want to compete with that, it stands to reason that you need to do likewise. We're told ad nauseum that there is dormant investment that would flood in, if pro/rel were adopted. We've been told by the very guy I'm quoting and others that R. Silva's proposal illustrates that there are $billions to be had. We know that there are a dozen parties willing to spend $150m on an expansion team. So ****ing shut up and do it. At one point, Hunt and Anschutz owned and operated multiple MLS teams and basically kept the league on life-support. The former went to bat when the league was a hair's breadth from closure and said "No - let's keep going". If these "investors", these 'believers' in pro/rel want the system, then they need to match Lamar Hunt's faith. They need to follow not just his MLS example but also the one he set in taking on the NFL. It might even have a similar effect, either forcing a merger, or even putting MLS in a tough spot should the pro/rel rival prove more successful. It could well force an integration where MLS teams and owners finally do agree to an open pyramid. Yet they'd apparently rather not. They'd much rather grandstand at unrelated USSF meetings and file complaints with CAS.
It's a heck of a lot better sample size than a handful of playoff games. Sure, you have to qualify for the playoffs in the first place, but when over half the league qualifies you aren't proving much by doing so.
This was the outcome of the critical meeting that kept MLS alive in 2002. Without this decision by the 3 investors to take huge personal financial risks we probably wouldn't have a professional D1 today. From "The United States of Soccer: MLS and the Rise of American Soccer Fandom" by By Phil West. And beyond that, it paved the way for the future from which Silva among others will benefit if they get their act together and stop whining.
I was wondering about the nature of the sport plays a role in how we view pro/rel. For example CrawleyBus and perhaps M made some comments alluding to the heartbreak and joy they experienced in their lives through promotion and relegation. I hope I can explain what I mean. In the U.S. the main team sports are baseball, football, basketball, and hockey with soccer in at 5th. Many US sports fans like more than one sport and follow more than one team. Each of those other four sports can end on a final play; a buzzer beater, hail mary, walk off homer, and an overtime winner. Where in soccer it can happen but there is usually some time left. A late go ahead goal is tough to be sure but there is always a chance of a kickoff and some matriculation and a shot. It usually doesn't happen but there is a chance. With the low scores in soccer, the late go ahead goal rarely happens in extra time as it is. This is not to say there are not dramatic soccer games (ManU-Bayern, Liverpoo-ACMilan). Obviously, in a cup playoff round penalties can end it with a play. A US sports fan can experience the heartache and joy many times a year through different sporting avenues. Perhaps US sports fans view sports as a bit of a one off activity no matter where it is in the schedule. I would guess US fans assume the players give their all even without the threat or carrot of pro/rel so any game should be played to the best of their abilities. Plus, US fans would go broke going to the numerous games they could attend (81 baseball, 8 football, 41 basketball, and 40 hockey; and that is just professional and home games). So when they do go to a game it can be a bit of a one off for them. Here is where I will make an assumption, correct me if I'm wrong. English fans would tend to be only soccer fans. Perhaps a rugby or cricket fan in addition but a majority aren't split equally between the 3 sports. If that is somewhat true, their sporting attention is given to their club 38 times a year. With hardly a game ending on a play the season becomes the focus, not the individual game. This is not to say individual games are not important in England or that the season is not in the US. But, the season is where the heartache and joy comes. When playoffs are added in the US, several game outcomes are the experience of that joy and heartache through your team's advancement or elimination. I think that the heartache and joy one experiences while watching a sport is important, much like a good book should stir some emotions. Perhaps, English fans focus on the heartache and the joy of the season due to the nature of the single game aspect of the sport. Whereas, US fans focus on the emotions of individual games because the ability of those games to end on a single play. I understand that not every game ends that way, I've been to plenty of clunkers but have have experienced heartache and joy many times as well. If I am at all correct in saying that the rules of a team sport foster emotion on a single game level or a seasonal level it plays a role in how pro/rel and the heartache and joy it brings to fans factors into the US sporting landscape. The sell of the seasonal emotion is difficult to crack when the next opportunity to experience it is a couple of days away with some other team.
The general idea is to win by being a 'flat track bully', the thing is that everybody plays everybody, twice, home and away, there is no excuses after that, the best team will win the league, the worst will finish bottom. You can't win the league by only 'trouncing' the bottom teams, to win the league last season Chelsea had to win 30 of 38 games, to win the league you are unlikely to lose more than 5 times during the season - you will need to win some games against the top teams, besides there is no 'easy' game in the EPL, Last season Chelsea beat Manchester City away and lost to Crystal Palace at home!
Nope. If you win the title that way while not beating any of your closest competitors in the head-to-head series, which has happened before, you are NOT the best team according to most Americans. The best teams are the ones that beat the best. American sporting culture values the ability to rise to the occasion when playing the strongest opponents over being a flat-track bully.