That's likely true for many Americans. I've had Americans new to watching European soccer ask me why the cup winner isn't considered the champion.
Not sure why this thread keeps circling to playoffs:- they are hardly mutually exclusive to pro/rel. Really, the only connection I can see is that closed leagues like MLS have half-assed sized playoffs as they don't have an alternative mechanism from the bottom up (i.e. relegation) to keep interest.
But you didn't though. You talked about player acquisition. I'm talking about the FA CUP. Try reading it again to see if you can comprehend. You quoted the 7 FA Cups in crediting pro/rel. Yet, 3 of those were won before the player acquisition you keep referencing. Now you seem to be talking about money. "Second rate" leagues are usually qualified by their clout, or lack of. Yet we address that. The "best" team over the season is recognized with both hardware and an automatic CL spot. THE FACT THOUGH, is that more than one person showed this wasn't really the case. You DON'T KNOW THIS ... AGAIN ... it's ACTUALLY thanks to the state of Tottenham that he bought Chelsea. False equivalency. The MLS Cup deals only with the MLS clubs and is seeded based on performance in MLS League play. It doesn't take into account any other league and doesn't have any non-MLS clubs participate. It doesn't have "random" draws to make matches from round to round either. You can, quite easily. I whole heartedly feel there was at least one, if not two or three teams better than Leicester in their Cinderella once in a lifetime EPL winning campaign. The fact that it was a historically BAD season for the other clubs only fuels that belief. Then there are other years where there are very close races .... and you can absolutely argue about whether City or 'Pool was the better squad. Or whether City or United was better a couple years before that. ^ I snipped, but this was fantastic. Why? Let's go even further. Even in the wonderful world of pro/rel ... how is it that clubs rise and fall TODAY? MONEY <---- Despite being everyone's favorite darling story and posting it up as the poster for pro/rel .... everyone wants to forget the 50m$ spent to buy the team ... the 132m$ in debt that was covered ... and the 98m$ (plus at this point) spend on players. People want to bitch about the expansion fee (which actually goes to further solidify and stabilize the league) but want to write off 280m$ (plus at this point) it has cost Leicester (not even including the monies spent on facility upgrades/reno/etc) to become the darlings of the pro/rel world. Sounds quite a bit like the dismissal we face when we say .... "so start your own pro/rel league and show the MLS and all of us how wrong we are" STOP AND THINK about what a half or even 1/3 of that 280m$ US dollars would actually get you in the soccer landscape of the US RIGHT NOW. If AAAAAAALLLLLLL of this investment is just SITTING THERE and would EXPLODE if only pro/rel would be implemented .... why wouldn't they spend SIGNIFICANTLY LESS to forgo the establishment they vehemently despise and implement their own "proper" pyramid? 10-15 clubs banding together spending 93m$ (significantly less than current MLS expansion fee, only 1/3 of what we KNOW has been spent at Leicester to be the pro/rel wonder story) would uproot the established way here. BUT NOBODY WILL DO IT. /anythingyouhavetosayaboutit Then stop making the mistake of taking the playoffs on their own. They aren't ... they're ON TOP of the regular season. The two go hand in hand. It isn't a separate cup competition like the USOC or FA Cup. AGAIN .... the FA CUP and the League are DIFFERENT .... "playoffs" are a continuation of the LEAGUE SEASON. Stop making this false equivalency. As do American soccer clubs ... and honestly, the destiny is easier to reach in the fact that if they meet certain points, they're in. In pro/rel you can do everything right, spend right, etc ... and still have some other team play park the bus, draw you to penalties, and win the coin flip that is PKs .... When there's an ACTUAL concentrated effort and not just lip service .... then we can judge that. Though HISTORY has proven in this country that if a sporting league DOES and doesn't just SAY ... results are had by entire leagues. NOPE. American's value taking the TOP teams IN A GIVEN SEASON and THEN putting them into a knock out play off. NO league here crowns its champion by just a knock out competition. There are knock out competitions within our sports ... but NONE of them alone crown the league champion any given year. The league champion is taken from the best finishing teams of a SEASON that have been THEN put into a knock out to see who emerges. Which actually puts that interest in the middle of the table ... where pro/rel leagues don't have a mechanism to keep interest.
Someone, probably Adam Tash among others asked why German coaching is better than American coaching. It's probably because their head coaches alone make more than some MLS teams salary budgets and the overall coaching costs must be ginormous. Stoke's Premier League finishes. 12, 11, 13, 11, 9, 13, 15, 14, 11 But they still sell out which suggests "meaningless" games don't put fans off.
Actually the only US sports that use straight KO are MLS & NFL. The others use series, which not only force teams to beat the best to become champions, but also eliminate the prospect of one shock win seeing a stronger team knocked out by an underdog. Add seeding to this and a low seed is forced to earn the title by running the gauntlet of stronger performing teams Of course, when MLS tried this system, it was scoffed at by soccer "purists. Scheduling issues were also a problem but now they've mitigated that with pay-as-we-play playoff ticketing schemes, I'd love to see the experiment tried again.
Well, they do play two-game aggregate series for half of the playoffs now. Not quite the same thing but it is somewhere along the road between NFL-style one-off and seven-game series.
In other words, the "best" team in American sporting culture is both reasonably consistent in league play, and able to rise to the occasion and beat the best in the playoffs, with more weight on the latter. Prove you're a decent team by making the playoffs, then prove you're actually the best by beating the strongest opponents head-to-head.
I've been an American sports fan for more than 60 years. I like playoffs. It's what I'm used to. They're exciting. However, I wish that MLS had fewer teams in the playoffs. Eight would seem good to me, although I wouldn't object to four.
True, though I'd say it's much closer than straight KO than a series. In many ways it's like a 180 minute game played across two days and venues. A good result in one game can severely impact the entire outcome and it's a lot easier for an underdog to scrape by a stronger team.
They control their own destiny NOW. They have complete control to run a competent team, sign good players, and win matches and championships of the league they're in.
Co-sign. More or less, that is--I actually wouldn't mind single-table for MLS if that's what we went with, but the league is just about too big for that anyway. But yes--I've always bemoaned how too many teams make the playoffs. I used to think it would be cool to have each conference runs as discrete single-table "leagues", crown each season champ as conference champ, and then have the two meet in MLS Cup.
Which is probably why the worst NFL teams still outdraw all but the absolute TOP soccer clubs in the world. DING DING DING DING DING .... or you know, what the insanely popular Champions League does .... How many teams' seasons were over with two months left in any given pro/rel league? Although, I did a count and I didn't get 8 ....
I don't see how the season is over in the Eastern Conference for anyone bar DC. Everyone is within six points of a playoff spot, which is certainly doable in MLS. Even in the Western Conference, I wouldn't say RSL are completely out of it yet and though unlikely, with the games in hand, either the Galaxy or Columbus could still make a late surge and pip Portland if results go their way. Regardless, I don't think it's fair to say that those teams don't currently have something to play for, even if some are in the last-ditch phase. EDIT: Even Bill Hamid claimed this weekend “You’ve got to continue grabbing points each week,” Hamid emphasized. “Like I’ve said, there’s still hope. The numbers haven’t cancelled us out of the playoffs yet. We’ve just got to not get too high and focus on Atlanta on Wednesday.” Though my wonderful Wife would likely respond "Keep clicking your heels Dorothy."
I'd be happier with the current number if they gave a little more of an advantage to the higher seeds. However, only to a point. There seems to be this attitude from some, that the playoff system is failing if the top seeds aren't winning regularly. Seeding shouldn't grossly weight the odds to the point that there's a barely a point to playing the games. I'd still like the "best of three" come back. Maybe it would be best handle das two-team groups, with the higher seed getting the two home games. If we kept the play-in round and MLS Cup as single KO, that would be two additional games. Or we could simply eliminate the play-in, which would take us down to @Roger Allaway 's 8 team field and require just one more date. I'd still prefer the final to be a single game at the higher seeds venue, just for the sense of occasion.
It doesn't cost all that much money to make your own league the higher league here. All you need to do to become a major league is put your money where your mouth is and act like one. That was the NASL's stated goal for most of it's existence. If pro/rel really had the potential to bring in the kind of investment you and others are claiming, someone would be doing it right now and relegating MLS to second tier status. A handful of owners spending like the cheapest teams in the NHL could do it easily.
Last season in the US, the average viewership for the EPL top six was 450k. For the bottom six, 280k. Interest certainly doesn't look "bottom-up" especially as the title chase was barely a two-horse race last season. I'm trying to find 2016 MLS TV ratings by club, but my Google skills aren't great: paging @Paul Berry Attendance wise, there doesn't seem to be much correlation between the top and bottomin MLS, but then the Supporters Shield was won by the notoriously ill-attended FC Dallas. EPL teams of course, tend to get strong gates in general.
Once again, "promoting" an entire league requires an entire league full of teams to invest to "major league" standard. A "handful" of teams wouldn't be enough teams to fulfill the requirements. In pro/rel, individual teams control their own destiny.
If the bottom six were merely playing for better draft choices, I suspect attendances and viewership would be lower.
Do you sincerely believe that the level of soccer player coming out of the college system today, would motivate an MLS club to tank for the first draft pick?
The "Toastification" of a team is determined based on whether a team has to average a 2.0 or better pace to surpass the team in the last playoff position if that team were to continue their current pace. So, in this case, all the teams that are brown in the EC have to average a 2.0 or higher to pass Montreal if Montreal were to maintain a 1.50 average for the rest of the season. It should be noted that: 1. This is the earliest in the season that this many teams have been toasted since Knave started doing this in 2007. Usually there will be one or two teams at most that have been toasted at this point and it generally isn't until the last weekend or two that this many will be toasted. 2. Since 2007, there has never been a team to actually make the playoffs once they have been toasted, but several have climbed back into playoff position, only to fall short in the end.