These examples of Dutch clubs with a surprising loss, to me, only underscores the fact that pro/rel is a very minimal factor for player motivation. As stated above, when a big club is struggling against a lower club they switch from relying on their superiority to playing with a fighting spirit that their opponents use. Those games for the big clubs are too few between to make relegation a motivator for those players. I would like to create a survey for players of various levels that asks 30 to 40 questions about their motivation. Run a factor analysis on it. I'd bet you'd find team relegation a very low to insignificant factor with team glory slightly higher. Others factors I'd bet would be higher, such as pride, money, glory, job to name a few.
I think it's rather funny that Yanks in here put playing in a P/R setting as a motivating factor. It isnot and nobody that's in his right mind claims so. What however is being put on the table by those "haters" is that P/R is detrimental to the competitiveness of a league. Maybe, if you only look at the table ranking. However what is far more important and is drawing the fans is how matches unfold in those 90 minutes. As I demonstrated it is far from match after match walk overs. The end result (see my PSV example, not only this but also last season) may "confirm" the haters biased opinion, but the 90 minutes of each match show something different. The P/R setting forces teams to play with all they got, so it's not P/R itself that motivates, but the end result that comes with consequences.
He's won 13 league titles in his career and has international goals against Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Croatia, England, Russia and the Netherlands. He's scored his share of goals against big clubs. But I get it: he said something positive about MLS. Heaven forbid.
I think we agree then that pro/rel is not a motivating factor for a player. As I said in an earlier post I'm not a scorekeeper of who said what but it is often heard from the pro pro/rel side the MLS games are like friendlies. There is no pressure. Yadda yadda yadda. What we don't have in the US is the pressure from the media or really the fans. MLS stories are buried in the paper after the NFL, NBA, MLB, news. It's not talked about on sports radio because fans dont know enough to call in and give any insight nor do the hosts have that knowledge either. It's a niche culture here. Which perhaps makes it seem to others as it is not important to the players. As far as league competitiveness I think it should framed league competitive balance. I understand that the best MLS teams wouldn't get many points in the Eredivisie ergo they wouldn't be competitive. However, the league from top to bottom is closer due the salary cap and roster rules.
I just had a brief discussion about this. If you consider that Jose Villarreal who was earning $105,000 per year for the Galaxy in 2017, with the team having made a few attempts to phase him into the first team, is now at Orlando, where he sees limited minutes and earns $85,000 per season, that's a guy playing for his livelihood. I can't imagine that many of Fulham's roster are playing under those circumstances.
Capacity crowds at Brighton and Burnley to see relegation six-pointers. Doesn't look like fans of the four teams are too worried about not finishing in the top six. Diito Southampton as well. Brighton v Cardiff in another six pointer on Tuesday; bet that one will have a capacity crowd as well.
The worst team in MLS so far this season: Portland Timbers, with 1 point from 6 games. The best team in USL so far this season: Portland Timbers, with 13 points from 6 games. Looking forward to the promotion playoffs! Interesting also that before Atlanta's win on Saturday, the 2018 MLS Cup finalists were in last place in their respective conferences.
Alternately, the USL Premier League could launch and then we could have LA Galaxy vs. LA Galaxy to determine LA Galaxy. Pro/rel is small stuff compared to the Existential Cup.
They aren't really reserves in the sense that they are players lower on team roster. To bring players up they would have to put those players onto MLS contracts which would mean removing players currently under MLS contracts. We tend to refer to the MLS2 teams as "reserve teams" but they aren't really. MLS has contract limits for the number of players that are eligible for MLS competition. The majority of the players on the USL teams are contracted to the USL team, not the MLS team. Unless the USL player concerned is on loan down to the USL team they can't just be called up since they are not on the MLS roster. There is a short-term loan exception for that is only for non-MLS competitions like the CCL and the Open Cup. Portland Timbers and Portland Timbers 2 are separate teams for most purposes.
Hmmm. 9 is a lot to have on loan. Ah, 4 of those 9 are already playing for the MLS team. Conechny and Tuiloma have four appearances for the MLS Timbers this year out of just 6 games. A couple of the others have already went up for a game or two. Obviously the Timbers aren't afraid to move guys up and down.
In today's news that isn't ... people show up in the last few games when their team could be banished to the lower leagues the next season!
Along these lines, Tacoma did a rather bullshit thing ahead of their match with Sacramento, imo: https://www.soundersfc.com/post/201...ters-standard-usl-loan-agreements-six-players Every other game this year has pretty much been a blowout loss except that one: https://www.tacdefiance.com/2019-schedule/
My team, the Houston Dynamo, sent guys down to Rio Grande Valley, our USL team, in a similar way but it hasn't helped. https://www.houstondynamo.com/post/...-loan-three-players-rgv-fc-road-trip-oklahoma https://www.houstondynamo.com/post/...ive-players-rgv-fc-new-mexico-united-showdown They still lost the game against Tulsa and drew 0-0 against New Mexico despite the first teamers. RGV is below Tacoma in the standings.
In general, I don't really get terribly fussed about the reserve teams in USL, but these "indirect 6 pointers" for or against playoff caliber teams is really hard to reconcile.
I get that concern but that would be an issue with reserve teams around the world that play in lower leagues, wouldn't it? Maybe not playoffs in most cases but promotion/relegation? Surely there are players going up and down among those teams. The USL-Championship is down to 11 reserve teams out of the 36 total so it should be less of an issue than it was.
I usually keep track of the MLS2 teams in the USL. Here are the final standings from 2018 with the MLS2 teams in Blue. The Red teams have local ownership but function pretty much like reserve teams. There were 11 of those teams total out of 33 last year. There doesn't seem to be much a pattern to where they wind up in the tables but they tend to wind up closer to the bottom than the top. Maybe they are distorting the standings but it would take a lot of analysis of the game day rosters to figure that out. STANDINGS EAST 1. Pittsburgh 2.00 2. Cincinnati 1.94 3. Louisville 1.81 4. Nashville 1.69 5. Indy 1.65 6. Charleston 1.53 7. NY RB II 1.39 8. Penn 1.39 -------------------------- 9. Bethlehem 1.35 10. Charlotte 1.33 11. Tampa Bay 1.29 12. Ottawa 1.23 13. North Carolina 1.18 14. Richmond 1.06 15. Atlanta 2 0.69 16. Toronto II 0.18 WEST 1. Real Monarchs 2.11 2. Phoenix 1.94 3. Swope Park 1.82 4. Reno 1.79 5. Orange Cty 1.67 6. Sacramento 1.58 7. Portland 2 1.44 8. San Antonio 1.38 ---------------------------------- 9. Co. Springs 1.25 10. Las Vegas 1.25 11. Fresno 1.25 12. St. Louis 1.22 13. LAG II 1.05 14. OKC 1.00 15. RGVFC 0.76 16. Seattle 2 0.69 17. Tulsa 0.67
I have no idea what this is like in other countries, but I doubt I'd be thrilled about it there, either, if I had some rooting interest in a team. Well, not really: the issue is that any given week there's absolutely no telling what they're playing for given that there's not necessarily an incentive to "win" (although there may be for that particular game). This screws with all sorts of things in the standings. At least every independent team you assume is trying, first and foremost, to win the game.
I'm OK with MLS2 teams because at least a few of them are consistently very strong and clearly able to win consistently whether or not it's their top priority. MLS2 teams tend to be very inconsistent from year to year because they have much more roster turnover than other teams. They rarely keep a player around beyond age 25 or so unless he's already on a MLS contract, and many of the academy players who play for them go off to college.
Sure. But does that really have an effect on the playoffs? Some of those MLS2 teams are apparently trying to win most of the time. Hard to see how they would do that well if they weren't. And the bottom-dwellers are mostly losing to everyone. I guess there are a few in the middle that are more inconsistent but do we know if that was based on dramatic roster changes? And, on the plus side, the number of those games is going down. Last year in the West there were 17 total teams with 7 reserve teams. That means the 10 independent teams had about 14 of their 34 games against those teams. This year there are 6 reserve teams out of 18. So the 12 independent teams have 12 of their 34 games against those teams. Not a huge decline but even less impact on the schedule.
Premier League bottom four average attendances: Brighton 30,413 Cardiff 31,272 Fulham 24,368 Huddersfield 23,093 All four started the season with zero probability of finishing anywhere near the top six, all four averaging 97% or more of capacity. So they've been playing to capacity crowds all season. More evidence that the cementation of the top of the table has had zero impact on attendances in the rest of the league. It's almost as if trying to survive relegation is a big deal for some teams...
That just goes to show how much the MLS2 teams prop up the western conference. This would be one hurdle to any USL Premier and pro/rel within USL. If you move the most likely suspects up to USL Premier the western conference would lose OKC, Las Vegas, Orange County, and San Antonio (assuming St. Louis/Sacramento/Phoenix all move to MLS). You'd then be left with a lot of MLS 2 sides in the Championship and League One. I guess you could do away with conferences at the lower levels but I don't see why you would.