I'd love to meet any team or fans who were trash-talking for any reason in one game. I'd also know it didn't automatically make DC the "better team", just the winner of a one-off game. If it was the Eastern Conference Final or potentially even the MLS Cup that would make it even sweeter. It wouldn't make DC the better team. Over the course of 34 games everyone gets screwed out of points and and everyone gets lucky sometimes. I'd be annoyed that they potentially could have taken the Supporter's Shield (assuming both teams were above both teams in the west) and with it the CCL spot when we were so close. Given that I'd played them twice, I'd probably look first to any points dropped directly to them. If we took all six points from them, I'd be pissed at DC for not taking advantage of any number of other chances that year to gain a couple points. I would definitely be much more willing to say they were better over 34 games than 90 minutes. Kcbus... how about you just avoid this thread and find one where you have something to contribute?!
That's true, of course. But uncertainty + uncertainty =/= certainty. A list of "maybe we were screwed" events on both sides doesn't mean the competition was perfectly balanced. On the contrary, it just makes the season's results even more unreliable. I'm not arguing the "better indicator" thing any more. I think I've made it very clear how I feel about the subjective judgments of "better" and "best". I'm just asking how the reader feels as an MLS fan. Are you satisfied walking away after a tight regular-season contest, knowing (or at least suspecting) that your team deserves more points than it got? ------RM
No, but it sure blunts the other team's argument that they're better, doesn't it? I think what our differences come down to is that you're willing to accept 34 games of MLS as reliable judge of the best team. This is important: We're not just talking 34 games of soccer, we're talking 34 games of weather-wacky, international-conflictin', crappily refereed MLS. You're willing to accept that, on the premise that all the craziness should be spread about evenly, so it all balance out in the end. I'll accept that -- to a point. No amount of craziness is going to turn a 1st-place team into a 5th-place team, for example. But in a tight race, where the winner takes it by less than six points? No way can I accept that team as an undisputed "best". So if I don't buy that a tight winner is the "best" team, where does that leave me? Well, I don't know which individual team is the best, but I can say that this group of teams at the top are all good teams. Let's fight it out. If we can't have certainty, at least we can have excitement. ------RM
Well, you are free to opt out of the discussion that the rest of us are having if you like. In terms of your question. The regular season could be better than it is, but I'm satisfied at the end of 34 games that the regular season will be a good (but not perfect) indicator of which team is better. There are few teams and fans that can't find something to be aggrieved about. I'd be open to any feasible improvements of course. MLS made some this year by limiting the international conflicts (other than the Gold Cup) this year. They also took two weeks off last year during the WC. Both are good moves. Getting rid of the Superliga will also help fixture congestion. So will the larger rosters... etc... I could go on. MLS is moving in the right direction and has a long way still to go. All this will be blown up when they move off a balanced schedule as more teams come into the league.
Sometimes that's not possible, and there's nothing your team can do about it. I guess c'est la vie, huh? ------RM
I'M NOT AGAINST PLAYOFFS or the EXCITEMENT. I love the playoffs for what they are. My point is that playoffs are NOT BETTER at figuring out which team is better/best. They are worse at it. The only factor that is a factor in the regular season that isn't a factor in the playoffs is international callups. The biggest factor that makes the regular season better is that its is 8.5 times more games. I'll take more games over international callups that affect maybe a couple important players for 5-7 games at most most years. No amount of craziness makes a 1st place team a 5th place team, but playoffs can and have given 5th, 6th, 7th, or 8th place teams championships or places in the MLS Cup, just 90 minutes. Next year, 9th and 10th places teams will have that too. In the regular season, a team in 8th place won't vault to first by winning 3 or 4 games at the end of the season. That probably wouldn't even happen with a 3rd or 4th place team unless the teams in front of them also happened to lose and/or the table was remarkably flat.
Yep. There are some things we can't control... although my argument is that you still had 102 points on the table in 34 games. If you lose by two points, you lost by two points. You can feel better about it knowing you had a 12 point swing possibly against the team you lost to. If you didn't take care of business, you can look at that directly. If you did sweep the season series, then you can blame scheduling factors if it makes you feel better, but, yeah if it comes down to it at the end, there IS nothing you can do about it and we all can and do live with that.
If it was as tight as you're suggesting, then it went down to the wire. I find regular seasons exciting enough anyway, but if it was a case of two points deciding the winner, then I'm guessing it must have been a 34 game rollercoaster ride. I've seen countless late or final day fixtures where team x needs to get more out of their game than team y, with the action swinging back and forth, news coming in from the other relevant fixture, tension on two fronts... it has excitement. The only time when it doesn't end with that is if the season is tied up that little bit earlier or if one team coasts to the title. In those cases, it's rare for the Champion to not be the better team. If you want evidence of all this, look at last seasons race for the shield between LAG, RSL and FCD. That run-in, for those involved was tense and exciting. LA beating Dallas on the last day to ensure RSL didn't snatch it, was a great thing to experience. I can walk away from a league campaign disappointed that if we'd had a bit more luck here or there, my team might be champions, however you can't legislate for that and I accept that sh1t happens. I contend that it's easier to see my team lose by two points to a side that kept pace and matched their overall performance over the course of a full season, than to see a great campaign wasted on a blown call in the favour of a team that scraped into the playoffs on the last day.
I'm watching the Fire/Red Bull preseason game and Petke just admitted that while it may be more difficult to win the most points in a 34 game schedule he'd rather have the Cup.
I don't blame him either given that MLS and most fans consider it the far superior trophy and its the one that gets the bold print as opposed to an asterisk in all the record books. Its also more exciting to win a playoff system than doing it over 34 games. You might win the Supporter's Shield, but you could potentially clinch it by beating the 14th placed team in the league on a Saturday afternoon with two games left in the season. You could even clinch it while watching on TV as the second place team tie the 18th placed team. Definitely not as immediately satisfying. It doesn't mean you didn't do the work to put your team in the spot to win, but it still isn't as immediately satisfying at all.
Well, then, I guess we don't have anything to argue about, because I don't disagree. I have never once stated that playoffs are "better" at determining a "best" team. That would be ludicrous. Where I think we differ is in how we continue from that point. We agree: 34 games are a better indicator of quality than a short playoff series... You: ...so the Supporters' Shield winner has a better claim to the title of "best" team. Me: ...but it's still an imperfect indicator, maybe 80% certainty at most, because of the crazy MLS season. So that tells me that at the end of the MLS season, we DON'T KNOW who the single "best" team is, and we NEVER WILL. But looking at the top "n" teams, we can say that those teams were better than the rest (we just can't pick out one "best" team). Since we can't reliably say which one is the best, we reward them all. We put them into a tournament and let them fight it out for the top prize. See, you're willing to settle for the "better" way to determine the "best" team. I'm not. Unless I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that one single team is the best, I want more. I want playoffs. And yes, before you state it for the umpteenth time, the playoffs are no better (and can be worse) at determining the best team. But I don't care, because I've given up on the concept of one single "best" team. I just want to see the "better" teams play high-stakes games for all the marbles. In summary: You see the MLS season as whittling 18 teams down to one who is probably the best. I see the MLS season as capable only of reducing the 18 teams down to 4 to 8 teams, each of which could conceivably be "best", and that's as much as we can say. That's why I feel playoffs are necessary, and why I don't see the Supporters' Shield as anything other than another trophy. (And yes, I feel 10 teams in the playoffs is too many. But I'm resigned to it, because it seems fans of every professional sport in the US think there are too many teams in the playoffs, so why should soccer be any different?) And with that, I am absolutely, truly done. I can't state my position any more precisely than I have now. If you read this, and still don't "get" where I stand, then I apologize. I don't know what else I can say. ------RM
The new playoff format should tell everybody how little the MLS front office values the regular season...................... I'm not saying I agree with it or not.........it's just the truth as I see it.
Which doesn't take away from what Hans Backe said. The Supporter's Shield winner now has a bigger advantage in the playoffs than it used to.
Not really, LA as the 1 seed played the 6th seeded Seattle in a home-and-home this year. In the new format the 1 seed could still play the 6 seed if it won its playoff game and the 5th and 6th seeded teams had better records than two of the top 3 teams in the other conference. Essentially if Columbus has finished behind Colorado and Seattle instead of ahead of them, which would have happened had Colorado won its late season game in Columbus instead of losing it, then LA would have still faced the 6 seed in their first playoff series.
Anyone who thinks that Colorado was the "real" champion last year is just stupid. Hence, why MLS Cup is less important in determining who's the real champion than the Supporters Shield. Supporter's shield shows who was the best team the entire season and MLS Cup just shows who was the best team in those few playoff games at the end.
I'm not sure I get where you stand because you say that the playoffs aren't better but that we should have them anyway (seeming to imply that they are necessary to determine the best team, but perhaps I'm reading too much into that). Of course we should have playoffs. As I keep saying, I love the playoffs and find them valuable and exciting and appreciate seeing a tournament where generally mostly good teams play with a lot on the line. I don't, however, find playoffs more effective than the regular season. I don't see the Supporter's Shield as a bigger trophy than the MLS Cup. I see it as better at one thing, being more likely than the MLS Cup to find the best team at its conclusion. I know that's not the intended plan for the SS. It doesn't mean I want to abolish the playoffs or want MLS to make the SS more important than the MLS Cup.
I agree with almost everything you just said except the fact that I do think Supporter's Shield should be more important than MLS Cup. I don't think MLS playoffs should be removed but I don't think they should determine the league champion. Maybe, they should be there as a mini-tournament at the end of the year with all the best teams but make it a separate thing from the league title.
Well, I hate to break it to you, but you are absolutely gonna have to live with playoffs determining the MLS champion.