It's because all of Holland hates NAC all of a sudden. I blame whingeing cry-baby Leonardo. And NAC management.
Playoffs certainly do keep things exciting until the last day, but on the other hand, they kind of devalue the performance over the course of a season. A few games out of 30-odd can make all the difference.
i thinks the playoffs were a success as for the excitment goes. but i think i was really unfair and i bit unecessary. for example AZ plays 30 somethin games and get second place, 3 higher than 3rd and 14 higher than 4th. And then they have to do a play off between 2, 3, 4 and 5 to see who is gonna go to the champions league? its pretty dumb. i mean they didn't worked hard to get second and get nothin for it besides money, they work hard to get second so they get a place in the CL 3qualifier round. thats the reward u r supposed to get for gettin 2 (or 3, 4 in some leagues), they can't be puttin 3, 4 and 5 in the fight too, they don't deserved it. my opinion is that ok maybe if u r an ajax, feyenoord, or groningen fan u'll like the idea. but put ur self in az's place. would u like ur team havin to play a play off to see who goin where after u clearly deserved it more than they did? i wouldn't like it.
Yeah, it basically nullifies the regular season. You play the regular season only for the hopes of making the playoffs (like American sports). One of the things I always liked about football is that the table actually means something.
The financial paper of the Netherlands "Het Financiele Dagblad" today reported that the play offs commercially were very lucrative. The normal competition had 200.000 extra viewers and the play offs added another 300.000 spectators. Financially the benefits were: 3 million €€ extra income in the competition 4.5 million €€ extra via play off 6 to 8 million €€ extra via television rights So I fear that the money is too sweet to abandon this system
These 200.000 extra viewers would also have been there without play-offs, because Groningen has a new stadium in the 2nd half of the season (20.000 in stead of 13.500) and a few other stadiums have been expanded somewhat (Heerenveen).
I enjoy the playoff system. It doesn't nullify the table since a) the table champion is still the champion and b) the number of teams playoff for a CL spot is small (ie, you still need to be quite high in the table to get there).
My only complaint is that almost everyone from the Eredivisie managed to get into some sort of playoff -If it brought in extra revenue then technically it worked but it was tough to follow every competition and stay interested-- especially after AZ choked