Could MLS adopt a "balanced Schedule" in 2016? With a even number of clubs a"Balanced Schedule" makes more sense. Future expansions should keeps MLS even numbers: 20, 22, 24, 28, etc. With 20 clubs they could play 38 regular season games, 19 home and 19 away games. The club with the highest pontuation will be the MLS Champion. All clubs will play against each other twice, one at home and one away. With 24 or more clubs (2018 and beyond), inter-conference games will be reduced to one legged games. MLS CUP (Not a Playoff, instead a second competion running during regular season, weekdays like CONCACAF Champions League). Group Stage (March-May) 4 Groups, 5 clubs each. Home and Away games: each club will play 8 games during this stage. Knock-out tournament. (September-October) Group winners and runner-ups: 8 clubs. Quarterfinals. two legs Semifinals. two legs. Final. one leg. Host City. Super Cup: MLS League Champions VS MLS CUP Winner Supporter's Shield awarded to the Club with the best performance during 2016 season in all "national" competitions. Club coeffencies will be implemented for club seeding purposes in Conferences and Group Stage instead of a geographic distribution. To mantains a equilibrium between conferences. Two new competitions could give more Money to the league: sponsors, tickest, advertises, more media atention, etc.
I think teams should play each other home and away an equal number of times. The problem is that you lose the revenue and media interest from one of the local match ups. I assume NYC will play NYRB at Yankee Stadium twice next season in front of 48,000 spectators, in a balanced schedule they would only get such opportunity.
MLS is committed to a 34 game schedule so it's not going to happen. There was a balanced 30 game schedule in 2010 and 2011 and that's it.
In addition to adding 4 games, playing a balanced schedule would add 5 trips to clubs in the other conference. I could see people being mad that the schedule within each conference isn't balanced either, but there's no solution to that without changing the number of games. With 24 clubs in 2 conferences of 12, playing 2 games against each conference opponent and 1 game against each club in the other conference would make 34 games, and if and when MLS plays a season with 24 clubs I hope that happens.
While I like the idea of a balanced schedule, it's never going to happen again on a nation-wide level. It was really, really hard on teams. I could foresee a day where East and West play a balanced schedule of, say, 26 games and then the top half and bottom half are divided and play post season tourneys with 6 teams from the top and 2 teams from the bottom advancing to some kind of super cup. Or some other ridiculous $#!].
Clubs from Europe could play more than 64 matches during regular season (not counting preseason and friendly matches). MLS teams could play 55 matches between MLS (Regular Season and Playoff), US Open Cup and CONCACAF Champions League. However most teams plays less than 40 oficial matches per season.
Almost by definition they do. They all play 35 (34 league + 1 USOC/CC). Teams that advance in the USOC/CC get more but at some point not all teams can advance. Same with playoffs. Some teams get CCL matches but in one season the number of those are limited. There are certainly teams that play more than 40 games but a majority? You think 10 or more teams play 40 or more games? I don't see it as likely though it might be technically possible.
I was referring to the 64 game regular season. As far as I know the English Championship plays the most at 46 games in a 24 team league. If a team makes the playoffs the get to 49. No league that I know of plays anywhere close to 64.
England: Premier League, League Cup, FA Cup, FA Community Shield and UEFA. Brasilian clubs plays almost 80 games if reaching all competition finals. Portuguese clubs could play 54 or 56 games if reaching all competition finals, very unlikely to reach UEFA finals.
Why are you focused on the number of games, which has been fifa's biggest gripe when discussing the calendar? The next question is when do you play the extra games?
Hypotheticaly (With more than 20 teams they must have conferences, however with 20 teams there no need, playing 38 regular season games without Playoffs). - 40 weeks Schedule, between 1st week of March and first week of December. Reducing Playoff season, no more than 3 weeks, 8 teams is enough. What's the point of regular season if almost every team enters playoffs, should be more restricted giving more importance to regular season?!! Also Ending All-Star Game, I think it doesn't makes sense! More double round weeks... CONCACAF Final should be one legged game helded in a host city. Doesn't make sense one two legged final, this was abandoned in almost every soccer competition finals trough the world. However when MLS reach 32 clubs, I think more than that is almost impossible: - During regular season they could play up to 54 games (9 CONCACAF games +5 US Open Cup games+38 regular season games=52)(7 playoff games - round 16, quarters and semi finals two legged games, final one legged game), one and a half game per week is a normal average.
Here's the most games I can think of for a club in the Premier League and Champions League: 38 Premier League 6 Capital One Cup (5 rounds with the Semifinals having two legs) 10 FA Cup (6 rounds with replays in the Rounds of 64, 32, 16, and 8; there are no replays in the Semifinals or Final) 19 in Europa League (4 in qualifying rounds + 6 in Group Stage + 9 in Europa League Round of 32 through Final) 1 Community Shield (would have to be the defending FA Cup winner) Total of 74 (excluding friendlies) A Premier League could play 3 combined games in the UEFA Super Cup and Club World Cup, but in that case the club would not be in Europa League qualifying rounds. Here is how many games each Premier League club in the 2014-2015 Champions League and/or Europa League played excluding friendlies and friendly tournaments: Manchester City: 51 Chelsea: 54 Arsenal: 56 Liverpool: 58 Everton: 51 Tottenham: 57 Hull City: 44
I have not the time nor energy to point out everything that fails with this idea. Just off the top of my head: 3 of the Champions League finals (UEFA, AFC, OFC) use a single-game knockout and 3 (CONCACAF, CAF, CONMEBOL) use a two-legged system. So its hardly abandoned in almost every soccer competition in the world (I know, another case of "the world" meaning "Europe"). With MLS cup now hosted by one of the teams the All-Star Game is the premier event for the league to wine and dine sponsors and such, can't get rid of it How do you plan to play MLS Cup after the first week of December if, say, Toronto or New England is hosting? How to you plan to compensate for the lost revenue by playing double game weeks?
Why double game weeks result in revenue lost? MLS Cup after 1st week of December, why? I Don't said that in my post... All-star game whats the point?! wine and dine sponsors?!! ok, I don't get it...
Because weeknight attendance (hell, anything but Saturday night attendance) tends to suffer in all but the best markets. You're moving normal weekend games and putting them on weeknights, resulting in lower attendance and lost revenue. I thought your 40 week schedule was just the regular season, to allow for breaks like the Copa America and international games, my bad. Every league does massive behind the scenes wining and dining at their league events. For the NFL that's at the Super bowl as everything can be set up with lots of prior notice. For other leagues it tends to be all their All-Star Games for the same reason. MLS used to do most of that at MLS Cup but now that MLS Cup's location is only known with one week's notice most of that has shifted to the ASG. That's where deals get done, the league gets shown off to new sponsors, the Board of Governors has their mid-year meeting, etc. All the VIPs are in one place at the same time.
So you're eliminating 6 playoff games and the ASG and replacing them with 3 home midweek games per team. I'm thinking that's not going to balance out financially and I'm not sure the schedule works with CCL play, USOC play, and international friendlies.
Can I point out something? Right now MLS teams lose money when they play on weeknights, especially when playing non-league competitions. It costs more to open the stadium on a weeknight than the team is able to collect in ticket revenue.