2020 MLS is Back Tournament

SUMMER TIME SOCCER!!!
DRUMS PLEASE!!!

 

I like it! I really thought MLS was going to pick the worst tournament structure, but they did their research. I especially like that the points carry over to the remainder of the 2020 season once it starts back up.

 

i dig this as well. it's not perfect, as nothing is, but it seems to be as good as it could be along with being creative and entertaining. considering all the ways they could've screwed the pooch on this, i'm impressed with this solution and looking forward to it!

 

i havent seen anything about how many games the regular season will have after the mini tournament

 

Truth!
I would bet dollars to donuts that MLS HQ has each conference play all it's teams at least once. Then add in matches accordingly to round out the schedule for 2020.
So there is that 11 or 13 matches there depending on West or East.

The league office stated that Nashville is officially an Eastern Conference team from here on out btw. So they should have 14 teams for a while where the West has 12 for a while. Then Austin and Sacramento come in as West teams and St. Louis is the break club as it could easily go either way being where it sits. Most likely going to the West as Charlotte arrives later on. Definitely an Eastern Conference club.

 

They haven't said but some articles have alluded to 9 or 12 or something like that. I think they are waiting to see how many states are opened up for fans and how the Florida tournament gets going.

There are so many variables this year and if they have to play in empty stadiums they take big losses with little TV revenue. The pro leagues all seems to be trying to get as much done by end of October to avoid the dreaded "second wave" that will shut things down again (Personal note: I think we already are in the second wave)

 

In soccer terms, that's a difficult group but not impossible. LAFC would be rough. Portland is doable neutral. LAG, wild card. They did not impress and we were not full strength. We tied but at home and this would be neutral. But Quintero and Elis sat. On paper we should finish last and could go winless, but maybe eeking game by game we could get out second or third.

 

The other wild card is whether summer transfer season takes place as if normal, and whether the roster is the same come July 2020. Does someone make another run at Manotas or Elis.

 

Re the regular season, I think the red states are hell bent on getting to the election with no further closures. I think the idea of a "second fall spike" was indulging HRH that this was going away this summer, which it never was going to if we opened right back up. Trump said as a national matter we won't be closing back up. I think the red state governors will back him. Abbott has not blinked at a second spike worse than the first, and in reality it was the counties that closed and the state was very late to the party. They are running on economics and dismissive of the virus. Sports is economics. So as a national or red state matter, business as usual through November which is basically the soccer season.

That being said, blue states may close and those teams may have to go neutral or away schedules. And the league as a whole may come under private pressure to reclose, which they did independent of the states.

I could see MLS trying to tough it out for survival reasons. But I could also see them being somewhat more practical than the politicians. But in terms of the politicians, the whole red part of the country is running on closures being economic poison. That is not going to change until we have a November election and any January switches.

I think there will be a lot of pressure, and little official red state pushback, on trying to get something finished this summer and fall. If anything changes in some states in the fall, it will be checkerboard, like the first weeks of March.

 

Personally I am not a fan of them playing at all because I think this could get ugly again.

If they have to play, I would suggest compartmentalized round robins in a limited set of neutral sites *****, relatively safe and expected not to close for political reasons, for the balance of the regular season. So you get in chunks at a time. So you don't depend on everyone being open for business. So you can cancel what we can on any chunks if we get closed again. So the teams, staffs, crews, all limit travel, get in multiple games at a chunk. Do x number of chunks, not too many games.

Neutral single site playoffs, single game rounds, 2 rounds a week, and try to get to a final by October or early November.

I would try to do it in a way that avoids having to worry about red vs blue, closed vs open. That means no home games, no crowds. It's a TV season and to get that done sell them on this being a predictable, short season, in a safe place to film.

Get the games in, get the season over, hope all the teams survive, get back in the bunker for the winter. Don't get greedy, don't go too elaborate, don't depend on 50 states being open through the election and winter.




*****I don't like the idea of a single site in an outbreak. That seems like a bad idea and depending on that state's health policies a little too much. I think you want a few identified resort sites where several teams can get hotels. Rotate the teams through them. Bus the teams from one site to the other. But to me if you put everyone in one place that risks everyone gets sick or that state closes.

 

Juve is all for hibernating until 2022, sports and the economy and our lives

 

Juve is actually for the New Zealand approach where we do our effing job and can open with a clean conscience. And they are doing that now, not 2022.

You're basically trying to make a virtue of failure and act like it has to be a choice between economics and public health. Only if you are libertarians or don't care. In which case we're stuck with the virus and it's this fake dialectic.

But by clamping down on certain elements hard, Taiwan and NZ have almost no new cases. Problem is the current government doesn't believe enough in "government" to get that done. You would have to seriously contact trace, real quarantine for the infected, close the borders completely, and we might have to do a few more weeks at home. But you do that and it's over for a while.

Way this is working we will keep pretending and keep having enormous cases and deaths, and put the states of conscience in the position of having to decide open vs closed again.

I'd also point out that the markets are now sufficiently internationalized where if they don't believe in your virus strategy, they don't have to play along with November oriented cheerleading. Or did you miss where the Dow tanked on Trump in March and is off nearly 2000 today. If they see us getting sick and don't believe we can sustain, they will cut on us no matter what Trump thinks. People have made sport of blaming the left for lockouts but the market tanked before the states closed because they could see the economic impacts before the politicians were willing to take the decisions. Closing in a pandemic is common sense. The markets right now are concerned that the genie is back out of the bottle. The right needs to grasp that market health right now is dependent on some degree of public health. That is true whether we lock down or not. Just like your insurance company can ding you for premiums and deny coverage whether or not Obamacare happened.

 

Sorry, I don't have time to read this now, I have to study up on Judge Hidalgo's new color-coded virus threat chart, which she made up out of thin air just coincidentally after the protests they allowed to happen.

 

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/te...oonReport&utm_term=news&utm_content=headlines

 

https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id...-temporarily-close-positive-coronavirus-tests

you bet on a lame horse

 

Just dropping this beauty of a goal to bring a little alegria to our threads these days!

 

https://www.houstondynamo.com/post/...wTq4O_Uyv9vlxtFrjUQhUaqASFsWRgJHPb_FPnFQCxnuo

Monday, July 13

Los Angeles Football Club

7:00 p.m. CDT

Saturday, July 18

Portland Timbers

7:00 p.m. CDT

Thursday, July 23

Los Angeles Galaxy

7:00 p.m. CDT

I think this is all dreamland still. We're potentially NYC-Lite if Abbott sits on his a$$ much longer.

This is probably the harshest schedule scenario, basically descending order of difficulty. But if we manage points early on we have a winnable last game (and perhaps way out of the group), based on how they looked the first time.

Or we could lose 3 straight or have nothing on the line last game.

 

"Houston will play its first competitive match in 128 days when they open the tournament on FS1 and TUDN on July 13 at 7 p.m. CDT against Carlos Vela and LAFC.

The Dynamo will face the Portland Timbers on July 18 on ESPN 2 and ESPN Deportes at 7 p.m. CDT. Houston will close Group F play against the LA Galaxy in a rematch of the 2020 season opener on July 23 on FS1 and TUDN at 7 p.m. CDT."

[since it has the TV]

so Kube gets nothing out of it so far

 

At least by getting drawn with these teams we avoid a 9AM kickoff

 

gets better -- that's 9 am Eastern = 8 am central.

i wonder whether it would be better or worse for a somewhat overmatched wing speed "counter and get lucky" team like us to play a drowsy or wide awake opponent.

 

Probably would have had an advantage I would think. Fortunately all the knockout round games are in the evening so we won’t have to find out.