So is it just me or does it seem unfair to United that this weeks match against NYCFC was rescheduled due to NYCFC playing a CCL match in Seattle and it being decided that playing in Seattle on Wednesday and then again in DC on Saturday was too much for NYCFC. Or do people see it as a week off for United to get back on the winning track? My thought is NYCFC needs to man up. If you want to play in the CCL things like this might happen.
Not all that concerned about fair. All I know is that DC United's form hasn't been all that great lately and a break may be just what the doctor ordered.
Any South American or European league moves that game to Sunday and it is the end of the story. So yes, MLS does seem to be looking out for their poster children. The Sounders game on Saturday wasn't impacted. I realize that it's NYCFC with the long travel, but that's never stopped the MLS from making teams play 3 games in 8 days with coast to coast travel involved. Our form is poor and we just came off the international break, so I am not sure that there is much saving us.
The Sounders game for this weekend was also rescheduled. https://www.soundersfc.com/news/sou...ncinnati-rescheduled-for-tuesday-september-27
Now scheduled for Aug 31 https://www.dcunited.com/news/d-c-u...-new-york-city-fc-to-august-31-at-red-bull-ar
Not sure when they changed it up, but it was still listed in the MLS app when I posted, maybe they were behind on updating the schedule, I didn't check the NYCFC schedule to see if it had been updated. It remains garage that domestic league games are rearranged to accommodate international Cup play. I get that MLS would like to see one of its teams win another international trophy, but this is part of being a "big club" playing in those kinds of games. Have enough players to tough out the schedule or make tough choices about which games you're going to focus on. My assessment remains, that both clubs should have played their weekly fixtures on Sunday and moved on with things. I am sure I am missing some more recent examples of schedule adjustments, but the first time I consciously remember a European team's league schedule being adjusted to accommodate Cup play was ManU in '99 when they were going for the quad, league/League Cup, FA Cup, and UCL.
They changed it in March. That article I linked to is dated then, and Goff reported on the change on March 18, the same day the DC United game was changed. Moving the league games to Sunday wouldn't have mattered, since the return Concachamps game is Wednesday, two days from now. If they kept the regular season games, it would either be two games between the first leg and the MLS game if they were kept on Saturday, or two days between the MLS game and the second leg if they were moved to Sunday. This isn't the first time MLS has rescheduled regular season games to accommodate teams playing in Concachamps. It likely won't be the last.
Every league that participates in intercontinental competition plays those games mid-week without impacting the rest of the league's schedule. With NYC being in the CCL, they should know they've got to have the roster to compete in both competitions. NYC has to deal with those 3 games in 8 day stretches. We shouldn't be pushed into the same circumstance (which is what we'll have when we make up this game) because MLS wants its poster children teams to have the best shot at competing in CCL. No team should be penalized for another team playing in another competition. The EPL would never have asked Brentford to play 3 games in 8 days because West Ham had a tough game with Lyon last week and has one this week.
What other league that participates in international competition has the ridiculous salary cap and roster construction rules that MLS has? A team like West Ham is far deeper than anything NYC could possibly hope to put together. As long as MLS has their byzantine roster rules and salary cap, expect to see games get moved during Concachamps. As I said before, this year isn't the first time they've done it. Finally, NYC is getting hosed even harder with schedule congestion by the game being moved than DC, as they now have 5 games between the 28th of August and the 10th of September. It's not like they dropped the game into an international break or in a lull in NYC's schedule.
I believe there are multiple ways in which MLS is pathetic as you may be able to tell from my sig but this isn't one of them.
I don't really give a damn about NYC's schedule congestion this week, next month or August. They're a good, well funded, well run operation. We are not and that's why the standings looked like they looked last year. If they can't cope with a domestic calendar and CCL, that's tough, no other MLS team should have any sympathy for them. Period. Go get some loan players from USL or youth team players. They presumably have an academy full of promising kids. What better opponent to run them out against than a team that didn't make the playoffs? The idea that you ask one team to make a sacrifice for the sake of another team's ambitious pursuits is 100% wrong IMO. It seems like you are looking at this from an MLS perspective or an NYC perspective rather than as a fan of any team that would be asked to take on an additional burden because of NYC's schedule congestion. Why should DCU accept 3 games in 8 days to accommodate CCL? Whether this is better or worse for NYC should not be an issue that any other team would care about. Instead, we're taking an extra burden which is all I care about. And while West Ham is deeper than NYC, they don't play NYC. They are trying to compete with ManU, Arsenal, Spurs, and Wolves for a European spot next season. And if Brentford were asked to take on schedule congestion at a future point in the season, which would almost never happen, there would be howling, not just from Brentford, but the whole league that wasn't receiving similar accommodation.
Personally, while I understand what they want and why they want it, I'd like to see Seattle and NYCFC put on their big boy pants and not whine about fixture congestion. Play your 2nd string in the MLS game prior and take your lumps. Prioritize. Every team has to do this at some point in the season, CCL or no. These are theoretically the best clubs in the league, and we let half the teams in the league into the playoffs. Using one or two games to build depth shouldn't meaningfully impact them. It's not even objectively a bad thing.
Someone had a sig that said something like "DCU but not MLS". I'm in that boat. Aside from my local team (support because of kids) I could give an F what happens in the rest of the league. I'll remind myself to see the previous week's scores to get a sense of the next opponent but that's it.
Also - MLS plays favorites and like someone said they are willing to screw over whomever to give their little preciouses a boost in the CCC or whatever. I hope both those ass teams lose their games. I am not a league booster.
For almost a decade the league tried to cut DCU down and restore parity to other teams, salary cap was applied accordingly. Never for FTRB or the Galaxatives but DCU seemed to get blown up every other season. So my animosity exists from that and it is good to know that things haven't changed. F-MLS - Garber can eat a bag of dicks.
I don't mind Garber, he works for his 28 bosses (I had to look it up to check if the number was right). Of course some bosses have more power than others.
The ignorance is stunning. NYC and Seattle play each other on Wednesday - winner moves to the finals. They can't both lose. Also if DC United were somehow in this situation MLS would be giving them favors, too. Like the extra allocation money that comes with qualifying for Concachamps.
As I said in my reply to Morrissey, if DC were somehow in NYC's shoes, they'd be getting the same concessions. And other teams before Seattle and NYC have gotten these concessions, too. This is nothing new. Hell, this isn't even the first time DC United has had a game rescheduled to accommodate an MLS team advancing in Concachamps. It's just a part of MLS.
I hadn't realized that you got a GAM boost for playing in these competitions. What's the point of a Byzantine salary rule to give the CCL participants extra GAM (salary cap money that costs the owner nothing) if you're also going to need a schedule accommodation here? It seems to me like that extra money should be spent on the depth you need to take on DCU in between your CCL games. It seems like MLS has made allowances for having these extra midweek games so creating schedule congestion for another team beyond the CCL participants shouldn't require additional accommodations to compete in them. CCL is an external competition. MLS is a league that should offer a level playing field for all its participants. If they want to te CCL participants to be more competitive in CCL, they should find a way to do it that doesn't screw over some members of the league. If NYC and the rest of the CCL participants require scheduling accommodations of this nature, they're using their extra GAM incorrectly IMO. Regardless of whether we got this same accommodation were we to ever qualify for CCL, its wrong to force a couple of other teams (DCU or not) to take on 3 games in a 8 days which handicaps them against the rest of the league because they don't have the extra GAM like the CCL participants who should have prepared for this exact eventuality.
I do think showing well in regional competitions is good for the league, and that's good for us. There's one justification I can think of for something like this, and that's if the team flies in for an away game six days before to acclimate to local conditions. If the league stated that was a best practice and all teams would be granted that privilege, I'd be for accommodating those teams by rescheduling games in that six-day window.
Yeah, I honestly don't care. I didn't even know they play each other and for me that's bliss. I will root for the meteor. That second point is a load of horseshit because our own history shows that MLS could give a rat fcuk about DCU, especially at their peak. It was always meddling to dole out parity at our expense unless you were FTRB or the Landycakes.