I didn’t say he wasn’t. He’s clearly still the best player in MLS by a good margin. I thought next year would be his last. 2 more on top of that guaranteed just seems ludicrous. Yeah, he’ll still be better than many other MLS players at that point. He’ll score FKs enough alone to make it worthwhile. It would make more sense for those to option years.
Gotcha. Misunderstood the context. I know he'll want to start, but I'm curious how they'll be able to mask his deficiency on defense I still think there's a good chance the contract ends in June 2028. I'm sure the club and league want to ride this gravy train as long as possible.
Watching LAFC v ATX. Seeing Ilie Sánchez playing for Austin, when he was on LAFC last year, and I was pretty numbed we didn’t make a serious push to sign him when he left SKC back in 2021/2022 offseason. Or we did and lost out.
To be fair, that (CM/CDM) was perceived as the strongest part of the roster. And then watching Sanchez get benched behind Caliskan would have been that much more irritating
I still struggle to understand why MLS spreads the games out over so many different days. It would be one thing if this round was specific to Fri/sat/sun. Instead it’s all over the place. If the league doesn’t want to compete with football (can’t blame them) then do Friday or Thursday. It’s also ridiculous the league isn’t done with playoffs before the November fifa window.
While I’m bitching… This best of three format is moronic. Columbus is routing cinci. 4-0, could be a whole lot more. But it counts the same as if they had tied and won in kicks. Duuuuuuummmmmbbbbb do the home and away series this sport pulls off so well top 5 from each conference qualify Round 1 single elimination with top seed getting a bye. Thursday & Friday after decision day. Round 2 is home/away with lowest seed remaining getting top seed. Wednesday/Saturday or Thursday/Sunday Round 3 is home/away with higher seed picking which leg they want. Same days Final on Sunday max games for a team is six.
A thought that occurred to me is that with MLS's desire to create excitement and reward more teams with a playoff spot they are actually hurting the product. I would seriously doubt that MLS would ever drop to 5 playoff teams but it would be better. I wouldn't mind seeing it go to 6 with no play in or 7 with a 6/7 play in but my preference would be 6. With that being said, my point is, the more teams you have make the playoffs the more you reward mediocrity. It allows teams, like RSL to suck longer instead of forcing them to make the hard decision earlier. If they went with your thought of only having 5 teams qualify instead of making the playoffs 5 straight years and selling that as an amazing accomplishment perhaps RSL pulls the trigger on finding a new coach considering that RSL would have only been in the playoffs 2 of the last 5 years. Same result if 6 qualified but 4 out of 5 if 7 was a play in or the number. 9 is definitely too many teams. If 5 was the number RSL would have made the playoffs 3 out of the last 11 seasons. You could argue that the number of teams that make the playoffs doesn't really matter because some organizations are going to suck no matter what but maybe setting the bar higher might put more pressure on clubs to be better. 9 is excessive compared to other leagues. I think 5 might be a bit low and 6 or 7 the sweet spot for playoffs. 18 out of 30 MLS teams 12 out of 30 in MLB 14 out of 32 from the NFL 16 out of 32 in the NHL 16 of the 30 NBA teams
I don't completely disagree, but I'm going to play devil's advocate. I don't understand how you can have the top seed get a bye in your format. You'd need to have 7 teams qualify if you want to give the best team a first round bye. Number 1 seeds in the past didn't like the week or so break when they did something similar. You could do a play-in with teams 4 and 5 though, a one off, with 4 hosting makes sense. MLS is a league of parity. They don't want first round upsets. They also don't want extra time. How do you address those? Every round should be home and away, except the Final, I guess. You are pointing out one of the biggest reasons they want to change the schedule/calendar. International windows in the Fall interrupt the playoff schedule. Playing these games in May and June makes a lot more sense (lots of other issues arise from this switch, though). My crazy postseason idea: 16 team tournament, top 8 from each conference. Group 1,4 5 & 8 and 2,3,6 &7 together. 6 group games, best record hosts 3, 2nd best hosts 2 and 3rd hosts 1. To reward attacking play, average GF during group play is first tie breaker, throwing out the highest and lowest scoring game. I'm not sure if 4 or 8 teams should advance (time constraints?), but non Final series are home/home. Higher ranked regular season team gets to pick which one they host. No extra time, with PKs after the second leg if tied on aggregate, no away goals rule. End brain dump.
I don’t buy into the fall windows driving a complete calendar change. End the regular season one or two weeks earlier, play a few more midweek games, shorten the playoffs.
tough loss for Seattle. I would prefer them over Minnesota but if you can't put it away when you have the chance you get the keeper with the ball off the bar. So for the quarter finals in the MLS playoffs it's: Van v LAFC Saturday Cincy v Miami Sunday Phlly v NYCFC Sunday SD v Minn Monday Probably some visiting team upsets in there. Miami will get some helpful calls and the pressure might build for the home teams. The LAFC and Van match up should be a really good match. The pigeons pretty much dominated Charlotte in the last game which was fine with me because Charlotte looked like an RSL clone that had no idea how to get into the box and what to do when they got there anyway. I also can't stand Zaha. SD took apart PTFC so hopefully they can do the same with Minn. Should be entertaining. Maybe not a foot of snow and plowing the field for extra time during the Canadian Final yesterday but still fun.
Doyle's comments on CIN v CLB really get me thinking about RSL and Pablo. I want the CLB model and it's not even close. I'll be shocked if we get there under Pablo. https://www.mlssoccer.com/news/game-3-heroics-what-we-learned-what-comes-next-mls-cup-playoffs
It looks bad, but is it bad for the players? Not all turf is created equal. The last 3 games should be on grass in warm climates, should see some really good games*. *I can absolutely see Miami crushing a very sub 100% NYCFC.
Espinoza is out of contract with SJ. You can make a good argument he should replace Goncalves as a DP at RSL. He made $2m last year, I don't know if you can get him as a max TAM player or not.
Depends. I think a lot of where players were last year in Pablo’s system was a way of getting them on the field together. Right or wrong. Comfortable in the role or not. if Pablo is married to the 4222 then I’d say put Espinoza in the middle of the 2s with Luna, behind Olatunji and Gozo
Rumor is that the San Jose front office didn't intend to allow Espinoza to become a free agent and is negotiating a return.
TIL that there's a GK in MLS with the last name Rando. I think RSL should sign him to be the 3rd GK that never makes the gameday roster and we're not sure if he's actually a real person or not.
I think Bode's spot is in trouble. https://www.mlssoccer.com/news/cf-montreal-acquire-dagur-dan-thorhallsson-from-orlando-city