As a hardcore soccer fan Its amazing that every year I get pumped for MLS but about 10 weeks in a loose interest and simply wait for the playoffs. Its simply tiring to see the same 10 teams play each other week in and week out for half a year just to eliminate 2. I cant take that anymore! Please MLS change the freaking format...make the regular season exciting! Why not create 2 halfs, where the 1st half champ gets a place in the final and meets the 2nd half champ? If the same team wins both than they are automatically the champs. Or if you really want playoffs do the same thing execpt 2 teams from each half make the playoffs. ANYTHING but this tedious system we have now. So much so that I simply havent wayched for about 2 or 3 months now.
I see what you are saying, but things will get better as more teams are added over the next 5 years and the number of teams that makes the playoffs remains the same. hang in there man. chivas and apparently cleveland, houston and philly are soon to come to the rescue.
You've made good points, as usual. This two-table thing has to go. Then, maybe, some kind of playoff, but only between the top clubs. Four at the most. There has to be real consequences to the majority of clubs for losing matches or only getting draws. That doesn't exist now. And, yes, more clubs will help. Hopefully, something will be done to allow them to build decent rosters.
I notice you're a metro fan. Newsflash: You've got two six point swing games w/ DC, who are are four points behind you. You've got two six point swing games w/ NE, who are 7 points behind you. You've got a game at San Jose You're not in the playoffs yet by any means.
The point is that it's still not really exciting. It would be exciting if the MetroStars HAD to catch Chicago.
Can I trust then that you have not, nor will you ever, post comments about what a travesty it is that MLS does not have relegation? Furthermore, now that there are only two spots available for the Concacaf Champions Cup, will you be satisfied if the extra spot goes to the Supporter's Shield winner? Afterall, then it'd be even MORE exciting by your book. The Metros would HAVE to catch San Jose, who are a full 9 points ahead of you. Problem solved, you can wake up now.
Instead of two halves of the season, as SoccerScout suggests, maybe we should just make a bigger deal out of one of the two segments we already have: the Supporter's Shield or regular season champ. If that achievement was given more emphasis and reward, teams would play for it, and Chicago would go into a game like Saturday's at Dallas with a bit more passion. It would also be more exciting this year if KC and the Galaxy were fighting with the bottom clubs in the East for the last place in the playoffs, rather than just the teams in their division. I think the playoffs are exciting and American and necessary, I just think there should be a bigger reward for the team that finished first in the regular season. When we get a few more teams again, the playoffs will be a little more exclusive.
Emphasis..hmm. I've got an idea. Why don't we make the supporters shield winner the first automatic entrant into the Concacaf Champions Cup, the ONLY international club competition for which MLS teams are eligible. Not that would be great.
Thanks for the replies. I'm glad I'm not alone in my sentiments. As for expansion, why should I be excited about that? Just 2 years ago we had 12! Now we have 10! We have shrunk instead of grown. Talk about expansion does not excite me because of this very fact. I simply dont trust expansion anymore and definetly wouldnt sit on my ass hoping that its the salvation for the league. MLS needs to make what they have NOW exciting and now try to "grow" into an exciting league. Make the league exciting NOW. Seriously I repeat there is a major problem with the league when hardcore fans like myself simply DONT CARE what happens until the playoffs. I want to love the Metrostars, I want to really CARE! I really do. But I just dont and its like this every year! Maybe when they expand, maybe when they get a new stadium, maybe maybe maybe. Enough maybes and change what you CAN change now. The format! Make the games matter from game 1 to game 30.
Seriously, I fail to see what point you are trying to make. You are 9 points out of supporters shield contention w/ 4 games to play. It's basically over already? WTF is that more exciting??
Seems SoccerScout won't be happy until MLS goes the way of many international leagues, where the top of the table club wins the league. That isn't going to happen ever in MLS, so you can either accept that and enjoy the fact that exciting soccer is happening every weekend for seven months here in our country, or you can quit watching MLS forever. Everyone bitches about eight of ten making the playoffs. Yeah, it's not a perfect system yet. But it will be. Still, check out the race in the East right now. All five teams still have a shot at winning the conference. One of the five will not make it, and it could be anyone of them. That's excitement. Yes, eight of ten make it. But there is excitement in seeing which eight do. And raise your hand if you think any league anywhere in the world has more then five real championship contenders, outside of Major League Soccer? Do you feel the EPL won't be won by one of these three (Man U, Arsenal, Chelsea)? Or the Scottish Premier League? Or La Liga (Real Madrid and the one other team that usually has a good season)? Or Bundesliga (Bayern Munich and who?)? Our league is unpredictable. You can say Chicago and San Jose are the best now, but DC & Colorado have good shots, Metrostars can't be totally eliminated, Crew are getting better every week, and you can never count out L.A. You don't like the regular season because it doesn't matter? I say it does. A)you have to get to the playoffs to win MLS Cup. B)especially this time of year, teams who are really coming together could put together a playoff run (think United in 1996, Rapids in 1997, San Jose in 2001, and Revs in 2002). As much as I love the Premiership (and I'd put my passion for that league next to anyone's here), if you lose seven or more games by Boxing Day, you really don't have a shot at winning the league. We have a real championship race here, and the games going on now are very important to that. If you're not watching, you are missing a lot.
I don't speak for SoccerScout, but here's my brief take on this. If that's what he wants, he's right. Don't tempt me. It's more interesting to see who loses rather than who wins? You left out Argentina. The clubs you named are always quality clubs because they use their brains and bucks to consistantly produce high class, entertaining squads. That shouldn't be punished nor scorned. It's not easy doing it year-in, year-out. It's incredibly difficult. I suppose they should break up all those clubs you mentioned, perhaps in the name of parity. Just like the draconian rules and regulations of MLS destroyed DC United. That's because everyone is mediocre. If you lose seven or more matches by Boxing Day, you probably don't deserve to win the Premiership. Matches at the beginning of the season count as much as the ones in the last month. That's why a single table is superior. All the matches, no matter when they are held, are important. What's wrong with the champion being the best club of an entire season, rather than the best club over a three or four week playoff period? Why should the Fire, if they have beaten the crap out of everybody during the "regular season," have to prove themselves again in a "playoff?" Especially against .500 or sub-.500 clubs. That's fair? Not really. I hate to come across as strident about this, but I'm fed up with the "MLS is perfect as it is" arguments. Do you want a top flight, major, world-class league? Or are you content with a half-assed minor one?
Brazil is known for experimenting year to year with formats. Since 1971 when they played the 1st true official National Championship Brazil had never played WITHOUT Playoffs until THIS YEAR. Many were afraid that it was death to the league to go the Euro way. But with 15 Rounds to go of 46 total there is still lots of interest ON ALL PARTS. Every team still has hopes of avoiding relegation, winning the title or making it to next years Libertadores (Top 4 teams). For the first time EVER in Brazil there will not be a playoff or final. But thats not what we are asking from MLS. We are saying "OK you want playoffs, FINE but at least make the regular season MEAN SOMETHING". Last year Brazil had playoffs. 24 teams and only 8 made the playoffs. Thats 33% of the teams making it into the playoffs. In MLS its 8 of 10! 80%! This borders STUPIDITY on MLS's part. Imagine if in Brazil 20 of the 24 made the playoffs, how absurd would that be? Well thats what MLS is doing and many of you make excuses for it. Please get off the high horse. MLS needs to learn from their 1996 mistakes which was trying to make a unique American style league. EVery year they slowly have gone more International and its time they take yet another step and re0do the entire format of the league. With only 10 teams there is absolutly no reason to have 2 divisions. Dont give me the US is too large for no division, Brazil is just as big and teams criss cross the country all year long.
MLS should give more $$ to teams by basis of where they finish in the Supporter's Shield race. If you finish 1st you get 1st place money, if you finish 7th you get 7th place money, and so on. The teams could then filter the $$ down to the players. This would get the players to fight hard in games 1-30.
Complete and total *#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#. 1)Take out competition for European/Copa Libertadores spots. 2)Take out relegation fights. Now, in any given league, you'd have 90% of the season be totally meaningless.
Re: Re: Have the playoffs started yet? Wake me up when they do. You have a very good point, obviously, which is why I think the MLS still needs some sort of playoffs or tourny, at least at this point. I mean, I would love relegation fights and qualification battles in MLS, too, but that's far off. What I want is more recognition for the best team over the whole season. The Revs charge last year was fun, but if they had won, it would have been a cruel blow for the Galaxy (I was hoping, of course).
First off, I'm all for reducing the number of playoff teams, or doing away with them all together. The problems I see though, are how many games you play, do you only play 18 games(each team twice), cause if you don't then you have the teams playing 36 games(each team 4 times) in the season, which I know many countries have seasons that long, but do they play one team for times during the course of the season. Also, the problem is size of the US, the US goes through four time zones, while Brazil goes through two and a little part of a third, here's a website to see that http://www.worldtimezone.com/. Also with MLS still not making much money, if any, a year, do you think that the owners of LA, San Jose, NY, and NE want to pay for their clubs to fly cross country 4 times a year (two verse each). I mean I'm all for this when MLS starts making money and gets to a size bigger then 10, maybe 16 teams (32 games playing each team twice) would be the ideal time to make one table. I personally don't feel that a single table would benifit MLS at this time, but I'm all for reducing the number of playoff teams to four or even two (split the season in two and the winner of the first half meets the second half winner, if the same team wins both, still have a championship, between the winner and the team with the most number of points after them. MLS Cup is the big event for MLS and they will need to keep it.) That's my .02
A system that, in retrospect, would have worked brilliantly this year would have been to have the division winners get a bye week while the number 2 teams hosted the number 3 teams in a "wild card" game to determine who would play at the division winner in the semis. In the west, LA and KC would not be coasting but battling for their lives. Dallas fans forgot about the postseason some time ago, so no loss there. Colorado would not only not have clinched yet, but would still have to fight to host the wild card game. In the east all teams have a good shot at third. The nice thing about this system is that you always want to finish higher. 4th is much worse than 3rd which is much worse than 2nd which is much worse than 1st. A negative case for the system was last year, where two teams, Colorado and KC, would have missed the playoffs despite winning records.
Agree. The problem is, the same people who are arguing that 80% is a joke would be arguing that 60% is a joke
Furthermore, I am not sure that a bye week is a reward and not a penalty for the division winners. If my team is on a roll, I would not want to have a week off.
Personally I also find the MLS regular season rather dull. I know the matches aren't meaningless. However, they are far too unimportant. For a completely neutral fan the battle for home field advantage is rather uninteresting and shouldn't take 7 months or whatever. And please note I did not advocate a single table, European style system, so don't berate me with the same old, tired "Eurosnob" argument in which I'm lectured about MLS being an American league that does it the American way blah blah blah.
It should be noted that I too would prefer a single table, that I too would like a reduction in playoff teams, and that I do not think that MLS is perfect as it is. I just disagree with the assertion that the regular season is meaningless. Soccerscout is a Metrostars fan. His team is not yet in the playoffs. A true supporter should be supporting that club rather then saying "Wake me when the playoffs start". His team is not there yet! There is a good chance they will not be! Thus every game for them right now is ultra-important! Even if they lose, if the teams below them lose, it helps the cause. If MLS was a single table format, as it sounds like he wants (maybe I'm wrong there, but it does sound like it) his team would be out of the running right now for the championship (except for a miracle run in form and a major slump by Fire and Quakes). Last year in the EPL with six or seven games left, it was basically a two horse race. So what did those supporters do? Did they say "Wake me in August when the new year starts, every game is meaningless"? Or did they support the club and hope that their team could make it into Europe. I say every game in most leagues is not meaningful, because as history has shown us over the last five to six years, you can usually boil it down to four or five teams at the most who actually have a shot of winning anything. In MLS, you can say that every year there are five to six clubs who could realistically win it all. I favor either one of these two playoff ideas for MLS (not original to me, but I have read them on here before): Top six in, three from each conference (since we ain't getting rid of those damn conferences anytime soon). #2 v. #3 with winner playing #1 in conference final. Gives the top team that minor advantage of a week's rest, plus playing at home. Or the one I like better: Top eight go into playoffs into two groups of four (like WC or CL): Group One is teams #1, #6, #7, #8 (in order of finish, not top four in each conference either), Group Two is #2,3,4,5. Top see in each group plays all three at home. Second best record in each group plays two at home. Third best record in each group plays one at home. Worst record in each group plays none at home. Group Two would be the "Group of Death". Two group winners then play in MLS Cup.
Personally, when I go to Quakes games, I just want to see them win...regardless of a single table, eight teams in playoffs, anything. Doesn't anyone at BigSoccer like going to the game because of the game? Does every game in the entire season have some sort of deep meaning to the standings? Oh, and I feel that MLS is damn exciting right now, the "problem", if there is one, is not the late season, but the mid-season. Right now there are three teams going for the Shield, a dogfight for standings in the East, and playoff positioning in the West. That's damn exciting.