From all appearances MLS will keep the 34 game schedule and add in this new competition Then put in playoffs, USOC, and CCL and some teams are going to fly past 50 games a season. This is going to be a train wreck. Garber essentially just confirmed what he told reporters in NYC Tuesday: MLS will keep 34-game regular season after new Leagues Cup begins in 2023.Much more on the competition from @FelipeCar and I, including some previously unreported details: https://t.co/TMr735TGnL pic.twitter.com/hOoB2Tp3E5— Sam Stejskal (@samstejskal) September 23, 2021
Doesn't Brazil have similar numbers of games when you include all tournaments they play? It is very doable but MLS would have to relax and/or increase the salary cap to have the depth to play so many games a year. Unless they plan on running with "2" teams in USOC, several MLS games and several Leagues Cup games.
As far as when to play this tournament, there is this natural dog days of Summer, "dead space" on our American pro sporting landscape right after the MLB All Star Game the second Tuesday in July till NFL preseason in early August. There has been for 25 years now just MLB and MLS play in the middle of July (putting FIFA Summer Tournaments and regional Summer tournaments aside) so taking time off for Leagues Cup from July 16thish to August 7thish would be the ideal time slot imho. All I know is that for those of us that went to and or watched on TV the Super Liga games back in the day, they were hella fun and just had a different vibe over MLS league play. A playoff vibe but versus Calero, Chaco Jimenez and Co in that era of Pachuca glory years. In South America there is Copa Libertadores and Copa Sud Americana so in North America there will be the CCL, which is also very fun to attend and has its own vibe, and this now with Leagues Cup expanded. Two regional club tournaments.
Thinking outside of the box? Rocket fuel? Jesus. Really curious to see how MLS rosters will be magically transformed into something that'll hold up to even more matches. I'd hoped that the new developmental league - which we still have few details about - would be a big step toward MLS clubs being able to field teams that could hold up to the strains of the regular season, playoffs, USOC, and the CCL, for teams that qualify. Tacking on a new major tournament to the above doesn't sound like 'rocket fuel.' It sounds like yet another gimmick that'll exposure MLS's threadbare/talent-challenged rosters against better competition. Especially when you compare it to the slow-growth numbers in the new CBA.
By the way, while I'm critical of the metaphor, in this case, 'rocket fuel' is probably unintentionally apt. Rockets burn hot and fast, and then either crash into the ocean or drift aimlessly in space (while manned capsules or satellites continue on to their destinations). Sounds like MLS 'outside of the box thinking' to me.
So is the MLS All Star game against the Liga MX all stars still going to be a thing? I mean I'm all for stoking the rivalry but this seems like a little too much.
Maybe. They could play it during the late stages of the new Leagues Cup. The majority of players/teams will be sitting around after the first 2 weeks or so of that tournament. The reports are that it will have 3 team groups so the group stage will only take a week or so. 32 teams advance but 16 will be eliminated in the first round of the knockouts so that means the players on 31 teams will have nothing to do for the rest of the month.
Without the rocket fuel the capsule or satellite couldn't get to their destination as it is part of the trip to get in orbit. Just saying.
My team wasn't in it, so I didn't care about it, Uh oh. On a serious note, excited to play different Liga MX teams in this tournament and will attend those games standing for 90 and cheering. I also couldn't give two shits about playing other MLS teams in this tournament and will skip every one including when making finals & whatnot.
Fair enough. It's just that the rocket fuel want to see MLS invest in is player talent. By the way, did you see the quotes from Frei after last nights' Seattle-Leon game? So what accounts for the lack of aggressiveness and hunger in MLS? Is it the quality of MLS rosters? Or the structure of the league where regular season games just aren't seen as having much value? Or something else? In any event, I question whether this tournament will magically make MLS teams more aggressive and hungry.
I think MLS is willing to trade some hard core fans like you to try to bring in a higher number of casuals. That's the bet they're making. I think they're both looking at this as something that will help them relative to the Honduran and Costa Rican leagues, and the Brazilian and Argentinian leagues (when it comes to buying players) and relative to Europe (when it comes to retaining domestic players.) As to my "take," I see both sides. I think it's a pretty high stakes gamble; this isn't like the one-off game that is the Champions Cup. This is putting the regular season on hold, and there will be knock on effects of regular season matches being either too bunched up, or scheduled in poor weather.
So this tournament could run from July 25th to August 27th giving it just under six weeks to play out. Although I've seen it might be 16 groups of three, this would only be two games for 32 teams leaving about a month layoff. If it was 12 groups of four you would have at least three games for every team. You could have the top two in each group qualify for the second round. With the second place teams playing each other then a round of 16, 8, 4, third place and championship game. I could be wrong but I believe the CBA has a provision in it for players being paid for games they play outside the league. I'm not sure if that is besides the prize money for the tournament or on top of it. You would think it is on top of it. The prize money for the CCL final in 2020 was $800,000 with $500,000 to the winner and $300,00 to the loser. If you want teams in this region to take this tournament seriously, it will take about 25 million in prize money for the tournament. With 94 games averaging 15,000 a game that is less than $18 average ticket price per game. So you could put $12 million towards the first round or $250,000 a team paying a thirty team roster $925 for each game per player. The next round could payout $2 million for the second place play in teams to the round of 16. Next round $4 million for the round of 16, $2 million for the round of eight, $1 million for the round of four, $1 million for the third place game and $3 million for the final. If the final split was $2 million for the winner and $1 million for the loser, that's over $66,000 per player for the winner just for this game alone with a thirty team roster. I believe this type of money would be easily obtainable for the tournament just on the gate alone. You would imagine with nothing but baseball going on during this time and 94 games to sell over five weeks this will get some kind of attention from the networks. How much could they sell this for?
Probably a bit of all that, as well as the place of domestic soccer in our overall domestic sports landscape. I was listening to the United States of Soccer last week and Jason Davis said the Red Bulls recently had a digital post game conference or something like that and only a few fan/hobbyist bloggers applied to get access to it. No professional sports writers.
There are only two group games for each team but 32 teams advance. So at 47 total teams (however they make that work) only 15 of them would get just 2 games. Everyone else would get at least 3 games.
My takeaways... 1. I really liked the MLS-is-Back Tournament, so this looks like a more competitive version. It went quick and I got to watch a lot of games and teams that I don't normally watch. 2. Hopefully, they figure out how to work this around FIFA dates. 3. The games played could count for league games since we have an unbalanced schedule anyway, which would reduce the total games played in an already congested schedule. 4. I like that Liga MX will be in their offseason... for selfish reasons of course. 5. I hope it will be played with host cities in the US, MX, and Canada for the knockout rounds at least.
Same as in any tournament with a single-game group stage. There will be tie-breakers implemented. Probably Fair Play points and then drawing of lots in this circumstance.
If you aren't worried about staggering every single game for TV window purposes like the World Cup is, it seems like 12 groups of 4 with the winners and 4 best second place teams advancing makes more sense.
Yes, it could plausibly be over 30 days with 5 weekends. Do the group stage weekend/Wednesday/weekend, and then four knockout rounds with three rounds on weekends and one midweek. Throw all the overlapping games on whatever streaming platform deal they have in 2023, with select games on regular national TV. I do wonder if they want to make the maximum game burden less than seven, though.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/ianqui...wrong-mls-scheduling-problem/?sh=24f3c8201fb0 The schedule can work but the roster needs to be more flexible.
By 'flexible,' he means that MLS needs to dramatically expand rosters, invest a lot more $$ into players. His comment about scheduling is a nice example of lazy journalism, worthy of a BigSoccer post. Is it really that easy to just schedule games in February, early March (and maybe even later for clubs like Montreal) in warm weather cities? I mean, maybe. But try doing the scheduling math, just to see how and if it works out. It also assumes warm weather cities want to play a big chunk of early season matches at home, then go on extended road trips in the summer. Again, I'd love for MLS to at least try to climate-adjust its scheduling. Historically, though, clubs like Chicago and Columbus have actually played more than 50% of their early season schedule at home. Maybe with stadium construction winding down, that'll change. I hope so. Regardless, I think northern clubs should/would play 1-2 games at home in the cold, the ideal being a noticeably tilted schedule - to warm weather cities hosting matches early in the season - but not 100% of those matches. The author does revive an important point about charter flights. They've got to become the default in MLS.