News: MLS owners approve fall-spring calendar and season format changes: Sources

Exactly. Philly fans view the the Red Bulls and DC United as their rivals. DC United and Red Bulls fans do not consider Philly their rival. Orlando City Fans view New York City FC as a rival (at least when both entered the league), NYCFC fans, not so much. Red Bulls fans didn't consider NYCFC a rival at first either.

Now iare a lot of the "rivalries" in MLS league manufactured? Absolutely. Are there legit, authentic rivalries in MLS? Absolutely.

 

San Jose moves the game to Stanford for a reason. Does it really matter if the rivalry is one sided? In the early days we wanted to play the Red Bulls and thought of them as a rival and they use to dismiss us. After beating them so many times in a row, I don't know if it changed for their fan base but I sure remember this season how happy they were to final break the streak. That being said, NYCFC is also turning into one because they've met in the playoffs three times. Part of the problem with MLS rivalries is it's more fan related and not player related. By the time you start to dislike a player on another team, he's gone. Other than Blake on the Union, how many players are causing a decade of grief for an opposing team in MLS? Ilsinho had a moment against the Red Bulls but joined later in his career. Imagine if that started in his prime and ended as the super sub he turned into at the end. Hopefully as MLS Next pro gets some history behind it, that will grow more player rivalries that carry over to the first team.

 

Eighteen years as an MLS lifer and played for both teams. MLS in a way has turned into the smart phone generation league. Instant gratification or fans lose interest in the team. It's hard to follow when the players come and go so quickly for a casual. I always believed that eventually the cap would rise so high that a league with 30 teams at 50 million would attract more players who couldn't play for the top teams in the top five leagues. This would raise the level of MLS while weaken the level of other leagues. The domestic player would increase in quality because of the competitiveness of the league. Not sure if that ever is going to happen anymore as it seems we rather fall more in line with South America and selling players.

 

LA,LA,SJ,PNW3

SD,COL,SLC,TX3

MN,MTL,TOR,CHI,OH2

STL,SKC,NSH,ATL,FL2

DC,CHA,PHI,NER,NY2

Perceived rivalries lost: Chicago-STL, LA-SDx2

I say split them up because they haven’t been rivals for long, even just one season in two cases. And CHI-STL stems from baseball and hockey to a lesser extent.

Thx,

Jay!

 

I wonder what the timeline will be for information relating to the details of flipping the season. Before or after the World Cup?

 

I honest to god don’t care. Just wanna watch my team without seven different subscriptions. This division thing is ultimately a soft-pedal pro/rel break between 34-40 MLS teams in two divisions. Let’s piss off the least valuable original fan bases first so when DC is starting off in the bottom tier the sheep just accept it.

Thx,

Jay!

 

Part of that also has to do with the size of the league. When MLS had 12 teams, you could watch a majority of the games in the league season if you wanted to, so you could get to know every team.

I think I'd struggle to name even a single player on like, a third of the league's teams at this point. God help me if you narrowed that question to a domestic player.

 

As another "old-timer," the RMC is really the only historical match-up worth preserving. Dallas and KC were never really considered rivals, and I don't think fans of any of these teams really looked at those games as "circle the date" kinda match-ups.

However the divisions shake out, I just don't want to be paired with with SoCal because the fans of those teams are completely insufferable. The fans of the Texas and PNW teams I find to be much more tolerable.

 

I'm old enough to remember when every single game (aside from the national TV broadcasts I think) was broadcast for free on the league website

 

Until someone in the US and Canada figure out how to make money on pro/rel for the owner.....

 

The Gals are like UNC basketball. Our rival is Dook. We are Dook’s rival.

But we are also the rival for NC State. And Wake Forest. And Virginia.

 

Plus Charlotte-Atlanta and STL-Chi

 

I don’t agree that there is some anti DC conspiracy. It’s simply math. There are 5 teams in the Southeast, and if DC isn’t the 6th team, no matter how a person tries to do it, it’s stupid. Stop overthinking this.

 

I do remember the Don mentioning quite some time ago that MLS was looking into "simulating" pro/rel within MLS, which is one reason why I joked about them going to a 2 separate single table "leagues" with pro/rel between them. As long as MLS treats both "leagues" the same, I don't think most fans would care/notice.

 

If most fans don't care or notice, what's the point? I remember a rumor the league would merge with Liga MX, in a way it has with Leagues Cup but most fans....

 

As a Crew fan, DC was top of our list for the PO losses in '97, '98, and '99. But we were just a speedbump to DC fans.

As an old-timer, I still view DC and Chicago as our biggest non-Cincy rivals. Or at least the teams I like to beat the most. But both have been so poor lately that the heat is out of it. The other original EC teams next: NYRB & NE.

Early TFC/Crew was early DC/Crew in reverse. Too one sided, though TFC did win an EC Final over us one year, IIRC. And while I certainly have distate for Miami and a couple others, it does not rise to the Cincy/DC/Fire level.

 

For the fans that would notice. Heh. My comment was more aimed at the casual fans that, in other pro/rel leagues, stop going to games when the club drops down a league.

 

I hate the way the West is done, other than that, it is fine.

But there is no "good" way to do it. The divisions are either too big at 8 or 7 or too small at 6. The fit is wrong either way and you have to sonething weird.

Cascadia + Cali is now 7, so unless you go to 4 of 8/7 to keep that together, it is a bust.

And if you go down that road, you still hit trouble out east. To wit:

Pacific (7): LAx2, SJ, SD, Cascadia
Central: (8)TXx3, COL, RSL, SKC, STL + maybe Minny.

Atlantic: NYx2, Philly, NE, DC, Charlotte, Miami, Orlando.

Midwest: Crew, Cincy, Fire, Nashville, Atlanta, TFC, MTL.

It isn't perfect, but it preserves most of the prinary rivalries and all of the OG ones.

8 team div: Play every team in your "Conference" once and your division twice (2x7 + 1x7 = 21). Play an entire division in the other conference once, alternating years (7 or 8). That gets you to 28 or 29. You have 5 or 6 left. Play half of the remaining division (3 or 4 games) with the remainder being a 2nd game vs the other division in your conference. If you have a rival in another division, the keague can lock them in as a 2nd game every year with this wiggle room.

It works much the same in a 7 team div.

 

FWIW, the proposed divisions align very well with a possible multi-year first round of expansion. Just for example, Baltimore in the SE, Pittsburgh in the East, Detroit in the Midwest, Sacramento in the NW, and Phoenix in the West would be easy fits either with the likely new divisions or by adding one more team (Indianapolis or Las Vegas?) and creating a new sixth division with realignment of the existing divisions. Six divisions would allow conferences to return. Garber said the league needs TV revenue growth, and market expansion can fuel that. It will fall to the new commissioner and owners to decide that, but expansion dollars seem far too enticing for owners to ignore. If enough dollars come forth to create northern retractable roof stadiums, the weather problems for players and TV disappear, even though fan commutes to the stadiums will still be issues at times in locations without good mass transit systems.

TL;DR version: It's forever and always all about the Benjamins.

 

The league could compensate San Jose by scheduling them to host the Galaxy game for the first 5 years after this is implemented. LAFC too for that matter.

 

That would only be two or three extra games in reality. Although LAFC is getting the Galaxy treatment by San Jose, it's not quite the same is it?
Eight divisions of four would actually work as well when they expand to 32. Now that they are flipping the season, places like Phoenix and Las Vegas might not need a dome stadium as a requirement to join MLS.

 

It looks to me like the league is prioritizing play every team at least once. So expansion to 32 teams would indeed be 8 divisions of 4 to get to 34 games. Then at 34 just play one rivalry opponent twice with no divisions at all.

These six team divisions might not last long.

 

Yeah, most likely a star-driven thing. Every team gets to see Messi and Son at least every other year, and at least on TV every year.

 

Also (and maybe this is just me) but the league was in such a precarious state that I found myself following and rooting for everybody except DC. I was walking around hoping that the arrival of Alain Sutter and Damian would improve attendance at the Cotton Bowl.