Here is why: If there was relegation, the Charleston Battery would replace the Dallas Burn, next season. The Burn,one year away from a new soccer specific stadium, would be out of the major league. The locals would go ballistic, and the team would probably have fold or be moved. The Battery, would play in front of no more than 7 or 8 thousand fans, next season, and then get bumped back down. The locals would NEVER pay for any improvements to their stadium with the prospect it would be for all of one year. This disasterous scenario would repeat itself every year, until MLS got rid of relegation once and for all. The very idea that the showcase teams could be sent into a lower league for a year of obscurity runs counter to everthing American sports is based on. The USA is not England. Repeating for the brain-dead, the USA is not England, Holland, Germany, Scotland or just about any place else. THERE WILL NEVER BE RELEGATION IN MLS!!!
There are some absolutes: EVERYONE ALIVE TODAY WILL DIE SOMEDAY. INCLUDING YOU AND ME. and MLS WILL NEVER HAVE RELEGATION. I stand to be corrected. Give me one, credible scenario where relegation could be used by the MLS.
Ideally we would have relegation. However, I am not sure if that would pass over well with the American public. Secondly, the stadiums in the A-league, and lower then that are horrible! There are also many Canadian teams, which would completely complicate measures. All I want is a league with one table, where the top 6 teams make the playoffs. The top two seeds have a bye, and the other teams either play a one home game knockoff (which would increase atmosphere) or a 2 legged system (more in tune with the rest of the world).
Replace that playoff format with two conferences, the champion of each getting a bye to the conf. finals and the next two playing a single elimination match, and I'm on board. Better still, take a page from the CFL and have cross-over playoff spots. If W4 has more points than E3, then W4 takes that playoff spot.
counterattack, You base you assumptions on the way things are now. I am not saying that things will change drastically enough to make promotion/relegation viable, but they could. But things will change for soccer in the future, that is for sure. How do you know if a second division will be considered "obscurity"? It could be structured in so many ways. You can't use the current situation with USL as a basis for what the second division will look like in the future. Here is one potential scenario. If we go by the way the other major sports leagues are structured in the US, you could have around 30 teams in a national league. But this is too many for a soccer league. We could evolve to where MLS is actually has 30+ teams, but they need to split into two divisions. Financially, both divisions could share in revenues and play by the same roster rules. You also put a negative spin on pro/rel. Promotion actually increases the importance of the second division, thus elevating above just being a minor league. Anyways, there is no sense in arguing with someone who uses the capital NEVER argument. Enjoy your static world of no possibilities. - Paul
Not so fast, my friend Yes, I am abosultely right that there will NEVER be relegation. However, in an effort to have it both ways, WHAT ABOUT PROMOTION? I think a cogent argument can be made for retaining a single slot in each MLS season for the champion of the A-League. They would be allowed to play in MLS for a season. Then return to the A-League the next year, to be replaced by the next A-League champion. This process is essentially American. It gives an underdog a way to over-perform. It makes the A-League championship extraordinarily meaningfull. It brings the excitement of the First Division playoffs to the US. It is the best of relegation, namely promotion. And just to sweeten the pot, add this in. . . If the promoted A-League team wins the MLS Championship AND the Hunt Cup, during their year in MLS, they win permanent inclusion into MLS. It could be glorius.
There is a very long road to promotion/relegation in MLS. The league's rules are designed to create absolute parity. Despite the criticism of some, at any point in the season, the last-place team's beating the first-place team is well within the realm of possibility. The league's desire to make sure the season stays wide open til the playoffs is a symbol of the management's feeling the league's existance is incredibly precarious. They can't afford to lose attendance at the bottom of the table. Changes that IMO would have to happen (and probably never will) for relegation/promotion: 1) each team has a different owner. 2) A-league average attendance= 13,000. 3) MLS avg attendance= 18,000. 4) Some of the MLS expansion is done by promoting an existing A-league team and upgrading its stadium. 5) The MLS and A-league sides accumulate incredibly loyal support, which could take a generation or more, so they lose less than 50% of their attendance when relegated. The idea of using only promotion is a very good one. It would add more interest to the A league and cement the development of American professional soccer as being independent from other sports. We already have lower divisions that are independently owned and managed. That's already a huge departure from the farm team concept that renders lower leagues meaningless.
counterattack, Your idea still includes relegation. Let's say my Seattle Sounders won the second division and then played in MLS this year. That's cool and all, but unless we win the league and the US Open Cup (geez, we were just promoted! c'mon!), we are going back down! What if we come in second and prove that we are better than the MLS teams that placed below us? In addition, let's say we succeed in your impossible feat and win the league and the US Open Cup in our first year in the first division. Who will drop down then? Or does the league increase by one team thus complicating scheduling and any revenue-sharing agreements in place? I think you will sleep more soundly if there isn't any promotion, either. - Paul
Like I've said, relegation is a tradition from the old days when sport was simply sport, their wasn't millions of dollars at stake. Maybe one should never say never but I'd feel pretty darn safe saying it in this case.
Never say never... But if I could place a bet with a bookie against relegation being adopted in the US during the next 20 years, I'd consider it a pretty good investment. I can't see Garber on the phone trying to sell MLS to a new invester and he's telling them that their investment might be worth half as much in a few years if the team doesn't play well. That's just not gonna happen. The MLS doesn't need relegation. What it needs is a half dozen more Home Depot Centers. That place rocks!
a system of promotion and relegation will not exist in mls for quite a while....at least until single entity is eliminated.... personally i wouldn't like promotion and relegation at this stage. with the parity in the league and the breakup of teams based on the salary cap, it would be a real shame to have a salary cap driven team breakup result in banishment to the a-league. that being said, i believe that mls should look at the more consistent winning teams in the a-league and offer them a sort of "promotion" (even in the form of a discounted franchise fee) if they prove that they can be financially viable in the big leagues. I for one would love to see well run, well established a-league teams like charleston and rochester being inserted into the league rather than a team just being whipped up from thin air. at least this way supporters and history are already present with the club.
I don't think you understand. The MLS needs teams and they would never turn down an A league owner who could meet the standards of the league. The best A league organization is probably Rochester but there's serious doubts that they have the financial cajones to move up. Seattle would be handed a team on a silver platter if they could just come up with an adequate owner. If it was as simple as you guys think, the MLS would have 16 teams by now.
Pro/rel is instituted between A-League & D3. MLS folds. A-League grows to become "major league" soccer.
Good Lord. How about this scenario: A major terrorist attack forces Americans to stay at home and shiver in fear. After a half of the population dies, it is replaced by a massive invasion of English from in and arround Manchester. Liverpool and Portsmouth, They immediately begin 3 professional football leagues, each with relegation and promotion.
salary cap As long as there is a salary cap in MLS, there will not be relegation. In europe, every team controls their leval of participation in top flight becuase they control how much they spent on players, this amount is usually effected by revenue, and revenue is based on past success and fan base. For Example Manchester United has and will always be one of the favorites to win the English league and also to go far in European play. They have created great revenue due their great fan base and previous success. in The middle, Everton should always be around in the top flight, fighting for a 5 or 6ht place spot so they can play in europe the next season, the have a smaller wage bill than United. Teams like Bolton and Liecester, may always be in the fight against their relegation and promotion from the lower level, and the revenue they recieve and wage bill reflects the performance on the field. teams can move around in the 3 examples and establish themselves in a higher place or lower place (Blackburn's resurgence, Levekuson's relegation battle, chelski), but this is rare. MLS can't have relegation because each team has the same oppurtunity due to the salary cap, and a powerhouse one year could be relegated the next. A dissapointing season for Barcelona equals mid-table, one for the Champion Galaxy would be relegation. Also, if team arent making money now, how well would they do financially in the A-league
Well, maybe yes, maybe no. We could learn from our south of the border neighbors. We could construct a pro/rel system which would help save the big teams and relegate the smaller teams. We could a) Base our relegation on a scheme of percentage of games won/lost in a given time frame in such a way that a losing year did not mean relegation. At the same time, newer smaller teams would get relegated promptly. or b) as has been the case many,many times in Mexico, Battery would go to 1st div and Burn goes to 2nd. Div. Billionaire doesn't like the idea of losing a major market. Soooooo, he buys C. Battery (players and all), changes it's colors, name, and moves it to Dallas, and Dallas Burn is moved to Charleston, changes name, colors, team, and new city. Voila! Charleston owners get $$$$ and Dallas BURN back on board. oh, no contaban con mi astucia! jajajajaja. El Chapulin Colorado
Never is a long time. Remeber when the MLS started the idea was to some how create an amercian version of soccer. Well as the league has gone on it has moved closer and closer with the rest of the world rather then away from it. There could be a day where relegation in some form (maybe with strict rules about the stadium and such) could become a reality. But it will not be for a long time.
Please explain the financial difficulties. Do you mean travel expenses, or would they have to expand the stadium, etc?
I think that i have to agree with the majority of posts here that believe that it's unlikely we will have relegation in MLS. the bottom line is that there are no salary caps in other leagues. that's what creates the perennial superpowers that are Real, ManU, ACMilan, etc. with that being the case, relegation makes sense in their league because there is always the potential of the teams at the bottom of their top league remaining at the bottom because of a sheer lack of spending. In our league, with a salary cap (which will not change even if they go away from single entity ownership .......... the cap will just get larger when the league starts making more money), there is such parity in the league that it just will not be viable to relegate a team that through good trades could be the champion the very next year.
LoL. Absolutes. Funny. The only Absolute I know is a liquor. I firmly believe that I will in fact live forever (above statement not withstanding). Furthermore I posit that the concept of relegation is not against "everything American sports is based on" (timeless things like poor grammar and terrible play-by-play announcers) but merely counterproductive to the flashy easy to sell mystique that other U.S. sports have developed... where people actually show up to watch games for teams that have no realistic hope of winning a title just cuz hey there are playoffs and anything can happen and there is always next season right??? The reason relegation wouldn't work in the NFL is because no town has an NFL team.... they have an NFL FRANCHISE. Semantics i know but the phrasing is everything... an NFL FRANCHISE instills about as much loyalty as being a rabid follower of DairyQueen Franchise... it doesn't work. But the [hugeglowinglettersandtrumpetsblaring]TEAM [/hglatb]... thats a monkey of a different color. Personally I stopped following the National Football Entertainment League a few years back for a few reasons.... and have opted instead for college football... which is entirely different. Personally I think College football fans would stick with a team that was relegated... would pay good money to make the facilities better for a team with no real hope of being a contender. Because they graduate thousands of people a year (and because budding HS students look forward to it) colleges have huge fan bases of VERY loyal fans. Therein lies the problem. What teams here can actually say they have enough core fans to support the team through thick and thin? Hmmm? Chicago I think has a very dedicated fan base. Who else? Its not that nobody would show up to the games of a team demoted to the A-league... its that nobody is actually going to the games anyway. Metros-Cbus looked as empty as a Montreal/Toronto/Marlins baseball game. All that being said... I think i'd call myself a crackpot if i predicted relegation in the US in the next 10 years. Maybe even 20. But after 10 years it won't really matter anyway. We'll all be hopping around in indestructible cybernetic bodies and the wait for relegation in the US will seem like no more than a couple minutes. And before that we'll be too busy picking up Colombian chicks by telling them Freddy Adu/ DMB is our brother. So in the meantime just enjoy the rather good soccer you have. I saw a couple A-league games that were great... and few MLS games that were excellent as well. Who knows what will happen a few years down the road.... But to say relegation is somehow antiamerican is kinda silly. You silly monkey.