We had our most successful playoffs in our history this year from an attendance and ratings perspective. However, I would have preferred to see more scoring and perhaps a more attractive style of play during the first round. Giving more weight to away goals certainly could address the defensive style we all saw in the first games. But I question whether anyone other than our most hardcore fans would be able to appreciate the concept. Could you imagine winning the second game and yet losing the playoffs because of away goals? That being said, we will continue to review our playoff format (as we always do) and make changes if we belive it owuld make our games more competitive and more popular. Duh, that could happen now Don....get a clue.
If you play a single game knock out, you cannot have that scenario happen Don. Just sayin'. If you want to have the first round be two legs, that's cool n' the gang. Then perhaps it would appear logical to play every round with two legs. And tell the ESPN's of the world tuff shit, away goals are cruel but such is the game. Because any other talk to avoid using road goals is to play a best of 3 format like in the early years and that's overkill for teams like us that had so many crucial matches in league and Cup in the Fall. I think Mexico gets it right with the team with the better regular season points total advances in case of a tied 2 leg series. However, if you don't let every team play each other in a balanced sched. then I would sure hate to not advance just becuase my opponent in the playoffs got to play that year's MetroBull 2x more than Houston did!
I agree with this completely. One leg seems like you can have that situation where one team just doesn't play well and gets upset. With two legs, you at least have two chances to play.
I think the Mexican format could be implemented in a rather fair way even if the schedule were unbalanced. Assuming that teams within a conference play all play an equal number of games against each other (a balanced intra-conference schedule), you could have two sets of point totals. One would be the intra conference point total, and the second would be the out of conference point total. The team with the higher intra-conference point total would advance in the event of a tie. If both teams had the same intra-conference point totals, then the out of conference point totals would determine who advances. Under this system, the fact that one team got to play an extra game against the Red Bulls would only matter in the rather rare event that both teams have the same intra-conference point total. However, the best solution may be to return to the 3 game serious format used in the early years of MLS. The advantage of this system is that in each game the players step onto the field knowing that the contest will not end without a winner, so the incentive to kill off a game is gone. A two game aggregate system is appropriate for unseeded tournaments like the UEFA Champions League where the objective of the chosen playoff format is to neutralize homefield advantage. It seems rather inappropriate for seeded, post-season tournaments like the MLS Cup playoffs.
So would the 3 Game series be for the opening round only or all the way to MLS Cup? Because the more games you pack into a November Playoff period the more you increase the chance of game cancellation/postponement for weather say in Colorado, New England or heaven forbid Toronto ever get's it stuff together. I think keeping it the way it is fine, if you want to make a Conference Championship a two leg affair I could live with that as well even though it takes some of the incentive away of being a higher seed to secure hosting the game at home as opposed to a game at home.
Sure, if you are certain that you can overcome any adverse result from the first leg. The way these things go though is that the first time a higher seed loses because they could not do that, the same people that are for a two game series will be clamoring to go back to a single Conference Championship game since their team lost. The basic premise of the Playoff system now is that all teams (and by extension their Fans) get rewarded with a Playoff game in the first round, then the higher seeded team (by whatever system used) gets the reward of another home game and then a one game final (currently neutral site). If you want to reward the teams all the way through with Home games then the MLS Cup should be a two legged affair as well, with the higher seed getting the return leg, right? At that point you have to make a choice: 1.) either starting the season earlier so that you can finish around this time every year (CBA issue, since that decides a few factors in this) 2.) playing several games a week in the playoffs so that you can finish around this time every year (Teams not in CCL would love that, while the exhaustion of CCL Teams would probably show) 3.) playing into December (pro: get's us away from weekend before Thanksgiving Final, con: weather factors in certain cities could play havoc with games 4.) what happens with teams that don't control their own venue? The primary tenant owner has to block out a sizeable portion of the calendar from Oct - Dec in case the MLS team makes the playoffs?
I like the current playoff format. The soccer was fine. I appreciate what Garber has done for the league. However, he still knows nothing about soccer. Statements like this just prove it. He is still obsessed with clueless "casual sports fans" while not having any deep understanding of the game or folks like me that have played and loved the game my entire life. This is same old NFL thinking that has all the rules tilted towards the offense. The Houston-Seattle 1:0 series was one of the best playoff series in MLS history. It had the hightest attendance of any playoff series in MLS history. It was exciting, dramatic, suspenseful. The LAG - Houston 1:0 WCF was simply the best MLS game I've ever watched. The quality of footy was elevated far above normal MLS levels. The Chicago v RSL ECF was another fantastic game. Out of all the playoff games only one was truely ugly. RSL v CLB Leg 1. That is just not a bad ratio and certainly is evidence to leave the current playoff formats the hell alone.
I know it's not traditional or Europe-like ... but ... How about shortening the regular season as necessary and going ahead and playing 2 out of 3 playoff series throughout the playoffs ... even in the MLS Cup? That way you eliminate alot of the middle/late regular season games that don't really mean much. You trade those games for playoff games that will be much better attended, have more intensity and generate more interest. Playoff series lead to more rivalries and could showcase more appealing aspects of the game. Sure the teams that do not make the playoffs would play less games, but I don't really see that as a bad thing. I suspect no other league does it that way, but so what?
so are you advocating returning to the shootout or (gasp) Pks to break the tie for each match? Or the genius first to five points series with a possibly minigame? That went over real well. the players didn't even understand the rules on how to advance. Look back at the LA/NY series and tell me that is a fair system.