In this case, this can be applied to ChefJim's explanation. Imagine if MLS were just going 1-4 East/West, Dallas would have packed it up awhile ago -- you could say they packed things up and then Cunningham said, "Nah uh!!!" and the rest of the team was all, "Wow" and now they're like almost in the playoffs -- and the meak east would have been even less intense. The 5 team fight for so few spots is the source of this problem. Every game is relevant this weekend. That's a nice problem to have...
I will say it goal differential is a bad tiebreaker. Remember when Joe Cannon? came forward last year for a final corner and then Beckham scored from 70 yards. That never happens with a GD system. If you win by one goal or 12 it shouldn't matter. BTW- that is what I hate about the home away CL format. It is really one long game played over two venues.
Next year with a balanced schedule, you can use goal difference. This season, it would be an unfair way to compare two teams with different schedules.
One of the original points does deserve more merit, after I re-read the post. It's not exactly fair for a team to have had an extra home game when comparing head-to-head results. But, with an unbalanced schedule, it's hard to come up with any tiebreaker that is fair. Clearly, the most fair would be to simply award the tiebreaker to the team who played the hardest schedule.
I would imagine they are simply making short-term concessions (more wild card spots) to accomodate for uneven conferences and expansion. I imagine it's a mixed bag right now because they plan on holding on to conferences long term. Agreed that it's not ideal, but I think completely overhauling the playoff format annually would be a bit worse. And though I don't think I'd endorse it: I think the excitement of this year's playoff race would be a valid selling point for a single table and simply going 1-8 in terms of playoff spots.
And for 2010 it will work exactly that way. This is the biggest reason I was so upset with Don Garber for announcing two more expansion teams in 2011 on July 4th weekend of 2008. If we had stayed at 16, that 30 game balanced schedule could have taken hold, so when they went to 18, MLS could have simply played 34 games. Now that's unlikely. We only get one season with a nice balanced schedule, then it all goes funny. Worst part is MLS is still eyeing teams 19 and 20 for 2014ish. At that point, every club will not visit every city every year. At least for 2010, we can have one of those really cool grid schedules, and be able to fill it in for the entire year. I know it's stupid, but it's one of those little things I dig.
I see your point, but I disagree. Here's why. The day is coming pretty soon when MLS teams will play some of the teams in the other division only 1 time a year. By maximizing playoff series within a division, MLS is heightening those twice a year rivalries. NE-Chi has become a rivalry because of the playoffs. Once upon a time, Columbus-DC was a rivalry because of the playoffs. Chicago and Dallas are rivals because of their epic 1999 playoff series.
Hmmmm. They're not making any more Saturdays in temperate weather. And besides, MLS is pretty clearly going to 20 teams in the intermediate future. Do you think they would have then gone to 38 games?
I like head-to-head as a tiebreaker. It doesn't make as much sense with an unbalanced schedule, but with a balanced schedule I think it's the most satisfying tiebreaker. If my team beat your team on the field, but we end up tied on points, it doesn't make sense that I should go home becaus I beat a minnow 3-0 and you beat them 5-0. And don't get me started on the "best second-place team" nonsense they do in UEFA qualifying...
My point wasn't for keeping teams on one side or another, it was simply to tweak the rankings, so that 1 conference or the other doesn't get to face the 3 worst teams who qualify for the playoffs, it's unfair and doesn't have anything to do with rivalries or not.
So you favor moving a team from the East bracket to the West bracket in order to balance the brackets, right? If that's what you're saying, I don't see how I got your position wrong.
I guess what I'm saying is the system is broken, and no solution is going to work out how it currently is. When you're already moving western teams to the eastern or eastern teams to the west, moving those teams again to make the seedings actually mean something doesn't seem to matter all that much to me.
We should keep it simple. MLS' conference setup isn't much like standard conferences in the American sense of the word. Why have Conference Finals? Just play a quarterfinal round with 1/8, 2/7, 3/6 and 4/5. Have 1/8 meet 4/5 in one MLS Cup Semifinal, and 2/7 and 3/6 in the other. Give the regular season conference winners an advantage for the following season, like a one season 5% or 10% salary cap bump. If RBNY was known as a 2008 MLS Cup Finalist, that would be something to be proud of, instead of the 2008 Western Conference Champions, which is a bigger joke than Jon Gosselin's new day care center opening in Philadelphia.
Because you increase local rivalries that way. LA-LA will draw better than LA-some team 1000 miles away. Vancouver-Seattle would be epic. Etc.
All this tie-breaker is traditional american style sports league crap.... Single table next year, take the top 8. Why don't you want he best 8 in the playoffs? Who care about west vs. east balence? TV ratings are small, traveling fans are small in numbers. We should put he best 8 on the field for the playoffs and see how that works next year and every year there-after.. it should not matter the leage is 16-18-20 teams.. Best 8.. make it mean something to make the playoffs... thus,making the regular season really mean something... Playoffs should be cut to 3 rounds- home and away total goals right to the final. A single game final at nuetral site is , too NFL boring... Need to get the home teams into the finals... add some excitement.. -
Just thought I would throw this out there as an alternative tie breaker since it has not been mentioned. How about the team with the best disciplinary record goes through? It could be used as a second tie breaker at least.
Yeah because no soccer leagues ever had to break ties. And none of them use head-to-head, well except Spain, Russia, Portugal, the UEFA Champions League, etc. Yes, clearly "traditional american style sports league" crap
[evil] This would all get solved if they just brought back the shootout. After all, they could use a 3/1/0, and give the team that wins the shootout gets a tenth of a point (basically the tiebreaker). The odds against three or more teams go past W/L records, shootouts, and head to heads, would be astronomical. [/evil]
For those saying that all final weekend games should start at the same time fine. Tell me how you do that with an uneven number of teams? Chivas has two matches this week, they are very much in the thick of the playoff chase albeit the top of the Western conference as opposed to a potential last spot tie breaker, but still.
At a glance, it looks to me that if Columbus and Chivas tie on 49 points, the Supporters' Shield will actually come down to fewer league disciplinary points (Columbus lost at Chivas 2-1, and Chivas lost at Columbus 2-1). Is that correct?
First tiebreaker is head-to-head points, which would still be tied. Second tiebreaker is overall goal difference. Columbus is currently +11 and Chivas is +5. Columbus wins here unless the margins are large in the final games.