According to Garber, MLS is considering having the rivalry games for PNW teams happen in a single week. As an example, Seattle @ Portland on Saturday, Portland @ Vancouver midweek, and Vancouver @ Seattle the next Saturday. Then, perhaps, later in the season it would be Portland @ Seattle on Saturday, Seattle @ Vancouver midweek, then Vancouver @ Portland the next Saturday. The idea is that this would increase the rivalry. That's a lot of games in a week though. I would also think it would put the team that got the midweek at a disadvantage in the final game of the series as players are going to be playing balls out for the rivalry match-ups and coaches are most likely going to have their best squads in for all three matchups. http://voices.washingtonpost.com/soccerinsider/2011/01/mls_commissioner_don_garber_di.html
I don't like it. Sounds like he is taking advice from the NHL on rivalry. Plus midweek is terrible for away travel.
I'm kind of interested to hear exactly what the reasons are that will increase the rivalry. I can't really think of any off the top of my head.
Imagine the anger of the Sounders fans for Vancouver losing to Portland!! Or the anger of Vancouver fans for the Sounder beating Portland... Oh, wait... Yeah, I've got nothing. I could see having the games be back to back, so SEA@PDX one week, then PDX@SEA the next, but I don't get having a round robin style increase a rivalry..
I would think with all the headaches that comes from scheduling they wouldn't have any time to be fancy.
Just a really dumb idea. Why blow your wad all at once. Let it spread out over the whole season. Gives you something to look forward too on the calander instead of mass hysteria then nothing.
Not really a fan of this. MLS has high profile games. Why cram them into a span of two weeks out of the 34? Instead space these games out over a course of five or so weeks. It makes timelines interesting.
From a supporter's perspective it's stupid... From the team perspective, we'll probably be playing 50 games in about 8 months so squeezing in midweek games with little travel when we can would be a benefit... And those are 50 actual competition games, not counting preseason, friendlies, and reserve league. Reality: this is going to be a brutal year. The insane travel last year caught up with us in the playoffs. Anything to front-load the schedule or minimize travel benefits us in the long run.
I thought of this as well, front loading the schedule so there is more down time when the boys need to travel to Central America for the CCL. That would be the only positive I could see. Then again, the FO and the league could totally mess it up and have a "Derby Week" right before the Sounders are due to travel to Costa Rica or whatever they may go. End result: the Derby Week taking a unnecessary toll on the team at exactly the wrong time. This is wrong. It's wrong for supporters. Bad for travel. More, the only benefit I see coming from doing the derbies this way has the potential to backfire. I REALLY hope this isn't holding up the release of the schedule, I want to start planning my away trips now.
The only reason I could think of them wanting to do this is from a marketing standpoint. They could hype it up on ESPN or whatever, saying how you can't miss "Rivalry Week. The greatest week in soccer!" or some such line. But I think it would effect the play on the pitch negatively (guys are gonna be tired by the third game, and you're likely to see lineups consisting of mostly reserves) and like has been mentioned, traveling support.
There are only going to be 2 games per team. completely possible in 1 week. That part isn't really a problem. Everything else about it is lame though.
With the schedule as tight as it is, do you really think the teams with the midweek games will really have the weekend prior or after off? I highly doubt it.
Conspiracy? Talk about a good way to limit the amount of away support since it would be difficult for many to hit two games in a week. Then they say "see, 500 is plenty." Discuss
The only way this is going to be difficult to send 500 to both games is if there really is only 500 people, or a little over that, interested in going to these away games.. If the SGs are correct, the demand for these tickets will be huge. As a result there will be people that can't make both games, but can make one, so what you're going to have is people that can only make one choosing the one they can make and if one is sold out, they'll buy tickets for the other. If there were more tickets available for away support you might be correct, but the limited number pretty much guarantees both games will sell out quickly, even if they happen to be in the same week.
Actually, I think that more proves my point (whatever my point is). I can't make this one so I'll make it to the other one because some of the folks going to game A can't go to game B. Rather than the same 1,000 fans fighting over 500 tickets each game. You'd still sell out 500 but you'd spread the wealth a bit and reduce some of the fevered shouting. Just a theory. Not particularly invested either way but I think it's interesting. However, the idea of a 3-way derby in a week sucks from a competiton and travel standpoint. I want a separate build up for each game with weeks of trash talk and weeks of dissecting results...
While I don't like this idea at all, if they're gonna do it, hopefully they do it right. If each club has a home and away that week then supporter numbers shouldn't be an issue as each supporters group only has to travel once. Portland at Seattle, Seattle at Vancouver, and Vancouver at Portland... The only issue I can see with that is that one club gets a full week between games where the other two don't. Still, I'd rather they not do this at all. There's six great derbies here that can be spaced out throughout the season with the intensity building toward the end. Especially if there's playoff races involved.
According to Ives, if this happens, it wont happen till 2012, so we have a year to change their minds.
Please no. I wish the Sounders and MLS would start treating this as soccer and stop trying to convert it into MLB/NFL/NBA/NHL.
I agree but I think they really may be concerned about violence. They're not stupid they're concerned about policing away support and the potential for trouble. Suppress the away support and package some quality midweek games on ESPN. Kills two birds with one stone.
Yes, they are stupid. Joe's vision seems to be to pack QWest with a bottomless supply of Pepsodent smiles on the faces of people who are just happy to be there, and to expect such people to show up forever as an endlessly increasing base, with hopes that the people who created the bandwagon he is profiting from, i.e. the people who give a damn and created the whole damn show with their passion, will gradually recede. He thinks we don't brush, floss, love our kids, pet our pets, pay his mortgage, drive his business, buy tickets to his movies, know that we made the world he profits from, etc. Of course, he is wrong on all counts. Hardcore American soccer fans have never, ever, not once, proven to be the threat that Raiders fans, of whatever city, or Dodgers fans, or Giants fans, or hockey fans of any team, to say nothing of overseas hooligans or fans of Chivas USA and other inferior CONCACAF organizations that do not own up to being American fans. Certainly, in Cascadia, the supposed security threat is a sponsored Fig Newton-ment of Joe Roth's imagination. Does not exist. Isolated incidences of singular idiots will happen. But a pattern of hooliganism in Cascadia? Is Joe planning to take over as Supreme Leader and make all of his season ticket holders into some sort of crime syndicate? That is just as likely as fan violence in Cascadia, with a few prudent best practices, becoming a serious problem. This is an obvious attempt to turn our rivalry that we created with the assistance of the original NASL owners into his ESPN cash cow. Well, rivalries are organic. It won't work. Go ahead. Kill the Golden Goose, Joe. See how well that works. Edit: As a certain Seventies sports journalism Celeb would say, honesty compels me to report that I was not a fan of the original Sounders. I was, however, a fan of the Fort Lauderdale Strikers and a detester of Rodney Marsh and the Tampa Bay Rowdies, and very keen that such similar rivalries should succeed everywhere.
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