Wynalda wants MLS to change it's season to match rest of world...

Really this is my biggest problem with pro/rel. in no other league can a team like Colorado go from 2nd worst in the league to conference semifinals right back to 3rd worst in the league. Honestly, I find European leagues pointless. I do enjoy the champions league, but even that is fairly pointless until the quarterfinals. I just don’t understand how it’s entertaining to watch Psg or Bayern beat mid to bottom table teams 7-0 30x per year. And I’m a Galaxy fan. Maybe no other team would benefit more from an open market.

 

Well, it looks like we dodged the bullet. Cordeiro just inched past Carter to become the new US Soccer president. Wynalda came in a distant third.

https://www.yahoo.com/sports/carlos...ected-new-u-s-soccer-president-163409087.html

Edit: Duh, that was just the first round. Cordeiro won on the third ballot with 68%.

 

There has been talk about salary caps in European soccer. And talk about financial responsibility measures. It's been weak so far, but it's coming in more and more--merely for competitiveness if nothing else.... If one also looks at other European sports, for example hockey, some leagues discarded pro/rel for sheer financial survival. The DEL is one of those. There's been some pro/rel in that league since--but purely due to financial reasons.

With England, you are missing one of the top things that makes them different from the US. Travel. Everything is relatively close. Travel is one of the biggest costs causing minor league teams to fold. Remember that Germany only had a unified national league in 1964. 1964. And that in a country the size of PA and Ohio put together. What works in Europe will have a much tougher time working in the US. It's not a panacea.

 

Think the solution to the travel would be to have a league big enough so the west teams played the west and the east teams played the east. Actually, we should have that with or without pro/rel. there’s no point in teams traveling 2500 miles to try to play a game. They almost always get rolled.

 

Which, if expansion keeps going the way that it has, MLS will be able to implement in a few years. At 28 teams, MLS could split into two 14 team leagues a la MLB which would be kind of small compared to most European leagues (Bundesliga, Eredivise = 18 teams, EPL, La Liga, Serie A, Ligue 1=20 teams). However, you could have each team play the other teams three times a year which would make a 39 game season, not too far from the 38 game seasons that the 20 team leagues have.

The Western League would be:

1. RSL (cuz RSL is the best!)
2. Colorado
3. Seattle
4. Vancouver
5. Portland
6. San Jose
7. Sacramento (Future Expansion)
8. LA Galaxy
9. LAFC
10. Dallas
11. Houston
12. Austin (Columbus RIP)
13. Kansas City
14. Minnesota

The Eastern League would be:

1. Toronto
2. Montreal
3. NYCFC
4. Red Bulls
5. Revolution
6. Chicago
7. Orlando
8. Atlanta
9. Philadelphia
10. DC United
11. Miami
12. Nashville
13. Cincinnati (Future Expansion)
14. Detroit (Future Expansion)

You could move both Minnesota and KC over to the Eastern League since they seem to be closer to more teams from there than in the Western League and add a franchise in Phoenix and San Antonio to bring the Western League up to 14 teams.

The only time that the Western League teams would play teams from the Eastern League would be during pre-season and during the play-offs.

 

Or you could follow baseball all the way and have an interleague play rotation. Play home and away in league, for 26, plus either home or away with 8 from the other league, drawn from a hopper or rotating or whatever. MLS has made it clear they want to stick to 34 games before playoffs, but you could have a dual table, best in league counts more for playoffs and league champions. Or you could expand to 36 and only meet in the playoffs.

 

Yes, I think the interleague play rotation would probably come to pass but I would rather have no interleague play until playoffs, just to add mystery and humiliation to the number 8 team in one league knocking off the Shield Winner in the other league.

 

They could have easily made it work with a 24 team league.

12 teams per conference (ie. East West)

Home and Away with Conference = 22 games (11 home and 11 away)

One Game with teams from other Conference = 12 games (6 home and 6 away) with the home and away teams switching every year.
ie) 2017 Portland (home )vs Orlando (away); 2018 Portland (away) vs Orlando (home)

Total : 34 game season with some balance.

With a 26 team league, it would create 35 games. With a 28 team league, it would create 36 games, if the format is followed.

 

I do think this is the best way to have both a US style season that revolves around making the playoffs and a balanced elsewhere season. Regular season champs of each league claim a supporters shield, which would be a half nation championship, while the playoffs make it possible to determine at true national champ.
OTOH the topic here is Wynalda and changing US footie to match western Europe, and obviously this has nothing to do with that, and that won't happen as Wynalda didn't happen.

 

Still over 1000 miles for some games. Even that is too costly for anything under the first division here in the US. It took Germany quite a while to get from the regional leagues to the formation of the 2nd Bundesliga (1974)--in two divisions--and there was no single 2 BL until 1981. The 3rd BL came about in 2008. And still clubs are getting financially relegated on a regular basis. Germany is also quite a bit smaller than the US territorially. Now yes, minor league baseball does it as does minor league hockey. But there much if not all of the payroll costs are paid for by the parent club.

 

It's often as cheap to fly long distance to fly shorter ones. New York - LA $231, New York - Atlanta $232, New York to Las Vegas $237, New York to Toronto $204.

 

It still adds up. And a sports team has to be in a specific city on a specific date. And get 20+ players and staff on that plane. That causes costs to rise. Especially in a city like Columbus. There's simply not that many flights and a lot are not nonstop. My biggest issue, for example, in using frequent flyer miles to Europe is not the trans-Atlantic flight. It's getting to the gateway city. Most of the time when I fly out of John Glenn Airport, they are asking for volunteers to give up their seats--and we try to fly on non-busy dates.

For the record, my wife and I were volunteers with an old USL team pre-Crew and got to know the owner and his family. He once noted to me that their biggest cost by far was travel--and had they not had a sponsorship with an airline that covered a lot of those costs, they would not have lasted as long as they did.

 

thats not really avoidable, unless you’re going to have a 48+ team league and divide it up into north south east and west.

But traveling 1000 miles and 2500 are two different things. Also, East coast teams have a decided advantage when it comes to traveling. DC United can take a train to New York or Philadelphia. About the only west cities that are close enough for that are Portland and Seattle, and I don’t even know if they would take a train (would they?). It wouldn’t matter for MLS Cup, but in the regular season, East Coast teams travel far less. That’s why east coast teams generally own west coast teams on the east coast. The other thing that would help is for teams to stop traveling the night before a game.

But you’re right, that doesn’t help the lower leagues. Maybe the north south east and west thing would be good for them. Also, the DAs and youth teams should all be divided up so they don’t have to travel.

 

You're still going to need a plane for 2500 OR 1000 miles.

The longest trip in the Bundesliga, for example, is likely Munich to Hamburg. Under 500 miles.

 

Academies are already largely regional.

 

Academy regional standings...
http://www.ussoccerda.com/sam/standings/league/standings.php?leagueId=MTAwNw==

 

Even if English clubs not in big cities have many people within an hour drive because that includes a greater percent of England's population than it does here, those people could have clubs much closer to them. All other things equal (which they're not between Europe and MLS), wouldn't you expect clubs in bigger cities to spend more?

 

In the top division sure. Trying to get out of the top division? Travel costs kill your budget before you even get started. There's a reason so many minor league soccer teams have folded in this country--and the reason is not the lack of pro/rel.

 

1000 miles is barely over a 2 hour flight. I realize that is still far more travel than most leagues, but it’s manageable. Much different than a 4 or 5 hour flight.

The bigger problem is it’s more than 2200 miles from Dallas to Vancouver. There isn’t really a solution to that aside from the north south east west thing.

They can get better. Youth soccer has a lot of travel, too. I know a lot of parents don’t let their kids get more involved because they can’t handle the travel and don’t want their kids to deal with it.

That still has 14 year old kids traveling from Colorado to Dallas (~800 miles) and Columbus to Minnesota (~750 miles). I’ll admit that it’s better than I thought it was, but there is still room for improvement. Plus, those are just the DAs. What about the youth tournaments that aren’t affiliated with the DA? Those are all over the place.

 

Flights cost money. A lot. There's a reason that you hear about bus rides in the minors.

If you are talking about our youth system? Well, that's another thing. Much of it is folks with a lot of money paying a lot of money to hopefully get their kids a scholarship. In many cases the parents would have been better off saving that money for a college fund, but I digress. But as you note, many parents don't do this due to the travel involved.

In any case, Wynalda did not get elected, and the need for this thread has ended.

So, I'm outta here.

 

I agree. I was not suggesting pro/rel.
No matter how many geographic conference are created, some clubs will have much more travel than others, and clubs in the northwest will have the most travel. In order to make travel equal you could have to divide MLS into an eastern half, northwest quarter, and southwest quarter so eastern clubs would play a greater percentage of the away games not at the nearest five clubs to them.

 

Right and it was a record amount of spending. Up 77% from 236 million pounds. England has a ridiculous amount of money to spend.

 

So all this discussion about aligning seasons to the "rest of the world"...

First, I guess "rest of the world" means EPL and a couple other leagues.

Second, EPL plays every month but June and July. MLS plays every month but Jan and Feb. MLS is never ever ever ever ever going to play in Jan and Feb. So this basically comes down to people wanting MLS to take June and July off. The only way that is possible is by playing less games. Is that a possibility? I don't know. Maybe they could lessen the number of teams in playoffs or go to single elimination for every round. That would shorten the number of overall games some and maybe make it possible to take July off. With EPL and MLS only having 2 month off seasons I really don't understand the huge fuss to make them align. But whatever.

Also, if this is just down to aligning the transfer windows then why not start the MLS season in Aug? Take a break in Jan and Feb and then end in July? There wouldn't be more than a couple week break from the end to the start of the next season. Does that make it not possible?

 

Norway, Sweden, Finland, Iceland, Chile and Brazil all play a "summer" schedule ("summer" because although it's winter for Chile and Brazil, it matches up with our summer schedule). You don't hear their fans crying about aligning transfer windows with other European leagues.

Instead of MLS aligning it's schedule with European leagues, why don't the European leagues align their schedules with MLS? Why does the MLS have to change? In the future, after the USMNT wins the World Cup 5 times in a row, all the talk will be about how the Europeans want to line their schedules up with the MLS so that the transfer windows align because all the best players will come from the USA.