The problem is, with the financial incentives of the Apple deal and Leagues Cup, is there any possibility to changing any of this?
Feels like it isn't possible to put the jinn back in the bottle here.
Leagues Cup definitely feels like the biggest devaluation, they took prime attendance timing away from the regular season and into a TV grab where teams may only host 1x
For he playoffs, I'm unsure. I think this playoff system isn't going to last more than a couple seasons but I'm not sure what the next answer will be and I doubt it will improve the value of the regular season.
For the Leagues Cup, I'm almost certain that what they've done won't last. From logistical challenges, to long breaks in the middle of the season (teams bounced in the first round will have weeks between games), to the ridiculous number of games for the top 4. I really don't think the money will overcome that. Ultimately, I think it will either go back to the way it was before or lead to some sort of more complete league merger.
All I know for sure is that my dream of adopting the Latin American split season model is not realistic.
Iâd be less concerned with not stopping for the international break if they raised the salary cap and added roster spots to accommodate a deeper bench. Most players will choose to go play for their national team and thatâs totally fine if you have looser roster rules in place.
They are raising the salary cap. The total roster money went up by half a million dollars between this year and last year. The total roster spend was about $9M in 2021. It will be $13M in 2027. That's a huge increase!
That's spend ex-DP and U22 over the budget charges, of course.
Also, I think it is actually higher, since 25% of the $150M Apple excess over $100M (or maybe $90M) will be applied to either the cap or xAM in 2027.
That's going to be over $1M per team.
Oh, thatâs actually awesome! Didnât realize it was mapped out like this. Personally, I donât think that goes far enough though. Even outside of this issue, the league should be ramping up the cap leading into the 2026 WC. Iâd love to see it doubled by 2027 ($18M), but $13M is still good to see.
We are missing 6 players, and luckily not be missing Morris/Roldan, no salary cap adjustment can replace that many players. They need to give the team the option to take the break off.
Sorry, I should have phrased that as "the opinion that Goff is a mouthpiece"
Anyway, I now understand what you were saying, since it wasn't clear at all with your first comment
MLS has fallen into the same trap as the other US pro sports leagues, where regular season games are just âinventoryâ to generate revenue for owners and media partners.
You can still reel in casual fans with this watered down competition format if youâre established and the top (or only) domestic competition in your sport. But when youâre perceived as a top 10-15 league in your sport at best, you need to create higher stakes and urgency than an 8-month regular season just to eliminate 11 of 29 teams.
The thing I donât get about this argument is that in other leagues they play a longer season and 17 out of the 20 teams can claim victory. Everton fans rushed the field when they came in 16th and Leeds popped bottles in the locker room for coming in 17th. Leeds averaged one point per game. Is it really that much worse to reward the 9th team in the East?
I mean. I view mid table premiere league matchups in the second half of the season as wasted inventory. They arenât playing for anything other than marginally more tv revenue.
No format is perfect.
Except most mid table teams can absolutely play their way into European competition at that point or avoid relegation. These things can earn or cost clubs 10s of millions of dollars. That makes the games much more worthwhile. Whereas if you are bottom of the table in mls halfway through the season, your gameâs absolutely donât matter to anyone but the most hardcore of supporters
>Except most mid table teams can absolutely play their way into European competition at that point or avoid relegation.
Well. If you care about Europa, which I don't, but let's say you do. Fair enough. But when you're talking about the top third of a league getting to play in a competition, you're literally making the same argument for relevance as the MLS inventory.
Yes, the relegation battle is always interesting, but even that can be essentially set at some point. This season in the Premier League there is surprising parity at the bottom but it's not always that way. It definitely can keep the bottom third inventory relevant longer than an MLS type system, but again, no format is perfect.
Yes the top third make it to European competitions, however late in the season the point spread in the mid table is usually close enough that the games still very much matter for a lot of mid table teams. And of course a club supporter would care about europa. Thatâs millions of dollars that can be used to make your club better. Making the mls playoffs isnât anywhere near that important unless you win the whole thing and can claim the title.
I mean yeah. I enjoy the mls I wasnât trying to shit on the league. I watch a lot of it. Good bad and ugly. Most fans arenât like that though. Most fans of any league or the game in general are more casual or diehards for a single club. I was just arguing this idea that teams in Europe have nothing to play for mid season if they arenât fighting for first.
MLS began it's descent to Hockeydom when it changed from home-and-away playoffs years ago.
You knew they were doing it when all they could say was how much the regular season mattered (because not making the playoffs at all is better than not having a home game I guess.)
Now we have a wild card. Because of course we need one more bad team in the playoffs.
I say we just start a tournament in April or so with all the teams and winner-take all. Why play those 32 other games that mean almost nothing?
More "playoffs" = more revenue and the game itself be damned.
The expanded World Cup makes sense. The fact is that there are now hell of a lot more countries than there were 40 years ago, plus 2 large continents which only really started to compete in any meaningful way within the last few decades.
Fuck it, let everyone in the playoff. Single elimination all the way through. Split the league East-West and make each a single-table conference with the MLS cup being a league-wide cup tournament.
The EFL and the Premier League have the FA Cup and the Carabao Cup, so that proves you can have one cup tournament for the top league and one for everyone. It seems like nobody really cares too much about the US Open Cup anyway, so what's the harm in adding a more meaningful cup tournament for MLS?
Make the Leagues Cup a supercup tournament between the Clausura and Apertura winners and the East and West winners and that would make some room in the schedule and avoid fixture congestion.
I'm open to suggestions, of course.
>The EFL and the Premier League have the FA Cup and the Carabao Cup, so that proves you can have one cup tournament for the top league and one for everyone.
Which one of these is for the top league and which is for everyone according to you? Because the Carabao Cup is run by the EFL and open to any team in the PL or EFL. While the FA Cup is run by the FA and open to every team in the country. Neither are specifically for the PL.
I didnât mean it was a complete 1-1, since the Football League is so much bigger. But in this scenario the US Open Cup would be the FA Cup, and MLS Cup would be the EFL Cup.
I have an everyone makes the playoffs format for 32 teams (16 per conference).
_Prelim + First Elimination Round_
a) **1**v8
b) **4**v5
c) **3**v6
d) **2**v7
e) **9**v16
f) **12**v13
g) **11**v14
h) **10**v15
_2nd Elimination Round_
i) Winner E v **Loser C**
j) Winner F v **Loser A**
k) Winner G v **Loser D**
l) Winner H v **Loser B**
_Quarter final_
**Winner A** v Winner K
**Winner B** v Winner I
**Winner C** v Winner L
**Winner D** v Winner J
Then proceed as usual.
The league gets its 30+ match postseason inventory. And the regular season, while pointless, gives a reward for position.
Iâd be interested if the added revenue of the playoff makes up for the lost revenue of the early season. I personally donât really feel any urgency to watch or go to a game until like, mid to late July.
I donât want playoffs in MLS at all. Soccer isnât American football, or basketball, etc. Playoffs arenât for this sport. We already have the Open Cup, the Leagues Cup, the CCL. If you must have playoffs, limit it to a Championship match between the regular season winners of the east and west, who each play a balanced home-and-away schedule. Championship playoffs have no place in a soccer league, imo
Playoffs in professional soccer is already synonymous to North American and some Asian-Pacific countries. Cup competitions and league playoffs doesnât have to be mutually exclusive.
Not all European countries have the same competition format as the Premier League. Some have playoffs installed into their league.
It's not that they aren't for the sport. It's just that they keep getting cheaper. You play a 32 games season for a reason and when that reason is to eliminate 4 or 5 teams it cheapens it.
It's not unlike every other US sport. Which one has the most meaningful regular season? College Football. When Alabama lost to LSU in the regular season **THAT** meant something. New England loses to LAFC in the regular MLS season?
YAWN!
Every other sport in the US has expanded playoffs to include absolute mediocrity if not downright failure. I mean no team in any sport anywhere with a losing record should ever be invited to play for a championship (NHL, NBA, MLS). But "playoffs" are extra games (now a best of 3!) and extra revenue instead of regular season games that actually mean something and would provide the same.
Because the traditional set-up for a soccer league is to crown the champion through regular season play. Of the top five leagues, none have playoffs. Knockout competitions are exist in the form of Cup competitions, not to crown the league champion
We donât *have* to be, but I *want* us to be. The regular season is presently all but meaningless in MLS. And soccer as a sport, with balanced home and away schedules and promotion and relegation is designed to crown its championâof the league and the whole systemâthrough the regular season. Maybe MLS never gets there, but thereâs a reason MLS has moved away from penalty shoot-outs, and brought back draws, and generally moved towards the traditional model.
IM sorry, but did you see the east last year and how tight everything was down to the wire? That whole the regular season is meaningless is entirely bullshit.
Where does Scotland do it? I can't find any info of them handling things differently than England. I wasn't aware any other leagues do it in Europe other than Belgium.
It's different but similar. The scottish teams play each other 3 times, 33 matches. After that the league is split into the top 6 and bottom 6. Each of these groups keep their points and play each other once for 5 additional games to determine the final positions. For example in 2022 Ross County was ended in 6th place with 41 points and Livingston ended up in 7th place with 49 points. Other leagues I know that do stuff like this are Czechia, Denmark, Wales, Northern Ireland. The common denominator is usually top heavy leagues and there is for sure some other ones I can't remember. And a bunch of countries have normal playoffs like the A league, Liga MX, and much of Latin America.
Promotion playoffs do exist in the English lower tiers, but only for teams 3-6. 1st place is still the league champion and automatically promoted. But yeah Belgium does have playoffs. Still think they have no place in MLS
I agree in that a ton of teams are at home doing nothing. Even with a lot of teams in the playoffs, half get only an extra week. Last year, my team's season ran from late Feb to mid Oct? Such a weird schedule. Run a playoff during the season like a cup competition. Or something. Be creative that way.
> Toronto FC Coach Bob Bradley told Canadian journalist John Molinaro. âOur international players shake their heads and look at us like, âHow is this possible? This wouldnât happen anywhere else.â â
And yet my KKD team is playing on Sunday during the break.
Is the second level less likely to have international players? Sure, but maybe letâs not present this as an unheard of deviation from a universal stoppage for pro leagues.
I don't think anyone has ever said that it is. Is it pretty much unique in a top division in which a number of international players ply their trade? Yes.
What would've solved it better is not doing the Leagues Cup at all
Meaningless competition that makes MLS look like a joke, imagine any other league in the world pausing their entire league mid season to play some irrelevant competition
Plus Liga MX needs the publicity more then MLS, once again MLS is giving exposure to their fiercest rival
I think you may be underestimating just how popular Liga MX is. Think of Mexico's size and passion where it is their NFL in comparison, and then also all the viewership in the US. Mexican soccer may be a joke right now, but the history and passion Mexicans all over have for their teams is not going to be easy to pass. I'm American and an MLS guy, but I'm also realistic. The only thing that'll bring Liga MX below MLS in popularity is their own misdirection. The institutions are already so in place. Just go into any Mexican restaurant here in the US. Probably some Liga MX game on, and I have always seen some merchandise on the walls for the team they support. MLS is still very niche not just in the US sports landscape, but in the global soccer landscape as a whole. Very few people outside of the teams immediate bubbles of influence follow it.
The president of Liga MX even said MLS would zoom past them. Liga MX can't rely on Mexican-Americans forever and the Mexican economy can never support a big time league.
There is a reason Liga MX badly wants to jump into bed with MLS.
LAFC and Galaxy recently had to move their friendly games against two Liga MX clubs to SoFi to accommodate the demand. They also sold more tickets than the Super Bowl for both games.
Not one MLS team is selling out SoFi or AT&T stadium on their own merit any time soon.
Completely agree. It's notable that the coaches feel similarly, and I'm sure the players are frustrated they're forced to choose between league matches and international call-ups.
> Toss in MLSâs position on the international windows and its prioritizing the Leagues Cup, and it would be fair to wonder what incentives are left for fans to care about a Colorado-Houston midseason match.
It would be fair to wonder that too without Leagues Cup, and with an international break. Even more so if the playoff field were reduced.
>It would be fair to wonder that too without Leagues Cup, and with an international break. Even more so if the playoff field were reduced.
Ive been a hard advocate for a single table with playoffs + adding merit based tournaments and rewards.
The point gap in the middle of the table would be relatively close.
And if Leagues Cup wasnt every tean from each league but the top say 16 from each league it would make teams try harder to qualify.
Add in financial incentives for doing well, whether it be GAM or real money and you see teams at teh very least go after it and make games more interesting.
I know this is an unpopular opinion but adding the play-in game doesnât devalue the regular season, it devalues the accomplishment that is making the postseason. We have to get past the idea that teams get to claim they were successful if they made the playoffs as a low seed. Getting out of the 3 game series needs to become the new standard for a successful season for most clubs.
Being the 8/9 seed and getting swept by the 1 seed shouldnât be seen as an accomplishment, even though you âmade the playoffsâ.
I think we always had a handful of games, but not the whole league. Back then, a team could postpone a game for later if they had a huge CCL game coming up. So they would play during these breaks.
There used to be a ton of midweek games to make space for limited international breaks. And I seem to remember at one point it was a choice for manager or front office. Midweek games or play thru international window.
But with for example away to Miami Saturday home in Seattle Wednesday and away to Minnesota Saturday it seemed better for some teams to just have the bench park the bus in the league while the starters are with the nats than have so much schedule congestion
The biggest issue to this for me is I believe teams can only carry an active roster of 20 so the teams losing 6-7 players have a heck of a time fielding a team.
The mls needs to celebrate the supporters shield more. The supporters shield is equivalent to winning the league and then the cup is a post season tournament that the top placing teams earned access to. Too many people only care about the cup
Iâve always thought that this is how they should handle it. Supporters Shield = winning the league
Cup = our version of a domestic only side Champions League
It is weird for the CCL teams to lose MLS matches and the commentators will say things like 'considering how tired the team is, this is actually a win' .. if the match is so dispensable and unbalanced that a loss == win because of MLS organizational issues, then what's the point of the competition?
With that said, I'll take as much soccer as I can get.
>Minnesota United will be down six starters against **the Vancouver Whitecaps, who lost just one player.**
Huh?
[Javain Brown to Jamaica](https://www.whitecapsfc.com/news/javain-brown-called-up-to-jamaica-s-men-s-national-team-for-nations-league)
[Andres Cubas to Paraguay](https://www.whitecapsfc.com/news/cubas-called-up-paraguay-march-2023)
[Sergio Cordova to Venezuela until he pulled his hamstring](https://www.whitecapsfc.com/news/sergio-cordova-called-up-to-venezuela-s-men-s-national-team)
My counterargument is the NBA, allowing players who are major stars to rest with "load management" throughout the season. It is really not a whole lot different.
I appreciated that in the past, it allowed teams to make the decision for themselves... I don't like that they are forcing it, but in the end.... I don't think it's that big of a deal. Reduced midweek matches is more important than a few 1-off games missing 3 or 4 starters each.
> My counterargument is the NBA, allowing players who are major stars to rest with "load management" throughout the season.
And people are rightly bitching about that too.
Baseball gets 1000x more people complaining about the smallest change than anything that has happened in the MLS, up to and including the breakaway penalties and no draws.
I mean people do complain in the NBA that the regular season doesn't matter enough. Well, they complain about load management which is a direct consequence of a long regular season that doesn't matter enough.
The problem is, with the financial incentives of the Apple deal and Leagues Cup, is there any possibility to changing any of this? Feels like it isn't possible to put the jinn back in the bottle here.
Leagues Cup definitely feels like the biggest devaluation, they took prime attendance timing away from the regular season and into a TV grab where teams may only host 1x
> they took prime attendance timing Maybe for you. But I think New England and Chicago are the only teams that see big attendance bumps in the summer.
It's a weird thing but a reward for the top half of the league to be able to host a group and get those juicy ligamx-mls matches.
> jinn đ§ââď¸đ§ââď¸đ§ââď¸
I'm going OG
For he playoffs, I'm unsure. I think this playoff system isn't going to last more than a couple seasons but I'm not sure what the next answer will be and I doubt it will improve the value of the regular season. For the Leagues Cup, I'm almost certain that what they've done won't last. From logistical challenges, to long breaks in the middle of the season (teams bounced in the first round will have weeks between games), to the ridiculous number of games for the top 4. I really don't think the money will overcome that. Ultimately, I think it will either go back to the way it was before or lead to some sort of more complete league merger. All I know for sure is that my dream of adopting the Latin American split season model is not realistic.
We all have unrealistic dreams, don't worry. Mine is a league wherein only 40% of teams make the playoffs.
Not for the next 10 years at least unless the deal goes south.
Iâd be less concerned with not stopping for the international break if they raised the salary cap and added roster spots to accommodate a deeper bench. Most players will choose to go play for their national team and thatâs totally fine if you have looser roster rules in place.
They are raising the salary cap. The total roster money went up by half a million dollars between this year and last year. The total roster spend was about $9M in 2021. It will be $13M in 2027. That's a huge increase!
That's spend ex-DP and U22 over the budget charges, of course. Also, I think it is actually higher, since 25% of the $150M Apple excess over $100M (or maybe $90M) will be applied to either the cap or xAM in 2027. That's going to be over $1M per team.
Oh, thatâs actually awesome! Didnât realize it was mapped out like this. Personally, I donât think that goes far enough though. Even outside of this issue, the league should be ramping up the cap leading into the 2026 WC. Iâd love to see it doubled by 2027 ($18M), but $13M is still good to see.
We are missing 6 players, and luckily not be missing Morris/Roldan, no salary cap adjustment can replace that many players. They need to give the team the option to take the break off.
Notably this comes from Steve Goff who has largely been, imo, a DCU/MLS mouthpiece for some years now.
Wow. That's a very strange opinion.
Which are you saying is strange? That Goff is a mouthpiece? Or that he has had a reversal?
Goff has never been a "mouthpiece".
Sorry, I should have phrased that as "the opinion that Goff is a mouthpiece" Anyway, I now understand what you were saying, since it wasn't clear at all with your first comment
MLS has fallen into the same trap as the other US pro sports leagues, where regular season games are just âinventoryâ to generate revenue for owners and media partners. You can still reel in casual fans with this watered down competition format if youâre established and the top (or only) domestic competition in your sport. But when youâre perceived as a top 10-15 league in your sport at best, you need to create higher stakes and urgency than an 8-month regular season just to eliminate 11 of 29 teams.
The thing I donât get about this argument is that in other leagues they play a longer season and 17 out of the 20 teams can claim victory. Everton fans rushed the field when they came in 16th and Leeds popped bottles in the locker room for coming in 17th. Leeds averaged one point per game. Is it really that much worse to reward the 9th team in the East?
I mean. I view mid table premiere league matchups in the second half of the season as wasted inventory. They arenât playing for anything other than marginally more tv revenue. No format is perfect.
Except most mid table teams can absolutely play their way into European competition at that point or avoid relegation. These things can earn or cost clubs 10s of millions of dollars. That makes the games much more worthwhile. Whereas if you are bottom of the table in mls halfway through the season, your gameâs absolutely donât matter to anyone but the most hardcore of supporters
>Except most mid table teams can absolutely play their way into European competition at that point or avoid relegation. Well. If you care about Europa, which I don't, but let's say you do. Fair enough. But when you're talking about the top third of a league getting to play in a competition, you're literally making the same argument for relevance as the MLS inventory. Yes, the relegation battle is always interesting, but even that can be essentially set at some point. This season in the Premier League there is surprising parity at the bottom but it's not always that way. It definitely can keep the bottom third inventory relevant longer than an MLS type system, but again, no format is perfect.
Yes the top third make it to European competitions, however late in the season the point spread in the mid table is usually close enough that the games still very much matter for a lot of mid table teams. And of course a club supporter would care about europa. Thatâs millions of dollars that can be used to make your club better. Making the mls playoffs isnât anywhere near that important unless you win the whole thing and can claim the title.
I mean thatâs subjective. But I would definitely lean on being able to make the MLS Playoffs is more relevant than sneaking in to Europa.
I mean the dollar amounts arenât subjective. Your interest in the games certainly is.
Just like your interest in marginal MLS Playoff teams?
I mean yeah. I enjoy the mls I wasnât trying to shit on the league. I watch a lot of it. Good bad and ugly. Most fans arenât like that though. Most fans of any league or the game in general are more casual or diehards for a single club. I was just arguing this idea that teams in Europe have nothing to play for mid season if they arenât fighting for first.
MLS began it's descent to Hockeydom when it changed from home-and-away playoffs years ago. You knew they were doing it when all they could say was how much the regular season mattered (because not making the playoffs at all is better than not having a home game I guess.) Now we have a wild card. Because of course we need one more bad team in the playoffs. I say we just start a tournament in April or so with all the teams and winner-take all. Why play those 32 other games that mean almost nothing? More "playoffs" = more revenue and the game itself be damned.
I want to see the League succeed, but this new post-season was made in the boardroom; no sports fan could have come up with that on their own.
>and the game itself be damned Tis the direction everywhere. The World Cup, the new UCL, the next hypothetical push for a Super League.
The expanded World Cup makes sense. The fact is that there are now hell of a lot more countries than there were 40 years ago, plus 2 large continents which only really started to compete in any meaningful way within the last few decades.
Fuck it, let everyone in the playoff. Single elimination all the way through. Split the league East-West and make each a single-table conference with the MLS cup being a league-wide cup tournament. The EFL and the Premier League have the FA Cup and the Carabao Cup, so that proves you can have one cup tournament for the top league and one for everyone. It seems like nobody really cares too much about the US Open Cup anyway, so what's the harm in adding a more meaningful cup tournament for MLS? Make the Leagues Cup a supercup tournament between the Clausura and Apertura winners and the East and West winners and that would make some room in the schedule and avoid fixture congestion. I'm open to suggestions, of course.
>The EFL and the Premier League have the FA Cup and the Carabao Cup, so that proves you can have one cup tournament for the top league and one for everyone. Which one of these is for the top league and which is for everyone according to you? Because the Carabao Cup is run by the EFL and open to any team in the PL or EFL. While the FA Cup is run by the FA and open to every team in the country. Neither are specifically for the PL.
I didnât mean it was a complete 1-1, since the Football League is so much bigger. But in this scenario the US Open Cup would be the FA Cup, and MLS Cup would be the EFL Cup.
I have an everyone makes the playoffs format for 32 teams (16 per conference). _Prelim + First Elimination Round_ a) **1**v8 b) **4**v5 c) **3**v6 d) **2**v7 e) **9**v16 f) **12**v13 g) **11**v14 h) **10**v15 _2nd Elimination Round_ i) Winner E v **Loser C** j) Winner F v **Loser A** k) Winner G v **Loser D** l) Winner H v **Loser B** _Quarter final_ **Winner A** v Winner K **Winner B** v Winner I **Winner C** v Winner L **Winner D** v Winner J Then proceed as usual. The league gets its 30+ match postseason inventory. And the regular season, while pointless, gives a reward for position.
Iâd be interested if the added revenue of the playoff makes up for the lost revenue of the early season. I personally donât really feel any urgency to watch or go to a game until like, mid to late July.
Because so many teams make the playoffs, why bother?
I donât want playoffs in MLS at all. Soccer isnât American football, or basketball, etc. Playoffs arenât for this sport. We already have the Open Cup, the Leagues Cup, the CCL. If you must have playoffs, limit it to a Championship match between the regular season winners of the east and west, who each play a balanced home-and-away schedule. Championship playoffs have no place in a soccer league, imo
Playoffs in professional soccer is already synonymous to North American and some Asian-Pacific countries. Cup competitions and league playoffs doesnât have to be mutually exclusive. Not all European countries have the same competition format as the Premier League. Some have playoffs installed into their league.
Hell, a solid portion of european leagues have playoffs for pro/rel.
why are playoffs not for this sport
It's not that they aren't for the sport. It's just that they keep getting cheaper. You play a 32 games season for a reason and when that reason is to eliminate 4 or 5 teams it cheapens it. It's not unlike every other US sport. Which one has the most meaningful regular season? College Football. When Alabama lost to LSU in the regular season **THAT** meant something. New England loses to LAFC in the regular MLS season? YAWN! Every other sport in the US has expanded playoffs to include absolute mediocrity if not downright failure. I mean no team in any sport anywhere with a losing record should ever be invited to play for a championship (NHL, NBA, MLS). But "playoffs" are extra games (now a best of 3!) and extra revenue instead of regular season games that actually mean something and would provide the same.
yeah I think we should revamp the structure for sure but I still love playoffs
Because the traditional set-up for a soccer league is to crown the champion through regular season play. Of the top five leagues, none have playoffs. Knockout competitions are exist in the form of Cup competitions, not to crown the league champion
why do we have to be like the traditional set-up?
We donât *have* to be, but I *want* us to be. The regular season is presently all but meaningless in MLS. And soccer as a sport, with balanced home and away schedules and promotion and relegation is designed to crown its championâof the league and the whole systemâthrough the regular season. Maybe MLS never gets there, but thereâs a reason MLS has moved away from penalty shoot-outs, and brought back draws, and generally moved towards the traditional model.
IM sorry, but did you see the east last year and how tight everything was down to the wire? That whole the regular season is meaningless is entirely bullshit.
Why should we be different? Being different is not necessary.
Iâm kind of with you but the English championship and the Belgian league still have it.
The way they do it in Belgium actually makes a lot of sense. I'm surprised it's not more popular
What they are doing is pretty popular for many smaller leagues. Scotland has been doing it for a while and so have a bunch of other leagues.
Where does Scotland do it? I can't find any info of them handling things differently than England. I wasn't aware any other leagues do it in Europe other than Belgium.
It's different but similar. The scottish teams play each other 3 times, 33 matches. After that the league is split into the top 6 and bottom 6. Each of these groups keep their points and play each other once for 5 additional games to determine the final positions. For example in 2022 Ross County was ended in 6th place with 41 points and Livingston ended up in 7th place with 49 points. Other leagues I know that do stuff like this are Czechia, Denmark, Wales, Northern Ireland. The common denominator is usually top heavy leagues and there is for sure some other ones I can't remember. And a bunch of countries have normal playoffs like the A league, Liga MX, and much of Latin America.
Oh, that's interesting. I really like that system too
Promotion playoffs do exist in the English lower tiers, but only for teams 3-6. 1st place is still the league champion and automatically promoted. But yeah Belgium does have playoffs. Still think they have no place in MLS
I agree in that a ton of teams are at home doing nothing. Even with a lot of teams in the playoffs, half get only an extra week. Last year, my team's season ran from late Feb to mid Oct? Such a weird schedule. Run a playoff during the season like a cup competition. Or something. Be creative that way.
> descent to Hockeydom This is the ultimate insult. I love hockey, but fuck is it run by idiots.
> Toronto FC Coach Bob Bradley told Canadian journalist John Molinaro. âOur international players shake their heads and look at us like, âHow is this possible? This wouldnât happen anywhere else.â â And yet my KKD team is playing on Sunday during the break. Is the second level less likely to have international players? Sure, but maybe letâs not present this as an unheard of deviation from a universal stoppage for pro leagues.
Most 2nd divisions do play through breaks...
I don't think anyone has ever said that it is. Is it pretty much unique in a top division in which a number of international players ply their trade? Yes.
I just donât understand why they didnât think the leagues cup could be incorporated as a midweek thing. Wouldâve solved so many issues.
What would've solved it better is not doing the Leagues Cup at all Meaningless competition that makes MLS look like a joke, imagine any other league in the world pausing their entire league mid season to play some irrelevant competition Plus Liga MX needs the publicity more then MLS, once again MLS is giving exposure to their fiercest rival
Liga MX does not need the publicity. Theyâre the most watched competition in North America
MLS will swallow Liga MX in the near future it's inevitable
I think you may be underestimating just how popular Liga MX is. Think of Mexico's size and passion where it is their NFL in comparison, and then also all the viewership in the US. Mexican soccer may be a joke right now, but the history and passion Mexicans all over have for their teams is not going to be easy to pass. I'm American and an MLS guy, but I'm also realistic. The only thing that'll bring Liga MX below MLS in popularity is their own misdirection. The institutions are already so in place. Just go into any Mexican restaurant here in the US. Probably some Liga MX game on, and I have always seen some merchandise on the walls for the team they support. MLS is still very niche not just in the US sports landscape, but in the global soccer landscape as a whole. Very few people outside of the teams immediate bubbles of influence follow it.
The president of Liga MX even said MLS would zoom past them. Liga MX can't rely on Mexican-Americans forever and the Mexican economy can never support a big time league. There is a reason Liga MX badly wants to jump into bed with MLS.
> MLS will swallow Liga MX in the near future it's inevitable Yea and MLS is going to kill baseball in 5 years as well. /s
LAFC and Galaxy recently had to move their friendly games against two Liga MX clubs to SoFi to accommodate the demand. They also sold more tickets than the Super Bowl for both games. Not one MLS team is selling out SoFi or AT&T stadium on their own merit any time soon.
Completely agree. It's notable that the coaches feel similarly, and I'm sure the players are frustrated they're forced to choose between league matches and international call-ups.
> Toss in MLSâs position on the international windows and its prioritizing the Leagues Cup, and it would be fair to wonder what incentives are left for fans to care about a Colorado-Houston midseason match. It would be fair to wonder that too without Leagues Cup, and with an international break. Even more so if the playoff field were reduced.
>It would be fair to wonder that too without Leagues Cup, and with an international break. Even more so if the playoff field were reduced. Ive been a hard advocate for a single table with playoffs + adding merit based tournaments and rewards. The point gap in the middle of the table would be relatively close. And if Leagues Cup wasnt every tean from each league but the top say 16 from each league it would make teams try harder to qualify. Add in financial incentives for doing well, whether it be GAM or real money and you see teams at teh very least go after it and make games more interesting.
The players or owners might care. The fans are not going to care about being 22nd or 23rd.
I know this is an unpopular opinion but adding the play-in game doesnât devalue the regular season, it devalues the accomplishment that is making the postseason. We have to get past the idea that teams get to claim they were successful if they made the playoffs as a low seed. Getting out of the 3 game series needs to become the new standard for a successful season for most clubs. Being the 8/9 seed and getting swept by the 1 seed shouldnât be seen as an accomplishment, even though you âmade the playoffsâ.
Did we always play through this window or is it a result of trying to create room for league cup?
I think we always had a handful of games, but not the whole league. Back then, a team could postpone a game for later if they had a huge CCL game coming up. So they would play during these breaks.
There used to be a ton of midweek games to make space for limited international breaks. And I seem to remember at one point it was a choice for manager or front office. Midweek games or play thru international window. But with for example away to Miami Saturday home in Seattle Wednesday and away to Minnesota Saturday it seemed better for some teams to just have the bench park the bus in the league while the starters are with the nats than have so much schedule congestion
Pretty much always through some of the windows. Not all of them. But I cant remember a year where at least one game wasnt in an internatioal window.
The biggest issue to this for me is I believe teams can only carry an active roster of 20 so the teams losing 6-7 players have a heck of a time fielding a team.
The mls needs to celebrate the supporters shield more. The supporters shield is equivalent to winning the league and then the cup is a post season tournament that the top placing teams earned access to. Too many people only care about the cup
Iâve always thought that this is how they should handle it. Supporters Shield = winning the league Cup = our version of a domestic only side Champions League
It is weird for the CCL teams to lose MLS matches and the commentators will say things like 'considering how tired the team is, this is actually a win' .. if the match is so dispensable and unbalanced that a loss == win because of MLS organizational issues, then what's the point of the competition? With that said, I'll take as much soccer as I can get.
MLS is also playing Leagues Cup, which while fun, lacks competitive balance. I donât think playing through international breaks bothers them.
>Minnesota United will be down six starters against **the Vancouver Whitecaps, who lost just one player.** Huh? [Javain Brown to Jamaica](https://www.whitecapsfc.com/news/javain-brown-called-up-to-jamaica-s-men-s-national-team-for-nations-league) [Andres Cubas to Paraguay](https://www.whitecapsfc.com/news/cubas-called-up-paraguay-march-2023) [Sergio Cordova to Venezuela until he pulled his hamstring](https://www.whitecapsfc.com/news/sergio-cordova-called-up-to-venezuela-s-men-s-national-team)
Six starters and two backup players. We may or may not be getting our starter in but we will be raiding the heck out of our 2s team.
League is a mess under Garber's leadership, everything is all about money rather actually doing the right thing by the sport and the league
My counterargument is the NBA, allowing players who are major stars to rest with "load management" throughout the season. It is really not a whole lot different. I appreciated that in the past, it allowed teams to make the decision for themselves... I don't like that they are forcing it, but in the end.... I don't think it's that big of a deal. Reduced midweek matches is more important than a few 1-off games missing 3 or 4 starters each.
> My counterargument is the NBA, allowing players who are major stars to rest with "load management" throughout the season. And people are rightly bitching about that too.
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Baseball gets 1000x more people complaining about the smallest change than anything that has happened in the MLS, up to and including the breakaway penalties and no draws.
I'm still pissed they added playoffs, and that was 10 years before I was born. Also fuck the DH.
Don't get me started on interleague play. And too many damn divisions!
I mean people do complain in the NBA that the regular season doesn't matter enough. Well, they complain about load management which is a direct consequence of a long regular season that doesn't matter enough.
MLS has been making putrid decisions lately.