Major Link Soccer - Crazy Stadiums Edition
by Dizzo on Oct 10, 2011 11:00 AM PDT
in Major League Soccer: News & Analysis
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PrintThe Seattle Sounders lost 2-0 this weekend to the Philadelphia Union while missing their three most creative offensive players. The Sounders played a game the average MLS team would be proud of. However, without Fredy Montero, Mauro Rosales and Alvaro Fernandez, the Sounders needed to out work the Union to secure the victory. The Union simply needed the points more and played that way. You can see the match highlights and photos on the team website.
LA Cinches Shield: The loss ends the slim hopes for the team to take the Supporters Shield from the Los Angeles Galaxy. It was never going to be an easy task. The Galaxy have been having a record year and would have needed to drop some key games down the stretch for the Sounders to slip into first place. It's unfortunate as the type of performance the Sounders have had this year would likely earn them the Supporter's Shield in other seasons. This is also the last year the league is likely to have a balanced schedule.
More news after the jump:
Beckerman Suspended: Real Salt Lake captain Kyle Beckerman has been suspended an additional two games for headbutting Daniel Paladini of the Chicago Fire. Beckerman will miss the rest of the regular season due to a combination of the suspension and his recent appearance with the U.S. Men's National Team. He started in the USMNT 1-0 win over Honduras this weekend. Beckerman was also fined $1,000.00.
Crazy Stadium Plan: Detroit, while not getting quite as creative as Qatar, is getting pretty inventive in their plans to transform the Silverdome into a soccer stadium. The link provides a conceptualization of a remodeled Silverdome with a 30,000 seat soccer stadium perched above a concert hall and basketball arena both able to hold an additional 20,000 people. Good thing Detroit isn't in earthquake territory.
US Men Win: Finally Jurgen Klinsmen gets to taste victory with the Red, White & Blue. Clint Dempsey scored the lone goal against CONCACAF opponent Honduras. The United States takes on Ecuador in more friendly action tomorrow.
Live Chat With Montero: Just as an FYI - Joshua Meyers is having a live chat with Fredy Montero at noon today (that's one hour from now if you are scoring from home). Montero has struggled at time with live interviews in English. We'll soon see if the live blogging format might be one he's more comfortable with.
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Agreed.
Look at how flat the seats are to fill in that huge gap between the old upper level and the pitch.
Who would want to sit that far from the field and yet, be that low?
by Jack Brando on Oct 10, 2011 12:11 PM PDT up reply actions
Silverdome
Not to get too technical, but the Silverdome isn’t in Detroit but Pontiac Michigan. It’s also in receivership which makes any public support for this project essentially zero.
I knew the Silverdome was privately purchased
I didn’t know that it was still under receivership. That certainly complicates things. Does the city still have some rights to the stadium?
I also knew the stadium was outside the city proper, but it would certainly be Detroit’s team if they ever received an expansion team. Much like the Seattle Sounders were Seattle’s team when they played at Starfire. Or the New York Red Bulls residing in New Jersey.
It was bought for under 600,000 dollars
Derek, you sure it is in receivership after that?
Also, do you call them the Pontiac Lions or the Arlington Rangers or the New Jersey Giants or Foxbourough Patriots?
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Don't forget
the Chester Union. I actually do call them that from time to time as I grew up in northern Delaware and associate Chester with crack dens and murders.
I've heard people derisively call them FC Frisco
Cause the stadium is so bloody far away from Dallas
Auburn Hills Pistons
Glendale Cardinals, Glendale Coyotes
St Pete Rays
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Sounder At Heart
Sorry
I wasn’t clear. The City of Pontiac is in receivership. Literally handed over to a financial manager under controversial new laws put in by their new Governor. Just meant that their local government won’t be doing any kind of facility district to renovate the place.
While I’d cut some slack on what to call them, I refuse to call any team located in one state by a different name. Like a certain Energy Drink team.
I think the plan is all privately funded
Only the insane would ask for more than 33% public funding of a stadium these days (they tend to be in the NBA).
I am not a Supporter | I am not a Fan | I am a Sounder
Sounder At Heart
by Dave Clark on Oct 10, 2011 4:05 PM PDT up reply actions 1 recs
Longshot
If that’s the case… maybe. But I’d be absolutely shocked if anything like that could be pulled off without some sort of public support. Even the stadiums that are supposedly privately funded actually require a huge amount of tax incentives to work that never pay off for the city.
I give them credit for creative thinking though. That’s the craziest thing I’ve ever seen.
Wow
Not really sure what else to say about that.
by chrisperry1983 on Oct 10, 2011 11:11 AM PDT reply actions
Montero | Meyers interview...
Is that going to be live, online, blogged or reported on?
Soccer is simple, but it is difficult to play simple.
The link above is to the Seattle Times live chat
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Sounder At Heart
I'm not sure any MLS team would be proud of a performance that lead to a 2-0 loss.
by Zakuani11Fan on Oct 10, 2011 12:17 PM PDT via mobile reply actions
I was referring to the level of play
The team played as well as an average MLS side in my opinion. Good enough for a draw or a win against half the league, IMHO. The Union are better than average. So are Seattle when they aren’t missing all those key players.
I get a game a week of MLS in South America, and have yet to see Sounders on my TV
I have seen Sounders in CCL on my TV, but there’s a feed on fox sports here, typically a replay in the middle of the night. Because its MLS, I DVR it. I cant remember the other games’ teams, but one was Toronto-NYNJRBMS.
I have never watched too much of random lower-to-mid-table MLS teams’ games, but oh my lord they looked atrocious to me. We are spoiled with the Sounders. Our guys’ bad day really is an MLS average team.
You do all the work for us, Honey Badger, and we'll just eat whatever you find.
Reminder
The Reserves play tonight at Starfire 7PM no charge.
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Sounder At Heart
reserve game
who are they facing
by alexyepz on Oct 10, 2011 1:19 PM PDT via mobile up reply actions
San Jose
local product Ellis McLoughlin should play, same with Ampai…… and Attakora.
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Sounder At Heart
I still don't buy that we're playing 34 games next year
It just doesn’t make sense from a scheduling perspective. How do you make a 34 game schedule work with 19 teams? I don’t think there’s any way you can re-jigger the divisions to make that work.
I think the 17 home game sales is a place holder until the league figures out what it’s going to do for next year. And given an odd number of teams, the thing that makes the most sense is a 36-game balanced schedule
Play in Conference Home/Away
in West (either 9 or 10 teams if Houston comes back) that’s 16/18 games
Reamining play every team but two twice. One of those two at home, the other on the road.
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Sounder At Heart
I think the unbalanced schedule is a bad move
The biggest untapped market for MLS is unconvinced soccer fans, and this is a move away from formats that have a lot of credibility with them, i.e. leagues across the world. MLS suffered a lot for its early Americanization, and I think this will be seen as more in that same vein by those unconvinced fans.
League officials have said they don’t have any immediate plans for expansion past 20. That’s a very familiar number for leagues around the world, and it would require finding room for just four more matches. They’d probably need to give the clubs a little more salary cap and roster room, but it’s not a huge, insurmountable problem.
two years of balanced schedules didnt convince them to come
They didn’t. The schedule isn’t why they don’t pay attention. If the league stops at 20 only 15 American cities will have top flight soccer and it won’t be a national league
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Sounder At Heart
by Dave Clark on Oct 10, 2011 3:28 PM PDT via mobile up reply actions 1 recs
Two years isn't a long time
When MLS was first established, I checked it out, saw a fairly low quality game played with weird Americanizations (countdown clock, ties broken with a bizarre “shootout”) and proceeded to tune it out until 2009. I watched Serie A for quality soccer and eventually got into the USL Sounders for live soccer. The point is there are soccer fans periodically checking out MLS and if it looks like some bastardized freak, then they’ll tune out, possibly forever.
For now the league is stopping at 20, with no plans on if they’re going to expand past that. Why prematurely drop the balanced schedule? It gives the MLS regular season more credibility than that of any other sport, and if the playoffs were fixed MLS would have the most credible playoffs of any sport. Instead, they’re going the opposite direction, towards all the problems that afflict the other sports in the US.
By playoffs being a problem
you mean making more money and getting higher ratings?
I am not a Supporter | I am not a Fan | I am a Sounder
Sounder At Heart
No, I mean guaranteeing the elimination of the second or third best team in the league in the first round
I’m not a huge fan of playoffs, but with a balanced schedule, you can make than as fair as possible. Instead of going by conferences, just take the top eight teams and seed them by performance. That way, you can get the likelihood that the two best teams will play for the championship as high as possible. Right now in MLS, the chances of that are exactly zero. The best case scenario in MLS this year is first versus fourth. That’s just stupid.
Other sports have equally moronic issues like teams with mediocre records getting in over teams with much better records just because they’re the least sucky team in a horrible division. If playoffs are supposed to crown champions, then that’s less credible if top teams get excluded and mediocre teams get included. That may be a necessary evil with unbalanced schedules, but that’s an evil that MLS is choosing to inflict upon itself, not one that’s being forced on it.
How about guaranteeing the elimination of the second AND third best teams
without any rounds?
That’s life without playoffs.
Nos Audietis
Completely okay by me
Everybody had the same chance to rack up points, but the Galaxy did it better than anyone else.
But since we have to have playoffs for some reason, why not make not suck as hard as other playoffs?
by CarlosT on Oct 10, 2011 5:01 PM PDT up reply actions 1 recs
We have playoffs because people like playoffs
The games are better attended than regular season games and lots of people watch them on television. Not that millions of people attending playoff games should sway your anti-playoff stance.
by ubelmann on Oct 10, 2011 5:11 PM PDT up reply actions 1 recs
Nope
Just because they’re popular doesn’t make them good. Millions more people attend leagues without playoffs, so it’s an argument that can go both ways.
I see, I guess the customer is not always right
American sports fans are too dumb to know what’s best for them!
by ubelmann on Oct 10, 2011 5:19 PM PDT up reply actions 1 recs
And so apparently are soccer fans around the world
This really can go on forever, if you want.
Copa Libertadores games are less popular than domestic league matches?
I’m sure that UEFA Champions League tickets must go for less than regular season matches, too, right? If you’re insistent that UCL is a tournament (which is just a sort of playoff by a different name) and not to be compared to leagues, then it’s clear that European soccer fans like playoffs, too, when they are given the option to view them.
Tournaments != playoffs
Playoffs are a second chance randomizer tacked on to the end of a season. Tournaments are separate competitions.
by CarlosT on Oct 10, 2011 6:17 PM PDT up reply actions 1 recs
So is the World Series a playoff or a tournament?
Was the 1950 World Series a playoff or a tournament? Will the 2011 World Series be a playoff or a tournament?
It's a playoff, obviously, and always has been
Here’s a handy guide for the Sounders:
US Open Cup = tournament
CONCACAF Champions League = tournament
MLS Cup Playoffs = playoff
Obviously?
In 1950, the American League champion (decided by a single table) played the National League champion (decided by a single table). That’s not a second-chance randomizer, it’s its own separate competition.
Think of it this way:
The regular season is just a gigantic group stage.
I met a possum.
by s0merand0mdude on Oct 10, 2011 9:27 PM PDT up reply actions
No, the customer is absolutely not always right.
I don’t necessarily think playoffs are a bad thing but that’s a terrible argument.
by Aaron Campeau on Oct 10, 2011 5:21 PM PDT up reply actions 1 recs
If most people thought that playoffs sucked, they wouldn't go
When we’re talking about entertainment here, I think people have plenty of good reasons for enjoying playoffs. First off, the games themselves are fun and exciting, which is reason enough to have them. Secondly, we all have busy schedules and it is simply easier to pay attention to a small subset of games than it is to pay attention to every single game of the season. For, say, a hardcore baseball fan, the grind of the regular season is a beautiful thing and many hardcore baseball fans I know would prefer the playoffs to have fewer teams and more weight to be given to the regular season. But most people are busy and it’s simply more convenient to pay more attention to the post-season than the regular season.
So fine, the customer’s not always right, but in this case, it’s clear that people value playoff games more highly than regular season games and there’s no compelling case to argue that they are just simply wrong to value things that way.
Playoffs are the reason I don't watch any American sports
What really killed it for me was the 2001 Mariners. That made me realize how pointless the regular season really is if you have playoffs. Why watch 162 games when 19 (probably less) will do?
After ignoring the regular season, I found I actually didn’t care about baseball, football, or basketball, and just started ignoring the sports altogether. The only reason I care about MLS at all is the Sounders and I tolerate the playoffs but I hate their randomness and lack of balance.
by CarlosT on Oct 10, 2011 6:23 PM PDT up reply actions 1 recs
The only reason you have 162 games in the regular season...
…is that you can’t have 262 games in the regular season. The regular season games are a reward of their own. Some years, just making the playoffs is a fantastic voyage.
The Mariners had a great year in 2001 and Mariners fans ought to remember that year fondly. It could have been even better with a WS win, but it was still a great year.
You only need 58 games for a balanced schedule with 30 teams
That leaves another 104 games to play with.
My point wasn't that there ought to be a balanced schedule
My point was that the only reason there are 162 games is that it’s not feasible to have 200 or 250 or 300 or 350. One of the joys of baseball is that there are so many games, and I would watch more if they played more.
As to whether or not baseball should even have a balanced schedule, it would be ridiculous for baseball to have a balanced schedule amongst all 30 teams. The Mariners already play too many games in the Eastern and Central time zones for my taste. I’d like to see all teams in the same division play the same schedule, but past that, I don’t think the entire league needs (or wants) a balanced schedule.
Also, the Supporters' Shield doesn't make much sense without a balanced schedule.
I know it was awarded in years without a balanced schedule, but it really doesn’t make sense. The half-decent teams in the Eastern conference are going to have a much easier time than the actually good teams in the West, because the Eastern teams will have their scheduled filled with a bunch of games against mediocre opponents.
Hmmm...
I’m unconvinced that the biggest untapped market for MLS is unconvinced soccer fans. MLS will be, realistically, a “minor” league on the global scale for a long time. That’s not such a terrible thing, though. College football is a minor league, they draw millions of fans each year. Minor league baseball draws millions of fans each year, too. And just as minor league baseball isn’t first and foremost out to reach hardcord MLB fans, I don’t think that MLS ought to be out first and foremost to get fans who are already affiliated with other teams and leagues.
There are also plenty of competitions out there which don’t play “balanced” round-robin schedules which are still quite popular. There’s nothing all that balanced about the EUFA Champions League (they even have playoffs!), but it’s probably the biggest revenue-generating soccer league on the planet. And IMO, the US has more in common with the EU than it does with any one country within the EU.
At the end of the day, people come to watch soccer, not to watch schedules. If the talent continues to improve in MLS, then fans of overseas leagues will follow MLS to see which players they’d like their favorite megaclub to poach, balanced schedule or not.
Do you really not understand the difference between a league and a knock out tournament?
Also, the “league” portions of the UEFA Champions League (and the CONCACAF Champions League, for that matter) are balanced, in that each team plays the other teams home and away. That’s the most credible way to determine who the two best teams are. If they did it otherwise, there would be doubt about whether the two best teams were going forward.
Seriously though, the “UCL/World Cup/other knockout tournament isn’t round-robin” argument really needs to die. I can’t believe how many times that comes up in discussion of this issue.
Do you really not understand the difference between a rinky-dink 50-million-person country like England...
…and a huge 300-million-plus country like the US? Canada by itself has 35 million people, over half England’s population. To stop a two-nation league at some arbitrary number like 20 is the height of absurdity. All Garber and the league is doing by abandoning the balanced schedule now is setting expectations for the future accordingly. When the league eventually has 30-32 teams (like every other major league in the country), a balanced schedule would be impossible and conferences will be the name of the game.
The idea that somehow other American sports leagues are struggling because they play unbalanced schedules is really laughable, too. The NFL draws three times the revenue that the EPL does, despite not being close to as global of a brand. MLB draws over twice the revenue that the EPL does.
And no, CONCACAF Champions League is not a balanced schedule. How many times do we play LA in CCL play? How many times do we play Toronto? Our “Conference” in CCL play has a balanced schedule, but the league as a whole does not. Why does the CCL have groups? Because it’s impractical for all teams to play each other. Why does MLS have conferences? Because it’s going to be impractical for all teams to play each other, so rather than starting with a single table and moving to conferences, they’ve just decided to have conferences the whole time. 40-50 years from now, we’ll look at this as a the two-year period MLS played a balanced schedule. The schedule as it is now is the exception, not the rule, and I think it’s fine that MLS is abandoning it as soon as possible so as not to give people the impression that it will continue to be that way going forward.
by ubelmann on Oct 10, 2011 4:45 PM PDT up reply actions 2 recs
Ever heard of Brazil?
Bigger than the Continental US, with 200 million people? They have a 20 team top league, and thousands of other soccer teams as well. They also have promotion and relegation, which allows teams to exist anywhere that wants one, and rise according to the talents they are able to attract, on and off the field. The state I’m originally from has over 150 soccer teams at all levels, any of which could theoretically rise to play in the top division. If American soccer fans weren’t so Euro-centric, they’d realize what is really possible.
And I never said that the US leagues are struggling, I said they lack credibility as sports competitions. How many years can you say that the playoffs in any sport includes the top teams and only the top teams? Pretty much never.
And the answer is apparently no, you don’t understand the difference between a league and a knockout tournament. The CCL has groups because it’s a particular type of the latter that has a league element tacked on to the front, making it a bit of a hybrid, versus a pure knockout tournament like the FA Cup or the USOC.
Well, I can only wish that the MLS should ever have the lack of credibility that MLB, the NFL, the NBA, and the NHL have
What Brazil does works for Brazil because most of the population is concentrated on the coast and the history of their teams goes back farther. It also doesn’t hurt that the leagues are, generally speaking, propped up by selling off the nation’s best players to other countries. (A situation which many top European nations are able to avoid and which I’d like to see MLS avoid in the long run.) The whole promotion/relegation thing has been beaten to death in the past, but the long and the short of it is that promotion/relegation in the US is a great model if you don’t want there to be a serious top league in the US for another 50-60 years (if ever) while all of the tiny grass-roots leagues establish themselves in the meantime.
by ubelmann on Oct 10, 2011 5:10 PM PDT up reply actions 1 recs
Oh, we're well on the way to lacking crediblity
RSL and Colorado as the last two MLS champs were huge strides in that direction.
The population of Brazil might be concentrated on the coast, but there are teams everywhere, and it’s also a long coast. Also, the selling of players is by no means a bad thing. It drives teams to scout far and wide for the best players and to develop the very best into stars. It harnesses the power of free enterprise to develop players. The US would benefit a lot of such a system.
RSL has proved the last two years that they were well deserving
They just happened to win their MLS Cup right at the start.
Thank god LA didn’t win in our house.
by Agent_J on Oct 10, 2011 6:51 PM PDT up reply actions 1 recs
No, they might be deserving in the future, but not then
To have a team with a losing record as your champion is just ridiculous.
Way too much is made out of Salt Lake's record that year
Their record really wasn’t that bad. They were only 8 points behind the Conference leaders and 9 points behind the Supporters Shield winner, Columbus. After the first round of the playoffs, where they beat the Supporters Shield winner twice in a row, if you add on the results of those games in the standings, they were only 3 points behind Columbus.
Adding in their playoff games to their overall record—and playoff games are against the top teams from the regular season—they finished the season at 13-12-9. (As compared to, say, Columbus, which finished 13-9-10 if you include the playoffs.) If you looked back in December, after the MLS Cup playoffs were over, you’d probably say LA was the best team in the league, but it’s not as though Salt Lake would have totally been out of the conversation after their playoff performance.
So with four extra games they finally had a winning record
Okay, my bad then, that makes them obviously better than every other team in MLS.
No one in MLS was obviously better than everyone else in 2009
As I said, if you look back over the season and the playoffs, there’s a good case that LA was the best team in the league, but maybe you are comfortable ignoring the playoffs and prefer Columbus. Even then, Columbus finished a whopping 1 point ahead of LA and it wasn’t a balanced schedule that year.
Brazil has no where near the spacial disparity of metropolitan areas
that the USA has. No nation earth does.
Something like 2/3rds of Brazil’s population is in the SouthEast seaboard which is roughly the size of the US North East.
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Sounder At Heart
by Dave Clark on Oct 10, 2011 10:04 PM PDT up reply actions 3 recs
.
And I never said that the US leagues are struggling, I said they lack credibility as sports competitions. How many years can you say that the playoffs in any sport includes the top teams and only the top teams? Pretty much never.
You could say the same about the World Cup, is anybody questioning the legitimacy of that? You could say the same about any Champions League in the world, but you’re dismissing those as “different”. Why? Because it defeats your argument? Maybe it’s time to say that your argument is not valid.
The playoffs are a system that a league like MLS will need to use fairly soon. They’re also essential in the NFL. NBA, MLB, and NHL all could do without them, but they play so many games that the winner of the league is usually decided far before the season ends. Quite simply, if your league’s too big for a balanced schedule, or if you play so many games the champion would be decided far from the end of the season, you need playoffs to crown a proper champion. Otherwise, you get a system similar to the BCS (this is extreme exaggeration for MLS, but it makes a point) or, in the case of the NBA, MLB, and NHL, you get maybe 100 games league-wide that literally do not matter.
If you want regular season importance, follow the SS. You’ll find plenty of MLS fans that agree with you. The reason the MLS Cup exists, in terms of the league, is to make money. Why does it make money? Because more people care about it than the regular season.
Face facts. Your viewpoint, while valid, is in the minority. I’m not entirely certain you even agree with yourself, with the whole “knockout tournaments are different” thing.
I met a possum.
by s0merand0mdude on Oct 10, 2011 10:08 PM PDT up reply actions
Knockouts and leagues are different, and obviously so
In a league, everyone plays a set number games regardless of whether they win, draw, or lose, while tournaments have teams dropping off at each stage. If MLS were a knockout tournament, we’d have been done after the first or second match, depending on whether it was single or double elimination. Why most American fans have trouble grasping this simple distinction is baffling to me.
At the moment, MLS has no need to unbalance the schedule. They have said they’re going to 20 teams and then staying there for an indefinite amount of time. Twenty is quite a manageable number, and would only require fitting in four more games into the season.
Also, more people care about the playoffs because they actually determine the champion, and therefore devalue the regular season, as all playoffs do. If there were no playoffs, people would value the regular season more.
And I’m quite comfortable being in the minority. I know I’m not going to change the system, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it.
by CarlosT on Oct 11, 2011 9:47 AM PDT up reply actions 1 recs
They haven't said that they are stopping at 20 though
They’ve said that they no longer need to expand as part of the business model. But if the telco/barca consortium comes back and says that they want to be Miami FC as team 21 MLS will not say no.
If InBev/AB say they will build a downtown stadium near SLU in St Louis and want to be 22 MLS will not say no.
The USA deserves more than 15 cities with teams.
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Sounder At Heart
This is Mark Abbott, MLS President
"Our focus right now is the 20th team in New York and we have not yet set a timeline for expansion beyond that, or even (determined) if we’re going to expand beyond that," Abbott told Straus. "There’s no place we need to be. Even at the size we are, we have a tremendous national footprint and are at the size that soccer leagues typically are. We feel good about the size we’re at. Other markets could be very successful as MLS markets, but (expanding beyond 20) wouldn’t be out of need. We don’t need to grow beyond where we are."
At the moment they have no plans set past 20 and MLS seems okay with where they are.
And they would never say no to those type of ownership groups
in those specific markets.
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Sounder At Heart
So unbalanced when those teams are added, not before.
But if you’re going to be at 20 or less, why degrade the competition unnecessarily?
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