MLS playoff system is flawed

[AreliusIII]

These are both great suggestions. Now if someone would convey them to the Don.

[AreliusIII]

http://www.nysun.com/article/22384

[AreliusIII]

Top seed is a bad place to be in MLS

By PETE GRATHOFF
The Kansas City Star

The Major League Soccer playoffs turned into the NCAA basketball tournament over the weekend.

Three of the four top seeds were eliminated, and the fourth needed an amazing rally to survive. It was a wild time colored with stunning blowouts and nail-biting finishes.

A quick recap: San Jose, the team with the best record in the league, lost by an aggregate 4-2 score to the Los Angeles Galaxy, which finished the season with the same number of points (45) as the Wizards, who missed the playoffs.

Colorado, which was the third seed in the West and also had 45 points, tied FC Dallas 2-2, but won 5-4 in penalty kicks. Chicago, the third seed in the East, crushed defending champion D.C. United 4-0, while the top seed in the East, New England, rallied from a 2-0 deficit with 25 minutes to play in the second game and beat the MetroStars 3-2.

Last week the MLS playoff format was hotly debated, with most blasting the first-round home-and-home series as not being much of an advantage for the team with the better record. But Wizards general manager Curt Johnson noted that since the league changed from a best-of-three first round to the current format in 2003, the higher-seeded team has advanced eight of 12 times, including this year’s upset specials.

“I think it’s an improvement over the three-game series,” Johnson said. “Is it perfect? No, but it is better than it was.”

That’s not to say Johnson wouldn’t mind tweaking things. In Europe, if a home-and-home series is tied after the second game, the team with more goals scored on the road wins.

“I think that gives the better team another resource toward advancement,” Johnson said of the European method. “I think that the better team more often than not is going to advance with the more tools they’re given to advance. I think an away-goals rule is something I’d like to see.

“On the other hand, we’ve changed the playoffs a lot. So we’ve got to be careful not to have knee-jerk reactions.”

If nothing else, it made for an exciting and improbable weekend of soccer.

[AreliusIII]

http://www.soccer365.com/_365_Features/page_121_110033.shtml

[AreliusIII]

Bruce Arena:

I think there's a lot of factors that go into making club soccer better. One thing that concerns me is that MLS games are not competitive enough. Not meaningful enough. And I'd like to see a mechanism in place that requires that each and every MLS game mean something.

My particular theory on the subject is that the regular season [should be] much more important than postseason and that the MLS champion comes out of the regular season. Bonuses for teams [should be] much larger for regular-season performances.

And then for MLS Cup, the postseason, I'd let everyone be involved. It extends the playing season for all the clubs, which they need. Seed the top four teams and give them a bye.

Right now if you win two games in a row in September, you're in the playoffs, it seems. It just seems that way. So you go through a whole regular season where the games don't mean a whole lot.

I think the regular-season champion [should be] the team that goes into the CONCACAF Champions Cup, not someone that wins a couple of games in the postseason.

http://www.socceramerica.com/article.asp?ART_ID=562136887

[AreliusIII]

SOCCER GRAHAME L. JONES
MLS Goes Backward, All the Way to 1800s
GRAHAME L. JONES

February 6, 2006

One step forward, one step sideways, one step back. And so on and so forth.

It's a slow waltz, this business of growing Major League Soccer into a sport that will be embraced in the U.S. rather than simply being tolerated. At times, in fact, it almost seems as if MLS is intent on standing still.

The one step forward in recent seasons has been the building of stadiums. No one can fault the league on that front. If Commissioner Don Garber's theory follows the movie script — if you build it they will come — he might be on the right track.

But they would arrive a darn sight sooner if MLS, whose 11th season opens April 1, started listening to those who have only its best interests at heart.

Bruce Arena is one of those people.

The U.S. men's national team coach recently told Soccer America magazine that "MLS games are not competitive enough. Not meaningful enough. I'd like to see a mechanism in place that requires that each and every game mean something."

The league has heard similar complaints before — from coaches, from players, from the media. But it has failed to respond.

Meanwhile, MLS has taken a sizable step backward by moving the two-time champion San Jose Earthquakes to Houston and then, compounding an already grievous error, giving the team a name that is a slap in the face to every Latino fan in Texas.

Houston 1836?

Por favor.

But first, Arena.

The U.S. coach believes that regular-season games should carry larger financial incentives, that the MLS champion should be the team that compiles the best record in the regular season, and that that champion should be the team that qualifies for the CONCACAF Champions Cup.

The playoffs, he argued, should include all 12 teams, with the top four finishers getting a bye in the first round.

To modify the idea a little, add the nation's top amateur and semipro teams to the postseason mix and call it the U.S. Open Cup. Advance the top four teams from that event to a restructured Interliga tournament, also involving Mexico's best, and suddenly there is shape, symmetry and, yes, meaning, to the MLS calendar.

It makes so much sense that the league will almost certainly ignore it.

Just as it ignored — or, more likely, failed to fully consider — what effect naming its Houston team after the date of the city's founding would have on Latino fans, especially those of Mexican heritage.

The idea was sound enough — to follow the German example and include a date in the team's name. Hence such Bundesliga clubs as FC Schalke 04, TSV 1860 Munich, Hannover 96, and so on.

But MLS forgot two things. First, the German clubs were named for the year of the team's founding, not the year of their city's founding.

Second, Texans of Latin origin do not recall 1836 with any particular fondness, it being the year of Texas' secession from Mexico. And there are nearly 1.7 million Latinos in Houston, the very people that MLS is hoping will support the team.

As one of those residents told the New York Times: "Do they think we're going to wear a T-shirt with the year 1836 on it?"

The Houston Chronicle pointed out that the team's logo is equally insensitive, including, as it does, Sam Houston on horseback leading the charge against Mexican troops.

The league, Raul A. Ramos wrote in the Chronicle, "has chosen to identify with a year that may divide the city rather than unite it."

Perhaps Oliver Luck, the former Houston Oiler quarterback and NFL Europe executive who is president of Houston 1836, could be forgiven for flunking history.

But MLS and AEG, the team's owner-operator, cannot be excused for not doing their homework properly. Did they even talk to Latino leaders in Houston? If they did, did they listen? Apparently not.

The league believes the controversy over the name will blow over.

Perhaps it will, but that's not the point.

The league should be fixing its error, and there's another relatively simple solution at hand. Have Garber and Luck apologize for the gaffe, a slight that clearly was not intentional, and then modify the team's name with a couple of strokes of the pen.

Turning Houston 1836 into Houston 2006 right now will be a lot less painful than opening the gates at Robertson Stadium on the University of Houston campus in April and finding no one waiting to enter.

If you name it badly, they won't come.

As for that logo, well, Houston, you've got a problem.