Who Needs a League Anyway?

I think I will start this post with an analogy. Imagine that you sit for a long, difficult and varied examination. You've studied hard, you've sharpened all your number two pencils. At the end, the teacher says that he's going to look over the work and as long as you didn't do too badly, say, as long as you got about half of the questions right, you'll be given three bonus questions that you can go home and study for and your entire grade will actually be based on your answers to these. One might feel frustrated. One might feel cheated. One might feel that this was not necessarily the fairest, most accurate way way to determine one's grade. And one would probably be right.

Now consider this. You train hard in the preseason, you play hard for thirty-two matches. Sometimes you play stunningly attractive, flowing attacking football. Sometimes you bear down and grit it out for 90 minutes to get the result. You put up with injuries, national team call-ups, other teams targeting you. Despite all of this, you dominate your conference in a way that hasn't been seen for years and win the conference title going away. Then, in the playoffs, you're eliminated by a .500 team that essentially showed up to play six matches all season, Open Cup matches included. I'll bet that this is essentially how the New England Revolution and San Jose Earthquakes feel.

I have to say, at this point, that I have nothing against elimination tournaments and playoffs per se. They can be exciting. They are great levelers. One good day or a series of lucky breaks and anyone can win, in theory. There is certainly a reason why knockout format cup tournaments persist. However, there is also a reason why single table, aggregate point league competitions exist and there is a very good reason why national championships are determined by these and not by knockout. It is generally felt, for good reason, that a team that can perform at a higher level than its competitors throughout a prolonged league season is more deserving than a team that manages to defeat a series of competitors in one-off matches. A full season tests the overall qualities of a team. Not only are skill and teamwork necessary, but also physical and mental stamina. In addition, in a league season, a team is tested in a wide variety of situations: heat, rain, possibly snow, home crowd, away crowd, up a goal early, down a goal late. The team that is best able to cope with all of these situations as well as contigencies like injuries to star players has every right to call itself a champion. There is just something a little hollow about a victory that is achieved by playing one good match every two or three weeks, or with six good minutes, or after slinking through a season waiting for everyone else to tire themselves out.

All of this discussion applies directly to MLS' elected method of choosing a champion. And perhaps it applies better this year than in any other. By playing, as I said, essentially six matches all year (two real Open Cup matches and four MLS Cup playoff matches) the LA Galaxy strolled home with two trophies, doing the domestic double. This, I would argue, makes them the worst team in the ten year history of the league to win the title, much less collect the double. A .500 team in the regular season, LA started well and ended playing nothing more than utilitarian football. In fact, it could be argued that they only snuck into the playoffs because the Western Conference hosted both MLS expansion clubs. Once in the back door, Landon Donovan, who, despite his talent, really only seems able to perform on an intermitant basis, dragged his team along behind two solid performance (one against San Jose and one against Colorado). (Incidentally, this might be part of the reason why Landon has so much trouble in Europe where one needs to perform at a high level every week, sometimes even twice a week). In the other two matches the Galaxy put on good tactical displays to defuse a desperate San Jose overcome a depleted and battered Revolution. Was this mickle crafty of them? Yes. Does it make them champions in my eyes? Not really so much. Do they care? I seriously doubt it.

But I do care. And I think that something needs to be done to prevent things like this from happening. I know that there is the sense that an American audience will feel entirely disoriented with out a playoff of some sort. Maybe it is true. In any case, I don't think that we need do away with playoffs and championship finals entirely. We should just change what's at stake.

As far as I can see, there is no point in even having such an extended league season if, in the end, it means so little. MLS needs to limit the number of playoff spots. I know that there is the belief that this will diminish profit opportunities or fan involvement or excitement or some combination of the above, but that is not necessarily true. With fewer playoff spots, regular season games would be played with greater intensity. Each game would have more meaning. Sure this may lead to playoffs contested by bruised, battered and burned-out teams. But in all likelihood, all of the contestants would be suffering relatively equally. No one would have to worry about a fresh lower seed. The games might be a bit slower, but they would showcase the qualities that brought the teams success throughout the season. For example, we would see Chicago's quick ball movement through Thiago and their massive physical defense against the more subtle skills, teamwork and resilience of New England rather than watch a team that hadn't bothered to perform at a high level for several months come out and tactically exploit tired opposition.

So what would I propose we do? I think the most important thing is that only four teams should make the playoffs, although with future expansion, maybe six. Exactly how to choose these four is open to question. I certainly think that the conference champions must be involved. Otherwise the entire conference format is needless. However, something must be done about either the further selection or the seeding to take into account the disparities between the conferences. I don't think that anyone can doubt, San Jose and LA's two cups aside, that the Eastern Conference was vastly superior this year. Ives Galarcep at Soccernet.com has some good ideas about this. Performance during the season has to be rewarded with some distinct advantage come play-off time.

There is actually one more issue surrounding the cup competitions that I would like to address. That is how they are used to determine the American teams that will take part in international competitions. The reason that I believe this to be such an important issue is that it is through these international club competitions that American sides will become visible to the world. CONCACAF may not have a strong reputation for producing quality club teams, but it's champion is still allowed to contest the FIFA World Club Championship. This year the region's representative is Saprissa from Costa Rica. There is no reason that it isn't an MLS club intead. Even more important is the opportunity to be involved in CONMEBOL competitions. In the Sudamericana and in the Libertadores (if our teams are ever allowed to qualify like Mexico's) MLS clubs get the chance to go face to face with some of the biggest and most storied clubs on the continent and in some cases in the world. While I don't think that our clubs will immediately compete with the big Brazilian and Argentine (or Mexican) clubs, the Brazilians and Argentines will still have to play our teams on the field and they will have to fly here to play our teams in our stadiums. They will have to admit that we exist.

As it stands, the two MLS cup finalists are entered into the CONCACAF Champions Cup and I certainly hope that the MlS champion will still have the opportunity to contest the Copa Sudamericana. I believe that some thought needs to be given to altering this setup. I have heard that in the future the Supporters' Shield winner will be given a berth. I like the idea of rewarding regular season performance in this way, but I think that with a suitably altered playoff system, it won't be necessary to use the Supporters' Shield. I would actually like to see the second existing spot given back to the Open Cup winner. If we can get our teams (and fans) to put more emphasis on qualification for international competition, this would be a great way to induce more interest in the Open Cup. Hopefully, in the relatively near future, MLS will be invited to enter more side into more competitions. A lot of careful consideration needs to be put into how to reward these places in order to produce the optimal incentives within the domestic competitions.

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Now that I've finally managed to get my MLS final post up, and since the MLS season is now over, can turn my attention to the global picture. A lot has happened since I last wrote anything here. Most notably, the World Cup spots are all decided. Nothing terribly interesting happened in the European playoffs. The Czech Republic predictably outclassed Norway and Spain slaughtered Slovakia. Anyone who thought that the Turkey-Switzerland tie was anything but a toss-up was not paying attention to the previous performances of the teams and the personel involved. I'm not surprised that Switzerland won. I'm not surprised that it was close. And I am not surprised that the Turkish fans threw things at the Swiss.

The biggest qualifying story from my point of view is that T&T are finally going to the Cup. The Soca Warriors have overperformed for so long in this region and have come agonizingly close to qualification but just never managed it. Given the chance in a playoff with Bahrain, they took full advantage, although they needed to win in the Gulf to book their place. I'm most happy about this because of what it says for CONCACAF. Our region gets very little respect. This quadrennium's qualifying group seemed suspiciously weak even to those within the region. But this playoff victory shows that our small teams are a lot better than most people think. There is no shame in struggling to beat the Carribean nations away. There's a surprising amount of football quality to be found. None of this is to say that anyone from this region is about to hoist the Cup or is even set to make much of a run at it this year. But maybe now the AFC will shut up about wanting more places.

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And as a final bit of news: Roy Keane has left Man U!!! That is not a typo or a joke. Sure he was getting past it, but it's hard to imagine the Red Devils without him. Now we will finally see how Ferguson handles a Keanectomy.