 |
| I was able to finally see this trophy, it was rather impressive |
Current League
Format
Competition
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Jan
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Feb
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Mar
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Apr
|
May
|
Jun
|
Jul
|
Aug
|
Sep
|
Oct
|
Nov
|
Dec
|
MLS Reg.
Sea.
|
S
|
P
|
P
|
F
|
||||||||
NASL Season
|
S
|
F
|
S
|
F
|
||||||||
U.S. Open
Cup
|
S
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F
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||||||||||
CONCACAF
|
P
|
P
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F
|
S
|
||||||||
Ap. & Cla.
Sea.
|
S
|
F
|
S
|
F
|
||||||||
UEFA Avg.
Sea.
|
F
|
S
|
||||||||||
UEFA Avg.
Cup
|
F
|
S
|
||||||||||
UEFA CL
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P
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P
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P
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F
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Q
|
S
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||||||
FIFA World
Cup
|
P
|
F
|
S=Season Start, Q=Qualifying, P=Playoffs, F=Final or Season End
The schedule that you see above
you includes the US soccer schedule and the seasons that everyone else in the
world. The “UEFA Avg. Season” column is nice, but this is actually true of
around the world. Almost every team in the Northern Hemisphere has a schedule like this. The
best leagues in the world which for this blog we are considering the following
the best in the world: La Liga (Spain), The Premier League (England), 1. Bundesliga
(Germany) and occasionally Serie A (Italy). The US teams follow a spring to fall format except
for the CONCACAF Champions League (CCL) that follows a fall to spring schedule
to align with the FIFA calendar.
THE MLS
CUP
In
the example of 2015 the Portland Timbers won the MLS Cup on the Columbus Crew’s
home field of Mapfre Stadium. There were so many things that are wrong with
this. I won’t be talking about how the MLS needs to shift from a spring to fall
schedule and get with the rest of the world with a fall to spring schedule
(especially with all of those turf fields they have) what I am going to talk about
is the format of the competition. I do like the knockout rounds and how they
dictate home field for those. I enjoy the two leg playoffs, I do wish away
goals didn’t exist and it was across the board aggregate. The part about this
that I have the biggest problem with that the final will be held in a location
where one team will have a huge advantage over the other. In a final! One team
already has an edge without ever stepping on the field. For those of you who
don’t know the MLS Cup final is held by the team with the most regular season
points of the two who are competing. I find this unacceptable and I demand it
be changed. Now the winner of the MLS Cup gets a berth in the CCL and a very
wonderful star above their crest. I love all of this and I love the stars, it
is a very permanent way for teams to show love to their past success. The way
that they display that they are the current champions is with a gold star (as
opposed to the silver ones) above their crest. I like most of what the MLS Cup
has to offer, a couple tweaks would make it great. (Make it Fall to Spring)
In
the example of 2015 the Portland Timbers won the MLS Cup on the Columbus Crew’s
home field of Mapfre Stadium. There were so many things that are wrong with
this. I won’t be talking about how the MLS needs to shift from a spring to fall
schedule and get with the rest of the world with a fall to spring schedule
(especially with all of those turf fields they have) what I am going to talk about
is the format of the competition. I do like the knockout rounds and how they
dictate home field for those. I enjoy the two leg playoffs, I do wish away
goals didn’t exist and it was across the board aggregate. The part about this
that I have the biggest problem with that the final will be held in a location
where one team will have a huge advantage over the other. In a final! One team
already has an edge without ever stepping on the field. For those of you who
don’t know the MLS Cup final is held by the team with the most regular season
points of the two who are competing. I find this unacceptable and I demand it
be changed. Now the winner of the MLS Cup gets a berth in the CCL and a very
wonderful star above their crest. I love all of this and I love the stars, it
is a very permanent way for teams to show love to their past success. The way
that they display that they are the current champions is with a gold star (as
opposed to the silver ones) above their crest. I like most of what the MLS Cup
has to offer, a couple tweaks would make it great. (Make it Fall to Spring)
THE
SUPPORTERS’ SHIELD
This award is relatively new to the soccer scene here in the US. The Supporters’ Shield is a fan created award that MLS picked up and ran with. First awarded in 1999, this award is very similar to the other leagues around the world where the team with the best season record is crowned the champion. Since 2006 the Supporters’ Shield winner has earned a berth in the CONCACAF Champions League (CCL), and that is it. That seems to be the problem with the Shield. All that comes of it is just a berth to a broken competition (we will talk about that later). The Shield seems to mean nothing to teams or fans except for a large pat on the back. There is literally no benefit for teams who win the league. The gain no notoriety or benefit in competition by claiming the regular season. That is where we stand right now.
I have a proposed plan to fix this. Now because this award is not the only award, but it is an additional award it will of course never mean as much as the MLS Cup as long as the play-off system exists. The only way that the Shield could get more of an impact is if it affected the outcome of the MLS Cup. The only way I could think of is if the Shield winners automatically became the host of the MLS Cup. If we think from a business stand point the tickets would have two months to sell. So not just the two teams in the finals fans could attend, but people who just love soccer could attend. I would personally love the opportunity to attend the MLS final, even if I had no connection to the teams playing. There is also a very real chance that the Supporters’ Shield winners could advance to the final. Which in turn would make winning the Shield all the more important.
If we take 2015 as an example the winners of the 2015 Supporters’ Shield were the New York Red Bulls. Now instead of a final held in a home stadium where there is an obvious home field advantage where we honestly want the best team to win the league I feel a final on neutral ground would be the best option. The MLS is at a point where the final was sold out after one day, there is definitely an interest in soccer now. Especially with the 2,000 traveling Timbers fans who were willing to go to an opposing stadium. Now imagine what would be the 25,000 capacity Red Bull Stadium. Completely neutral supporting local businesses and how cool would that be to have a final in the great city of New York. Come on MLS let’s make it happen. The Supporters’ Shied winners host the MLS cup.
Another big problem that I have with how the MLS treats the Supporters’ Shield is that with the MLS cup the team that wins it gets to put something on their jersey to celebrate that (stars). Something that I wish would happen, would be a patch that teams could put on their jersey to celebrate this. Just something to celebrate the accomplishment.
This award is relatively new to the soccer scene here in the US. The Supporters’ Shield is a fan created award that MLS picked up and ran with. First awarded in 1999, this award is very similar to the other leagues around the world where the team with the best season record is crowned the champion. Since 2006 the Supporters’ Shield winner has earned a berth in the CONCACAF Champions League (CCL), and that is it. That seems to be the problem with the Shield. All that comes of it is just a berth to a broken competition (we will talk about that later). The Shield seems to mean nothing to teams or fans except for a large pat on the back. There is literally no benefit for teams who win the league. The gain no notoriety or benefit in competition by claiming the regular season. That is where we stand right now.
I have a proposed plan to fix this. Now because this award is not the only award, but it is an additional award it will of course never mean as much as the MLS Cup as long as the play-off system exists. The only way that the Shield could get more of an impact is if it affected the outcome of the MLS Cup. The only way I could think of is if the Shield winners automatically became the host of the MLS Cup. If we think from a business stand point the tickets would have two months to sell. So not just the two teams in the finals fans could attend, but people who just love soccer could attend. I would personally love the opportunity to attend the MLS final, even if I had no connection to the teams playing. There is also a very real chance that the Supporters’ Shield winners could advance to the final. Which in turn would make winning the Shield all the more important.
If we take 2015 as an example the winners of the 2015 Supporters’ Shield were the New York Red Bulls. Now instead of a final held in a home stadium where there is an obvious home field advantage where we honestly want the best team to win the league I feel a final on neutral ground would be the best option. The MLS is at a point where the final was sold out after one day, there is definitely an interest in soccer now. Especially with the 2,000 traveling Timbers fans who were willing to go to an opposing stadium. Now imagine what would be the 25,000 capacity Red Bull Stadium. Completely neutral supporting local businesses and how cool would that be to have a final in the great city of New York. Come on MLS let’s make it happen. The Supporters’ Shied winners host the MLS cup.
Another big problem that I have with how the MLS treats the Supporters’ Shield is that with the MLS cup the team that wins it gets to put something on their jersey to celebrate that (stars). Something that I wish would happen, would be a patch that teams could put on their jersey to celebrate this. Just something to celebrate the accomplishment.
THE U.S.
OPEN CUP
Well, I have more to say about this than I had ever anticipated. Blink and you will miss it. The United States oldest (and what seems like shortest) competition. Yes, this is a real thing and to many soccer fans in the US this comes as a shocker. Most, if not all teams in the world has a “cup” to compete in. This gives every club at every level a chance to win something and play against the giants of the game. It is always shocking with a team like Wigan Athletic face the giant teams like Manchester City. It is even more shocking when they win (2013 WA 1-0 MC). The format of the Open Cup currently has 91 teams and runs from April to September. There are several things that plague the U.S. Open Cup here are a couple reasons why I think the Open Cup seems rather insignificant: prize money, media coverage, duration of competition, competition days, and finally the number and quality of teams and a little bonus of NASL. (And again there should be something on the kit to signify this accomplishment) I like patches.
Prize Money: Now with all the teams entering the competition, there is prize money associated with it. This is not uncommon, the World Cup even often teams prize money based on performance and on which round they are eliminated in. The U.S. Open Cup does the same, they award based upon advancing furthest in the competition from the clubs respective divisions ($15,000). The only other sums awarded are for the runner up of the competition and the champion receiving $60,000 and $250,000 respectively. I am personally not a fan of this method personally. I would have actually like to see a format similar to Europe where clubs are awarded prize money for every round they advance. This is regardless of how others have done in their division the receive money for performing in the competition. Let’s look at the FA cup, this is more comparable to the US in terms of money. (For example the DFB Pokal champions can amass upwards of €7.6M) teams receive £18K for advancing past the first round proper, then £27K for the second. £67K for the third, £90K for the fourth, £180K for the fifth, £360 for the sixth, £900K for the Semi-finals. In the finals the teams receives £900K and if they win, that amount doubles. That total leaves the winner walking away with a very cool £2.5M. Money at every level will definitely incentivize teams to not only participate, but compete at a high level. The problem with this right now, is simply the fact that US Soccer just doesn’t have that kind of money to give.
Media Coverage: MLS regular season games are getting quite a bit of media coverage now a day. With games regularly showing up on Fox Sports 1, ESPN, ESPN Deportes, Univision Deportes, and MLS Live streaming online it is not hard to find a match game on the television. However, the only place I have ever seen U.S. Open Cup matches is on a side on-line streaming option on the Open Cup website or on YouTube. The U.S. Open cup needs to get more attention if it ever expects to gain more notoriety, more money, and just be relevant.
Duration of Competition: I have said it before, but the Open Cup is open too soon. I personally love the feel and thrill of a cup game, but it seems like the “season” for Open Cup games (where it gets interesting) is roughly only during the summer. This is so radically different from around the world. I would love to see the Open Cup modeled after the European cups. In 2013 when Wigan Athletic beat Manchester City in the cup final, they did this on 11 May, 2013 the last day of the regular season was on the 19 May. Wigan Athletic was relegated that season where Manchester City took second in the league. I think this is very important for what a cup is about. Letting smaller teams have a swing at the bigger teams who are quite honestly, focusing on other things. In 2015 in the MLS the last day of the season was on 25 October, the U.S. Open Cup final was on 12 August. This is a full month! The champions of the cup win and say to themselves, “Well, back to work. We got more important stuff to win.” I feel that a lot of the spirit of the competition is forcing teams to choose where they put their best players and where their priorities are. At the moment of course every team would chose to devote their resources to the MLS route, but in the future I could see this being a very big shift in this.
Competition Days: The current format that the Open Cup follows has roughly 9 match days with the top tier teams coming in on the fourth round (5th match day) This is very similar to the rest of the world. There is no use in Manchester United just blowing your local rag-tag team out of the water for a tiny bonus of £1,000. I get it the entire format makes since except for one thing and this is the reason why this competition is the shortest thing I have ever seen and why, whatever team is just doing well in June seems to win the completion every year. All around the world all the matches for that round (especially in the FA cup) are held on the same day, something that the Open Cup does not. That is simply part one of the problem. The bigger and larger part is even more glaring. In cup competitions around the world there is about a month break in-between match days. The U.S. Open Cup has roughly 2-3 match days a month. I would like a slow burn for the cup rather than a short burst. The winning of the cup should be an accomplishment of the season, not just a side completion to win.
Number and Quality of Teams: The big thing that is making the U.S. Open Cup rather underwhelming is the fact that anything outside of the MLS takes a serious dip in competitiveness. There can’t be serious competition without their being serious people to play against. Granted, the FA Cup in England has 736 teams competing in the cup. The Copa del Rey has 83 and the DFB Pokal has a 64. This is especially true with the NASL, the second tier of the American Soccer system. A tier that exclusively has teams on the eastern half of the United States. A tier that runs off of a Apatura and Clasura system (a system different from every level in the pyramid). A tier that starts and ends a month later than every other system in the United States. This league struggles to attract top level talent and only has 14 teams. A boot in quality will come in time, we just need to keep developing our youth system and the talent will come.
The North American Soccer League: NASL, the U.S. Open Cup should be your completion. What a better opportunity to stick it to your big brother top tier teams. But the NASL were a joke. In the 2015 Open Cup, with 14 teams entering the competition in the Third round (match day 4) and only 2 teams making it through to the Fourth round, this level of competition could hardly be called competitive. In 2015 only 1 NASL Team beat a MLS team. That team was the very new NYCFC who struggled to find their feet, and the lost to the very old and established New York Cosmos. That was the only major victory that the NASL registered that year. In all seven matchups between the third-tier USL and second-tier NASL, the USL clubs were victorious, 5 of them lost by shutouts. If you are going to be the second tier in American soccer, act like it. Three simple things to fix NASL are the following: 1. Play against MLS teams more and get out into the limelight. Create a bit of a competitive edge and actually build some credit to your name. 2. Expand into every big American city that MLS is not in; even if they there, expand. There are two criteria, it must be more than 20 miles away from a MLS team and have the highest population aside from the city MLS is in, except if that city has a population of 2+ million (That just leaves Houston, Chicago, Los Angeles and New York) 3. Change your schedule to match MLS. Yes I hate how MLS is formatted, but they are the top tier, they get to dictate how the rest of the leagues operate. Just follow the system NASL, just follow the system.
P.S. Cities that have large populations that don’t have a higher level club in them or are big enough to support two clubs in the West (*cough*cough* expand here NASL): Houston (2M), Chicago (2.8M), Los Angeles (4M), Phoenix (1.5M), San Diego (1.3M), San Francisco (852K), Las Vegas (613K)…we will talk about this later.
Well, I have more to say about this than I had ever anticipated. Blink and you will miss it. The United States oldest (and what seems like shortest) competition. Yes, this is a real thing and to many soccer fans in the US this comes as a shocker. Most, if not all teams in the world has a “cup” to compete in. This gives every club at every level a chance to win something and play against the giants of the game. It is always shocking with a team like Wigan Athletic face the giant teams like Manchester City. It is even more shocking when they win (2013 WA 1-0 MC). The format of the Open Cup currently has 91 teams and runs from April to September. There are several things that plague the U.S. Open Cup here are a couple reasons why I think the Open Cup seems rather insignificant: prize money, media coverage, duration of competition, competition days, and finally the number and quality of teams and a little bonus of NASL. (And again there should be something on the kit to signify this accomplishment) I like patches.
Prize Money: Now with all the teams entering the competition, there is prize money associated with it. This is not uncommon, the World Cup even often teams prize money based on performance and on which round they are eliminated in. The U.S. Open Cup does the same, they award based upon advancing furthest in the competition from the clubs respective divisions ($15,000). The only other sums awarded are for the runner up of the competition and the champion receiving $60,000 and $250,000 respectively. I am personally not a fan of this method personally. I would have actually like to see a format similar to Europe where clubs are awarded prize money for every round they advance. This is regardless of how others have done in their division the receive money for performing in the competition. Let’s look at the FA cup, this is more comparable to the US in terms of money. (For example the DFB Pokal champions can amass upwards of €7.6M) teams receive £18K for advancing past the first round proper, then £27K for the second. £67K for the third, £90K for the fourth, £180K for the fifth, £360 for the sixth, £900K for the Semi-finals. In the finals the teams receives £900K and if they win, that amount doubles. That total leaves the winner walking away with a very cool £2.5M. Money at every level will definitely incentivize teams to not only participate, but compete at a high level. The problem with this right now, is simply the fact that US Soccer just doesn’t have that kind of money to give.
Media Coverage: MLS regular season games are getting quite a bit of media coverage now a day. With games regularly showing up on Fox Sports 1, ESPN, ESPN Deportes, Univision Deportes, and MLS Live streaming online it is not hard to find a match game on the television. However, the only place I have ever seen U.S. Open Cup matches is on a side on-line streaming option on the Open Cup website or on YouTube. The U.S. Open cup needs to get more attention if it ever expects to gain more notoriety, more money, and just be relevant.
Duration of Competition: I have said it before, but the Open Cup is open too soon. I personally love the feel and thrill of a cup game, but it seems like the “season” for Open Cup games (where it gets interesting) is roughly only during the summer. This is so radically different from around the world. I would love to see the Open Cup modeled after the European cups. In 2013 when Wigan Athletic beat Manchester City in the cup final, they did this on 11 May, 2013 the last day of the regular season was on the 19 May. Wigan Athletic was relegated that season where Manchester City took second in the league. I think this is very important for what a cup is about. Letting smaller teams have a swing at the bigger teams who are quite honestly, focusing on other things. In 2015 in the MLS the last day of the season was on 25 October, the U.S. Open Cup final was on 12 August. This is a full month! The champions of the cup win and say to themselves, “Well, back to work. We got more important stuff to win.” I feel that a lot of the spirit of the competition is forcing teams to choose where they put their best players and where their priorities are. At the moment of course every team would chose to devote their resources to the MLS route, but in the future I could see this being a very big shift in this.
Competition Days: The current format that the Open Cup follows has roughly 9 match days with the top tier teams coming in on the fourth round (5th match day) This is very similar to the rest of the world. There is no use in Manchester United just blowing your local rag-tag team out of the water for a tiny bonus of £1,000. I get it the entire format makes since except for one thing and this is the reason why this competition is the shortest thing I have ever seen and why, whatever team is just doing well in June seems to win the completion every year. All around the world all the matches for that round (especially in the FA cup) are held on the same day, something that the Open Cup does not. That is simply part one of the problem. The bigger and larger part is even more glaring. In cup competitions around the world there is about a month break in-between match days. The U.S. Open Cup has roughly 2-3 match days a month. I would like a slow burn for the cup rather than a short burst. The winning of the cup should be an accomplishment of the season, not just a side completion to win.
Number and Quality of Teams: The big thing that is making the U.S. Open Cup rather underwhelming is the fact that anything outside of the MLS takes a serious dip in competitiveness. There can’t be serious competition without their being serious people to play against. Granted, the FA Cup in England has 736 teams competing in the cup. The Copa del Rey has 83 and the DFB Pokal has a 64. This is especially true with the NASL, the second tier of the American Soccer system. A tier that exclusively has teams on the eastern half of the United States. A tier that runs off of a Apatura and Clasura system (a system different from every level in the pyramid). A tier that starts and ends a month later than every other system in the United States. This league struggles to attract top level talent and only has 14 teams. A boot in quality will come in time, we just need to keep developing our youth system and the talent will come.
The North American Soccer League: NASL, the U.S. Open Cup should be your completion. What a better opportunity to stick it to your big brother top tier teams. But the NASL were a joke. In the 2015 Open Cup, with 14 teams entering the competition in the Third round (match day 4) and only 2 teams making it through to the Fourth round, this level of competition could hardly be called competitive. In 2015 only 1 NASL Team beat a MLS team. That team was the very new NYCFC who struggled to find their feet, and the lost to the very old and established New York Cosmos. That was the only major victory that the NASL registered that year. In all seven matchups between the third-tier USL and second-tier NASL, the USL clubs were victorious, 5 of them lost by shutouts. If you are going to be the second tier in American soccer, act like it. Three simple things to fix NASL are the following: 1. Play against MLS teams more and get out into the limelight. Create a bit of a competitive edge and actually build some credit to your name. 2. Expand into every big American city that MLS is not in; even if they there, expand. There are two criteria, it must be more than 20 miles away from a MLS team and have the highest population aside from the city MLS is in, except if that city has a population of 2+ million (That just leaves Houston, Chicago, Los Angeles and New York) 3. Change your schedule to match MLS. Yes I hate how MLS is formatted, but they are the top tier, they get to dictate how the rest of the leagues operate. Just follow the system NASL, just follow the system.
P.S. Cities that have large populations that don’t have a higher level club in them or are big enough to support two clubs in the West (*cough*cough* expand here NASL): Houston (2M), Chicago (2.8M), Los Angeles (4M), Phoenix (1.5M), San Diego (1.3M), San Francisco (852K), Las Vegas (613K)…we will talk about this later.
CONCACAF
CHAMPIONS’ LEAGUE
In order for this completion to gain more notoriety in the United States a couple things are going to need happen. I will write an entire article about this topic soon but let’s just scrape the frustrating surface of this competition.
1. The Calendar: The competition is going to need to shift to run congruent to the MLS regular season so the actual champions are playing in the correct year. Right now the 2014 MLS Cup champions will be playing in 2016 in the champions league. This just doesn’t seem right to me.
2. The Playing Time: Right now MLS teams get 4 berths into the Champions League that means that if none advance to the tournament (very sad) the American viewers are guaranteed 16 matches, total. That is all the action that American fans will experience. Let’s say we are a German fan watching our teams in the UEFA Champions League and none of our teams advance to the tournament (sad again, I know) these fans are guaranteed 24 matches with their home teams facing the top talent in their region.
3. More teams: More teams allow more time and more games to be played. I will talk about this more in a later post, but for right now, I would like to see
In order for this completion to gain more notoriety in the United States a couple things are going to need happen. I will write an entire article about this topic soon but let’s just scrape the frustrating surface of this competition.
1. The Calendar: The competition is going to need to shift to run congruent to the MLS regular season so the actual champions are playing in the correct year. Right now the 2014 MLS Cup champions will be playing in 2016 in the champions league. This just doesn’t seem right to me.
2. The Playing Time: Right now MLS teams get 4 berths into the Champions League that means that if none advance to the tournament (very sad) the American viewers are guaranteed 16 matches, total. That is all the action that American fans will experience. Let’s say we are a German fan watching our teams in the UEFA Champions League and none of our teams advance to the tournament (sad again, I know) these fans are guaranteed 24 matches with their home teams facing the top talent in their region.
3. More teams: More teams allow more time and more games to be played. I will talk about this more in a later post, but for right now, I would like to see
FIXED LEAGUE
Ideal Soccer Calendar for United States Soccer Competitions
|
||||||||||||
Competition
|
Jan
|
Feb
|
Mar
|
Apr
|
May
|
Jun
|
Jul
|
Aug
|
Sep
|
Oct
|
Nov
|
Dec
|
MLS Reg.
Sea.
|
S
|
P
|
P
|
F
|
||||||||
NASL Sea.
|
S
|
F
|
S
|
F
|
||||||||
USL Reg.
Sea.
|
S
|
P
|
F
|
|||||||||
U.S. Open
Cup
|
S
|
F
|
||||||||||
CCL
|
P
|
P
|
F
|
S
|
||||||||
FIXED MLS
|
P
|
P
|
F
|
S
|
||||||||
FIXED NASL
|
P
|
F
|
S
|
|||||||||
FIXED USL
|
F
|
S
|
||||||||||
FIXED USOC
|
F
|
S
|
||||||||||
FIXED CCL
|
P
|
P
|
P
|
F
|
Q
|
S
|
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