The MLS 2017 Season Thread

With Chivas gone, I guess that makes us definitively the worst team in the country!

 

Whitecaps sneaking in to the playoffs on your behalf was a bit of brilliance.

 

Never payed any attention to this league is it still * or is it getting better?
always found the american fans a bit cringey.has to be said their chants and banter are plain *. Haha
although your support during the world cup was pretty inspirational.Put englands support to shame.

 

It's got better especially the fans teams like Portland and Seattle make more noise than any EPL team that's for sure. They have their own culture and actually come up with some funny chants and flags. The US national team is different sort of fans they don't really have much songs and some of the chants are cringey. But that's because they needed something easy for all the new World Cup fans to sing. The MLS league is slowly getting better and it will continue to get better. The likes of David Villa and NYC and and Kaka at Orlando will increase the popularity.

 

It's certainly improved a lot over the past decade but it will take another decade or two before it could even come close to the top leagues in the world, if it ever will.

 

What I enjoy about it is the competitiveness. The other top leagues are all geared towards a handful of teams who basically win the title every year.

The MLS system is excellent, in that it doesn't allow any one team to run away with it simply because they have an owner with more money.

 

Its pretty stupid actually. Seeing that a team like Kansas City (finished tenth this year) can still win the MLS Cup and be champions. It makes for a lot of * games as teams don't really have to try, knowing that a handful of wins will get them into the play-off's.

If they want competitive games and leagues were no one runs away with things they should look to the south with Apertura-Clausura systems.

 

You're completely wrong on every account.

 

Aye. 2005 champions LA Galaxy finishing 8th in the regular season and still be crowned champions 1) Isn't really fair and 2) as Jon Arnold often says makes for a ton of boring games as teams realise they have enough points to make it to the play-off's early on, saving players for then and generally going through the motions.

 

Wouldn't the teams still be looking to win their conference (if it was possible), and also finish as high up the table as possible to secure a better seeding, or even finish in a position that gives them a bye in the first round of the playoff stage?

 

Precisely. The only meaningless games would be ones that couldn't affect the table, but that can be said about any league table system.

I prefer the traditional system of top of the table winning the league and cup tournaments throughout but it is what it is. The North American way.

 

The Apertura-Clausura system is unmitigated chaos. Anyone who thinks that is a model worth following is insane. I can appreciate the entertainment value, but it's a complete mess. The MLS ain't great yet, but give it 10-20 years and it'll be top 5 in the world.

 

But you don't get anything for winning it.

Once they are out of the race for Champions League spot they race is over for most teams. For someone like Dallas the regular season ended long ago. They had enough to make it to the play-off's but not enough to get into the Champions League. They may have had to play a extra game but they were still in the running. Making their games pointless.

But in other leagues the table doesn't lie at the end of the season. At the end of the Premier League we don't get Stoke City coming up and winning the play-off's and being crowded champions, even when they finish ninth. If Seattle don't win the MLS cup then the table will be a lie.

It has it's flaws but it is miles ahead of the MLS system. It makes no game pointless; it keeps it interesting to the very end and the table doesn't lie at the end of the season.

Wikipedia says that NASL already uses the Apertura-Clausura system. The same system as Peru with the grand final at the end between the two winners..

 

Hmmm you might need a playoff with Chicago Fire to confirm who has that honour:icon_mrgreen:

 

Raul just signed for the New York Cosmos will they be in the MLS next season?

 

No NYCFC is coming in next season. There hasn't been talk of a third NY franchise at all over here. The Cosmos have always been the big club in a little league.

 

It is the most intoxicating time of the season, when the step quickens on the way to the stadium, or the beer sipped on the couch seems all the colder: the postseason in Major League Soccer; or, it’s the final stretches of league seasons in other parts of the world. While the big European championships are just getting started, the seasons in one of soccer’s most fabled churches, Brazil, and in one of its burgeoning hotbeds, the United States, are reaching their climaxes.

At first glance there should be little comparison between the Brasileirão and MLS. The former is the dominant sporting competition in a country with a rich soccer heritage stretching back to the Brazilian game’s first superstar, Arthur Friedenreich, El Tigre, in the 1930s. Soccer dominates the sporting landscape in a country of 200 million people, with legendary clubs such as Corinthians and Flamengo boasting around 30 million fans each. Brazil may be struggling to reach the heights of its own glorious past, but its production line continues to churn out talent. Seventy-six Brazilian players are registered to play in this year’s UEFA Champions League, second only to Spain.

MLS, on the other hand, is just 19 years old and is populated by teams with names which are still faintly comical to the rest of the world (Real Salt Lake?). Despite much recent progress, soccer remains overshadowed by the other big three professional leagues (the National Football League, National Basketball Association, and Major League Baseball). Quality of play is never easy to measure, but the fact that Bradley Wright Phillips, a journeyman striker in England, is this season’s top scorer is not a tremendously optimistic sign.

Encouragingly for U.S. soccer fans, but troubling for Brazilians, the two leagues have more in common than might be imagined, both good and bad. And remarkably, MLS is in some respects in far better health than its southern equivalent.

In other areas, the two leagues share the same grumbles; or, different grumbles about the same issues. While MLS fans can ruminate about their overly long off-season, Brazilian soccer faces the opposite problem. The estaduais (state leagues that were historically the cornerstone of the club game in Brazil, but which today are increasingly archaic, forcing big teams to play meaningless games against tiny local rivals) take over the calendar from January to May, leaving just six months in the second half of the year to squeeze in the Campeonato Brasileiro, the Copa do Brasil, plus continental competitions such as the Copa Libertadores and Copa Sul-Americana.

Such is the resulting fixture chaos that Brazilian soccer, like its northern counterpart, is unable to take a break on FIFA international dates, forcing clubs to lose key players for important games. This explains why Atlético Mineiro striker Diego Tardelli recently flew home to play for his club in a key game against Corinthians some 36 hours (including a 30 hour flight) after playing for Brazil against Japan in Singapore.

Turning to on field matters, Brazilian clubs and journalists make much of the fact that unlike the closed shops of La Liga or the EPL, the Brasileirão is a competitive, open competition. In the last five years the title has gone to four different clubs, and there are usually up to six legitimate challengers for the trophy.

That does not, however, mean Brazilian soccer has created some kind of democratic, egalitarian sporting paradise. The big clubs in Brazil are as financially dominant in a local context as their rivals in Spain or England, but a combination of their historic debt mountains, financial mismanagement, the hot-headed, impatient hiring and firing of coaches (a recent survey by the Mexican publication El Economista showed that the average Brazilian manager stayed in the job for just 15.2 games – the equivalent figure in MLS, the most patient league in the survey, was 88.4 games), plus the talent drain to Europe, tends to level the playing field. The result is that Brazilian clubs usually stumble, rather than sprint across the finishing line, as is the case with league-leading Cruzeiro at the moment. Visibly tired, the defending champion has won only three of its last nine games.

The net result often makes depressingly poor viewing. “Show the quality of the (Brazilian) championship to a German or a Spanish fan and they’d say that we aren’t playing football here, we’re just kicking the ball backwards and forwards,” wrote Juca Kfouri, one of Brazil’s most respected sportswriters, last year. Needless to say, such criticism has grown in intensity since Brazil was destroyed 7-1 by Germany in July. Those looking for o jogo bonito these days should try Madrid or Munich, not Rio or São Paulo.

Similar quality issues dog MLS. Financial probity and the salary cap limits the ability of clubs to attract top players, youth development is not cohesive, and the playoff system, which sees half of the league’s clubs qualify for the post season, arguably promotes mediocrity alongside sporting socialism.

Interestingly, until the beginning of the pontos corridos (a round robin, points-based league system) era in Brazil in 2003, the league title was also decided on a playoff system. More than a few Brazilian fans, when the league race becomes too one-sided, pine for the good old days and moan that a points-based system just isn’t as exciting.

Both leagues also face a threat from over the water in Europe. While the televisual behemoths of the UEFA Champions League and El Clásico are possibly a greater threat to U.S. soccer, they may also soon spell trouble for Brazil. The country’s recent economic and social development has seen a huge swell in the Brazilian middle classes, eager to spend their money on cable TV packages and tune into the adventures of Messi, Ronaldo, and the rest. The resulting comparison with the local product does Brazilian club soccer no favors. “Enjoy the game,” leading Brazilian sportswriter Paulo Vinicius Coelho encouraged fans before the UEFA Champions League final in May. “You’re a citizen of the world! It’s Brazilian soccer that isn’t!”

Brazil’s mauling at the hands of Germany, coupled with the U.S. national team’s hardworking, if technically limited World Cup campaign, made the case that the two sides are arguably as close as they have ever been on the pitch. In terms of the two nations’ domestic games, it may not be long before MLS surpasses its more storied counterpart.

http://soccergods.com/2014/10/31/major-league-soccer-brazil-brasileirao-campeonato/

 

Yes at this point I don't see anyway that the New York Cosmos gets into MLS. The league is continuing to expand but with New York FC about to begin playing in the league there seems little chance of Cosmos getting in any time soon.

 

I understand your points but you have to understand the context. The league has so much parity that the 10th team (SKC) is much closer to the top (Seattle) than in England. In such a parity system, the table will often be a lie, especially considering that the best clubs (like SKC) are punished by having their best players called up for national team duty. In the US there is a lot of emphasis on "clutch" performance. The playoffs are the entire point of the table. There is also a strong narrative here for finishing strong and making sure that you head into the post-season on a high ("peaking" at the right time). You'll never really see an American team in any sport taking their foot off the pedal at the end of the year just because they have made the post-season (and there is also always seeding to play for). As the beat said (I think you misquoted him a bit), the only meaningless games are those in which nothing in the table is affected. But this is the same as any other league.

About Daibhi's point about the system, I think he means the way the league is governed as a whole, not just the playoffs. I agree and love to see that you can't really bet on any single match. It's incredibly unpredictable.

 

What team do people think are going to win it this year? I would like to see New England win it as they have struggled for a long time and look good this season especially Lee Nguyen who is having a great season.