Three U.s. Soccer Trophies - Which Is Most Important?

[Gotham Gator]

There are three major soccer trophies in the United States.

- The MLS Cup, given to the team that wins the MLS post-season playoffs
- The U.S. Open Cup, a season-long tournament between all U.S. professional teams
- The Supporters' Shield, given to the team with the best regular season record in MLS

I don't believe any team has won all 3 in a single year.

Which do you consider to be the most important and/or the one that most clearly recognizes the best team?

 

[joe]

Best team: Supporters' Shield
Most important (ie, prestigious): MLS Cup
Neatest: U.S. Open Cup

 

[Gotham Gator]

To me, this is a difficult question. If you asked me which trophy I'd prefer that NYCFC win, I would say the MLS Cup, because it is the one that gets the most recognition.

If you ask me which trophy signifies the best team in a given year, there is no question to me that it's the Supporters' Shield. In fact, I would be very happy if it started to get recognized as the greater of the two rewards.

The Supporters' Shield requires a team to be consistently good across the whole season. Plus, a 34-game schedule helps the effects of luck and injuries to even out between teams, something that a single tournament does not allow. You have an unfortunate injury or unfair red card in the MLS Cup, and you can be sent home, even if you're the better team. It's harder for a single game or lucky stroke to make as big a difference in the Supporters' Shield race.

Think back to last season. Seattle won the U.S. Open Cup. Then, the Sounders won the Supporters' Shield by 3 points over Los Angeles, including beating the Galaxy 2-0 in the final game of the season with everything on the line. Then, Seattle lost to LA in the MLS Cup playoffs on the away goals rule, with LA going on to win the MLS Cup. I hope nobody here would try and claim that LA was a better team than Seattle last season - that somehow tying Seattle 2-2 on aggregate demonstrates that LA's MLS Cup win was the deciding victory of the season. It's preposterous to even argue.

 

[Gotham Gator]

By the way, you can follow the Supporters' Shield race in this thread.

http://nycfcforums.com/index.php?threads/supporters-shield-race.3689/

 

[Seth]

To me, this is a difficult question. If you asked me which trophy I'd prefer that NYCFC win, I would say the MLS Cup, because it is the one that gets the most recognition.

If you ask me which trophy signifies the best team in a given year, there is no question to me that it's the Supporters' Shield. In fact, I would be very happy if it started to get recognized as the greater of the two rewards.

The Supporters' Shield requires a team to be consistently good across the whole season. Plus, a 34-game schedule helps the effects of luck and injuries to even out between teams, something that a single tournament does not allow. You have an unfortunate injury or unfair red card in the MLS Cup, and you can be sent home, even if you're the better team. It's harder for a single game or lucky stroke to make as big a difference in the Supporters' Shield race.

Think back to last season. Seattle won the U.S. Open Cup. Then, the Sounders won the Supporters' Shield by 3 points over Los Angeles, including beating the Galaxy 2-0 in the final game of the season with everything on the line. Then, Seattle lost to LA in the MLS Cup playoffs on the away goals rule, with LA going on to win the MLS Cup. I hope nobody here would try and claim that LA was a better team than Seattle last season - that somehow tying Seattle 2-2 on aggregate demonstrates that LA's MLS Cup win was the deciding victory of the season. It's preposterous to even argue.

I agree with you personally, but I don't think the Supporter's Shield will be allowed to get more important than the MLS Cup because it wasn't an MLS thing but was invented by fans. The SS is the equivalent of the EPL trophy, best record wins it. The problem is that MLS doesn't want that as one team could theoretically dominate for years. What they want is a tournament that anybody could win (which is why there's the large number of teams in the tournament). The MLS wants parity, with lots of even competition so none of the small markets are eliminated easily. Sort of the way nobody benefits from the Yankees winning the Series 8 times in a row. They don't necessarily care about what makes sense but rather what will grow (or least not hurt) the league.

 

[Drainyoo]

Definitely the MLS Cup. That's the season championship, and what all teams play for. It's how teams are measured, and what the stars on the jerseys signify.

 

[Fantazma]

supporters shield= presidents trophy in NHL sure great i guess if you win it but it doesnt recognize you as the champion. it doesnt add the star to your crest. so MLS cup for sure

 

[joe]

I agree with you personally, but I don't think the Supporter's Shield will be allowed to get more important than the MLS Cup because it wasn't an MLS thing but was invented by fans. The SS is the equivalent of the EPL trophy, best record wins it. The problem is that MLS doesn't want that as one team could theoretically dominate for years. What they want is a tournament that anybody could win (which is why there's the large number of teams in the tournament). The MLS wants parity, with lots of even competition so none of the small markets are eliminated easily. Sort of the way nobody benefits from the Yankees winning the Series 8 times in a row. They don't necessarily care about what makes sense but rather what will grow (or least not hurt) the league.

What they want is more revenue, which playoffs generate and the SS doesn't. That is why MLS Cup isn't going away.

 

[SayWhat44]

MLS Cup = Championship... end of debate

 

[Vallos]

Winning the Supporter's Shield marks you as being the best against good and bad teams. Winning the MLS Cup marks you as being the best of the best!

 

[Mikeylito]

It's preposterous to even argue.

I'm pretty preposterous.

Meanwhile, my vote was for the US Open Cup.
While MLS Cup and MLS Supporters Shield helps Major League Soccer,
US Open Cup "lifts all boats"; it helps every level of US club soccer.

 

[Falastur]

Being a Euro, it's always going to be the Supporters Shield for me. I'll follow the playoffs and get hyped for our chances and so on, but at the end of the day I am culturally programmed to respect the winner of a full league season more than the chance winner of a knock-out competition.

 

[LionNYC]

The goal of any team (in America) is to win their last game. That means the MLS Cup.

 

[mgarbowski]

Tournaments, a category which includes playoffs, have a high randomness factor due the limited number of games and elimination format. Poor teams rarely prevail, but if you could perfectly rank teams, the tournament winner is much more likely to be one of those ranked 2-6 than 1.
The best record over a season can still suffer from randomness, but it is more likely that the best record will reflect the best team. Imbalanced schedules throw a bit of a spanner in the works, but best record over a longish season is still the best measurement we have.*
Seasons reveal the best teams, but tournaments and playoffs crown champions. And people love champions crowned in head-to-head, winner-take-all competition. In the end, the MLS Cup is more important than the Supporters Shield because as a whole, we have decided it is more important. Gotham Gator I'm sympathetic to your position, but in the end it doesn't matter. I think the Supporters shield is more likely to go to the best team, but the Cup is more important.**

* Baseball used to balance these almost perfectly until the 1960s. The World Series crowned the champion, but you won the pennant by having the best record in your league. Everyone in the league played the same schedule, and winning the pennant was very important, to the point where the WS was almost a bonus rather than the entire point. Winning the pennant was highly prestigious even if you lost the WS.

** The US Open Cup is not even in the running.

 

[Seth]

Being a Euro, it's always going to be the Supporters Shield for me. I'll follow the playoffs and get hyped for our chances and so on, but at the end of the day I am culturally programmed to respect the winner of a full league season more than the chance winner of a knock-out competition.

I'm an American but I totally agree with this. Not a fan of single-game wild card playoffs, for example. And the World Series meant a lot more when the winner of one league played the winner of the other. I understand that large playoff groups give other teams a much better chance to get in (2000 wild card Mets, for example) but do you really want to see the 7th best team play the 11th best team for a championship? To me that's why the Supporter's Shield means a lot.

 

[Seth]

Tournaments, a category which includes playoffs, have a high randomness factor due the limited number of games and elimination format. Poor teams rarely prevail, but if you could perfectly rank teams, the tournament winner is much more likely to be one of those ranked 2-6 than 1.
The best record over a season can still suffer from randomness, but it is more likely that the best record will reflect the best team. Imbalanced schedules throw a bit of a spanner in the works, but best record over a longish season is still the best measurement we have.*
Seasons reveal the best teams, but tournaments and playoffs crown champions. And people love champions crowned in head-to-head, winner-take-all competition. In the end, the MLS Cup is more important than the Supporters Shield because as a whole, we have decided it is more important. Gotham Gator I'm sympathetic to your position, but in the end it doesn't matter. I think the Supporters shield is more likely to go to the best team, but the Cup is more important.**

* Baseball used to balance these almost perfectly until the 1960s. The World Series crowned the champion, but you won the pennant by having the best record in your league. Everyone in the league played the same schedule, and winning the pennant was very important, to the point where the WS was almost a bonus rather than the entire point. Winning the pennant was highly prestigious even if you lost the WS.

** The US Open Cup is not even in the running.

Well crap, mgarbowski. We said very similar things but your use of footnotes made your post much classier than mine. Now I'm going to have to start using references and sources and stuff!

 

[mgarbowski]

Well crap, mgarbowski. We said very similar things but your use of footnotes made your post much classier than mine. Now I'm going to have to start using references and sources and stuff!

I was just footnoting myself.
And I very much agree with your point about randomness and parity. It's actually a favorite point I like to make, so damn you for making it first! US major sports leagues all use playoffs to create the illusion of there being more parity than there really is.

 

[Mikeylito]

** The US Open Cup is not even in the running.

I get your reasoning, but then it begs the question.
The only professional teams that can win MLS Cup or MLS Supporters Shield are teams belonging to Major League Soccer. Professional teams in USL and NASL can't win either, for obvious reasons.

US Open Cup makes financial contributions to the best club at every level of the US Soccer pyramid.

If the question is... what is the Most Important Trophy a U.S. Major League Soccer Team Could Win?

It's preposterous to even argue.

I'm pretty preposterous.

Galaxy was the better team than Seattle. They got the star.

 

[Konrad]

I wouldn't exactly say that the supporters shield crowns the best champion in this league. First off your not playing all the teams an even amount of times. Second you could be playing in a weaker division (east), and thus have an easier schedule. Third, you have three game series against different t arms in this league. Are you going to say that winning 9 points against Chicago would be the same as another team winning 9 points against columbus?

Basically I think that the supporters shield and the mls cup are both important to crowing some of the best teams in our league. They both have their flaws, but I do not think that one is more important than the other.

 

[Ferdinand Cesarano]

Baseball used to balance these almost perfectly until the 1960s. The World Series crowned the champion, but you won the pennant by having the best record in your league. Everyone in the league played the same schedule, and winning the pennant was very important, to the point where the WS was almost a bonus rather than the entire point. Winning the pennant was highly prestigious even if you lost the WS.

Actually, baseball balanced it perfectly through 1993. Divisional play began in 1969. When the leagues had two divisions a piece, you still had the importance of a table, as only the divisional champs moved on to the playoffs. There was no wild card; so it didn't matter that the teams in the American League's and the National League's Eastern divisions played a different schedule to that of the teams in the leagues' Western divisions. What mattered was that all teams within a given division played the same schedule.

Up through 1993, the division titles were prestigious championships in themselves. Just this year the Blue Jays held a celebration of the 30th anniversary of their 1985 AL East title; and the White Sox did the same a couple of years ago in honour of their 1983 AL West championship.

Since the twin abominations of the wild card and interleague play, all this has gone out the window. The wild card, introduced in 1995, brought us teams playing different schedules but competing for the same prize (the same problem with the Supporters' Shield); and interleague play, introduced in 1997, only exacerbated this problem. The prestige of the divisional title has been destroyed. In 2001, the Cardinals and Astros tied for the NL Central title. But they played no playoff game to decide the championship, as had been done in such instances up through 1993, because the loser would have been the wild card anyway.

Regarding MLS, I'd say that the optimum schedule would be one in which teams play two games against each conference opponent, and one game against each team from the other conference. Of course, this works only if you have the same number of teams in each conference, which MLS had not tended to have lately until this season, and will not have once Minnesota United come in (assuming that they come in alone, without Miami). Such a schedule would have given MLS teams a 28-game schedule for this year, and would yield a 31-game schedule in an MLS with two 11-team conferences. While this sort of schedule wouldn't solve the problem of the Supporters' Shield, it would make the conference standings more meaningful.