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

[Seth]

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 championships.

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.

I agree with this. In baseball it doesn't matter at all who wins the conferences as long as you qualify for the playoffs. Same with the MLS. But in the EPL if a team clinches the title early they get the "honor guard walk-in" from the other clubs for the remaining matches. I like that. With the EPL method your record is everything, but in the MLS the regular season means nothing (I'm ignoring home-field advantage for a moment) as long as you qualify for the playoffs. In the EPL the point of the matches is the matches themselves regardless of whether you're champions or relegated, but in the MLS the point of the matches is all about getting into the playoffs.

 

[NYCFCFan10]

Actually, there's a 4th: CONCACAF Champions League (MLS Cup is actually USA + Canada, so by it's inclusion, I assume it's trophies available to U.S. clubs to win?)

Right now, it's MLS Cup for sure but if NASL ever gets it's way and is allowed to be D1 as well(and I actually believe there's a very good chance this may happen) it will be the US Open Cup that will be the most important domestic title.

That's why I'm hoping that happens actually.

 

[Falastur]

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?

Yes, but the first time you face a team from the other conference in the playoffs is in the very last game, the grand final. If they made East face off against West in every round then I could see the argument that the playoffs is a Great Leveller, but if anything it positively encourages a team from a weaker conference to take a shot at winning an undeserved crown by making them only have to win one solitary game against the supposedly much stronger opposition from the other conference. You could even argue that by making the teams from the stronger conference have to face off against each other at every stage, you are mentally and physically weakening them for the one all-important game against the comparatively fresh but weaker cross-country opponent.

Actually, there's a 4th: CONCACAF Champions League (MLS Cup is actually USA + Canada, so by it's inclusion, I assume it's trophies available to U.S. clubs to win?)

Right now, it's MLS Cup for sure but if NASL ever gets it's way and is allowed to be D1 as well(and I actually believe there's a very good chance this may happen) it will be the US Open Cup that will be the most important domestic title.

That's why I'm hoping that happens actually.

Obviously you guys know more about this stuff from having lived in a country where this kind of decentralised, sometimes-competing organisation of national leagues takes place, but surely this would be a problem for the long-term future of US football? It strikes me that it can't be positive having two independent leagues trying to share equal place as the most important league, even if it is by consensus and agreement rather than by duplicity and politicking?

I can only imagine that there would be serious issues in the long term with leagues trying to steal each others' best players, accusing each other of foul play by undermining each others' salary caps and so on, and that it would only serve to put off potential recruits from outside of the US by making them unsure of what exactly they were signing up for. Nowhere else in football do two league competitions share equal place as the summit of national football (I'm not including the South American Apertura/Clausura stuff or the Brazilian state leagues; that's different). I can only imagine that the peace would collapse between them in a matter of years and then the rivalry would completely destabilise the national game.

 

[Tony L]

Obviously you guys know more about this stuff from having lived in a country where this kind of decentralised, sometimes-competing organisation of national leagues takes place, but surely this would be a problem for the long-term future of US football? It strikes me that it can't be positive having two independent leagues trying to share equal place as the most important league, even if it is by consensus and agreement rather than by duplicity and politicking?

This USL vs NASL thing might not last too long. I think with the MSL partnership, the USL is already on their way to topping the NASL. NASL clearly doesnt want to work with anyone to improve national soccer, while the USL is more than willing to work with the MSL. Here are some interesting reads ....

http://www.mlssoccer.com/news/artic...g-markets-face-choice-between-usl-pro-and-nas

http://lastwordonsports.com/2015/06/03/usl-rising-the-usl-is-above-the-nasl/

http://www.sbisoccer.com/2015/05/seven-perfect-third.html

http://www.sounderatheart.com/thefuture/2015/2/10/8013189/usl-pro-rebrand-d2

http://www.theguardian.com/sport/20...ey-for-positioning-in-us-soccer-pecking-order

 

[EganSoccerWords]

D1 is just a label. If if NASL sues their way to D1 status, NASL still has nothing on the MLS.

• Not a single NASL team is averaging over 10k in attendance
• The owner of the Carolina Railhawks, Andrew Davidson, was indicted in FIFA corruption scandal in the spring.
• The owner of the Tampa Bay Rowdies, Bill Edwards, is currently being sued by the U.S. Department of Justice for taking money from his company so that he wouldn't lose that money in another class action lawsuit that alleges that his company defrauded veterans and the government. He was recently named a plaintiff in that suits and if he loses the class action suit, he will be forced to liquidate his assets and sell the team.
• Their Atlanta franchise is going to have to move because they will not be able to compete with the Atlanta MLS franchise set to open up.
• One of their best franchises, Minnesota United, is moving to the MLS.
• The San Antonio franchise is looking to move to the MLS as well. They also have the only decent SSS in the league. The rumor is that they might partner with the San Antonio Spurs (NBA) and sell their stadium to the Spurs with the intend of expanding to 18k and making the move to MLS.
• Every single NASL team that has a SSS except for Carolina is either trying to move to MLS or moving out of their city because of MLS.
• Their Canadian teams will have big decisions to make if a rumored C-League comes into existence.
• No NASL team made to the Quarterfinals of the US Open Cup this year.

NASL doesn't matter and until they do something like win a US Open Cup they will continue not to matter and the MLS teams will continue not to care about the US Open Cup because its an inferior competition. They have a long way to go before they can talk about being a league that they can compare to MLS. I would bet that the NASL folds before any of that can happen.

 

[NYCFCFan10]

Yes, but the first time you face a team from the other conference in the playoffs is in the very last game, the grand final. If they made East face off against West in every round then I could see the argument that the playoffs is a Great Leveller, but if anything it positively encourages a team from a weaker conference to take a shot at winning an undeserved crown by making them only have to win one solitary game against the supposedly much stronger opposition from the other conference. You could even argue that by making the teams from the stronger conference have to face off against each other at every stage, you are mentally and physically weakening them for the one all-important game against the comparatively fresh but weaker cross-country opponent.

As the league continues to grow, 28 teams, 30 teams, 32 teams -- maybe even more-- with a 34 game schedule (league already says they don't ever want to go above 34 games) it becomes clear that they'll switch the schedule such that some teams won't face other teams with the exception of playoffs. It's then that the playoff solution becomes the most obvious solution.

Obviously you guys know more about this stuff from having lived in a country where this kind of decentralised, sometimes-competing organisation of national leagues takes place, but surely this would be a problem for the long-term future of US football? It strikes me that it can't be positive having two independent leagues trying to share equal place as the most important league, even if it is by consensus and agreement rather than by duplicity and politicking?

I can only imagine that there would be serious issues in the long term with leagues trying to steal each others' best players, accusing each other of foul play by undermining each others' salary caps and so on, and that it would only serve to put off potential recruits from outside of the US by making them unsure of what exactly they were signing up for. Nowhere else in football do two league competitions share equal place as the summit of national football (I'm not including the South American Apertura/Clausura stuff or the Brazilian state leagues; that's different). I can only imagine that the peace would collapse between them in a matter of years and then the rivalry would completely destabilise the national game.

Most of our current leagues in other sports are the combination of two (or more) former leagues.

I think Soccer is the one sport where you could see two leagues survive, both in D1, because they already compete with so many other leagues abroad and there's outlets to allow for the mixing of the two leagues like the US Open Cup or Champions League that are run by independent entities.

As for undermining salary caps, NASL doesn't have salary caps. Would that undermine MLS? Of course! In the same way Uber undermines traditional taxis or Amazon undermines Wal-Mart or Netflix undermined Blockbuster but its competition.

As for confusing players, I don't see it being anymore confusing than a player deciding if he wants to play in the English PL or Bundesliga. Just two separate leagues.

We have 120 teams and like 10 different leagues in Division 1 of college football (even more leagues for basketball). It's glorious. The hatred between leagues is real.

 

[mgarbowski]

It strikes me that it can't be positive having two independent leagues trying to share equal place as the most important league, even if it is by consensus and agreement rather than by duplicity and politicking?

I can only imagine that there would be serious issues in the long term with leagues trying to steal each others' best players, accusing each other of foul play by undermining each others' salary caps and so on, and that it would only serve to put off potential recruits from outside of the US by making them unsure of what exactly they were signing up for. Nowhere else in football do two league competitions share equal place as the summit of national football (I'm not including the South American Apertura/Clausura stuff or the Brazilian state leagues; that's different). I can only imagine that the peace would collapse between them in a matter of years and then the rivalry would completely destabilise the national game.

Two folks already covered the specifics of the NASL and MLS, so I'll briefly cover your speculation as to how this would play out if the NASL actually did manage to challenge the MLS. There is a history of independent leagues forming to challenge dominant sports leagues in this country, although most of the instances go pretty far back. In baseball the National League formed in 1876 and the American League 25 years later. They basically spent 7-8 decades in a slow merger. They are still nominally separate, but effectively divisions of a single entity called MLB.
In our football, the NFL had a challenger in the 40s called the All-America Conference. It folded but 3 teams joined the NFL. Later, the USFL (1980s) and XFL (2001) tried to challenge the NFL and failed completely. Each time there were bidding wars for players and all sorts of shenanigans.
The NBA's biggest challenge was the ABA in the 60s and 70s. Four ABA teams merged into the NBA.

It was actually easier to form a new top level league and potentially succeed back when travel was hard and information (TV, newspapers) was more local. I don't think we could maintain an equilibrium in any sport in which two competing leagues had top level stature.

 

[NYCFCFan10]

Two folks already covered the specifics of the NASL and MLS, so I'll briefly cover your speculation as to how this would play out if the NASL actually did manage to challenge the MLS. There is a history of independent leagues forming to challenge dominant sports leagues in this country, although most of the instances go pretty far back. In baseball the National League formed in 1876 and the American League 25 years later. They basically spent 7-8 decades in a slow merger. They are still nominally separate, but effectively divisions of a single entity called MLB.
In our football, the NFL had a challenger in the 40s called the All-America Conference. It folded but 3 teams joined the NFL. Later, the USFL (1980s) and XFL (2001) tried to challenge the NFL and failed completely. Each time there were bidding wars for players and all sorts of shenanigans.
The NBA's biggest challenge was the ABA in the 60s and 70s. Four ABA teams merged into the NBA.

It was actually easier to form a new top level league and potentially succeed back when travel was hard and information (TV, newspapers) was more local. I don't think we could maintain an equilibrium in any sport in which two competing leagues had top level stature.

It was easier to start a top level league back in the day because it required far, far less money. People didn't expect you to play in 60,70, 80,000 seat multi-billion dollar palaces. You didn't have to pay your players 500 million dollars. You didn't need 30+ teams in a league to be considered major league, either. 10 or 12 was great.

The bar to be seen as major league in this country is insanely high now which is why you'll never see another league challenge the NFL, NBA, MLB, or NHL.

But you confuse the situation a bit, I think. Those other leagues merged out of convenience, not necessity. I believe it won't be convenient enough for MLS and NASL to merge. First of all, they'll be too big to merge soon. NASL has 12 teams. MLS has 22 teams. That's 34 teams with both looking to expand more every day. If MLS had wanted all of NASL's teams, they'd have merged already. They don't want them (all). MLS will pluck the best of the bunch and will eventually stop growing when they think the addition of any more teams won't be financially worth it. NASL also has owners that just philosophically disagree with MLS -- like the NY Cosmos.

Secondly, all of our other sports never had a FIFA/US Soccer above them and hundreds of other leagues around them. Our other sports leagues realized they could, legally, form a monopoly. That's not really an option for NASL and MLS. Soccer is too global.

This is kind of off-topic now though. We can start another thread to discuss it more.

 

[mgarbowski]

It was easier to start a top level league back in the day because it required far, far less money. People didn't expect you to play in 60,70, 80,000 seat multi-billion dollar palaces. You didn't have to pay your players 500 million dollars. You didn't need 30+ teams in a league to be considered major league, either. 10 or 12 was great.

The bar to be seen as major league in this country is insanely high now which is why you'll never see another league challenge the NFL, NBA, MLB, or NHL.

But you confuse the situation a bit, I think. Those other leagues merged out of convenience, not necessity. I believe it won't be convenient enough for MLS and NASL to merge. First of all, they'll be too big to merge soon. NASL has 12 teams. MLS has 22 teams. That's 34 teams with both looking to expand more every day. If MLS had wanted all of NASL's teams, they'd have merged already. They don't want them (all). MLS will pluck the best of the bunch and will eventually stop growing when they think the addition of any more teams won't be financially worth it. NASL also has owners that just philosophically disagree with MLS -- like the NY Cosmos.

Secondly, all of our other sports never had a FIFA/US Soccer above them and hundreds of other leagues around them. Our other sports leagues realized they could, legally, form a monopoly. That's not really an option for NASL and MLS. Soccer is too global.

This is kind of off-topic now though. We can start another thread to discuss it more.

Let's just leave it at I think you clarified in part, added detail in part, and I disagree in part. It's far enough OT that I don't think it's worth pursuing.

 

[Falastur]

I'm aware of the history of competing leagues (hence my comment) but I was under the impression that whenever it happened it either was in the context of an acrimonious rivalry or the two actively seeking to combine into a unified league, NFL style (and yeah, I'm aware they started out acrimoniously too). Somehow I couldn't see the NASL and MLS sharing top berth and actually agreeing to a merger, so I figured it had to end up down the acrimonious path.

 

[NYCFCFan10]

Let's just leave it at I think you clarified in part, added detail in part, and I disagree in part. It's far enough OT that I don't think it's worth pursuing.

http://nycfcforums.com/index.php?threads/the-nasl-thread.3770/

Made an NASL thread if you want to continue the discussion there.

 

[Seth]

In our football, the NFL had a challenger in the 40s called the All-America Conference. It folded but 3 teams joined the NFL. Later, the USFL (1980s) and XFL (2001)

Minor nitpick: there was also the AFL of course in the '60s, started up the Super Bowl, eventually merged into the NFC and AFC as parts of the larger NFL.

 

[mgarbowski]

Minor nitpick: there was also the AFL of course in the '60s, started up the Super Bowl, eventually merged into the NFC and AFC as parts of the larger NFL.

Totally meant to include that and totally spaced in leaving it out.

 

[Seth]

Totally meant to include that and totally spaced in leaving it out.

Yeah, I figured.

 

[Mikeylito]

One of the differences between the other sports (and for the life of me, I have no idea why college athletics was brought into this discussion) and association football is none of those professional sports operates under the authority of a sanctioning body. While it's true that the National Basketball Association and USA Basketball have become more closely associated in recent years, the NBA wasn't formed under the sanctioning of USAB.

Such is not the case with US professional association football. In each case, each league operates with the sanctioning of the US Soccer Federation. The USSF was directly responsible (along with FIFA and, presumably CONCACAF) for the formation of Major League Soccer as a precondition for a US-hosted World Cup competition. The "new" NASL has already submitted to the authority of the USSF when they cooperated with the federation's Division 2 league when the NASL breakaway from USL occurred. If you remember, US Soccer would not sanction either NASL or USL as a Division 2 league.

So, despite the NASL beating the jungle drums and threatening a court case, I don't see them defeating the ability of the federation to set parameters of how the US Soccer pyramid should look. Most of us realize that the Cosmos are the only NASL team that pushes the fiction that NASL can be a D1 league. The rest of the teams are seldom heard from.

 

[NYCFCFan10]

One of the differences between the other sports (and for the life of me, I have no idea why college athletics was brought into this discussion) and association football is none of those professional sports operates under the authority of a sanctioning body.

The irony in that you explained exactly why professional soccer is more similar to college leagues than the other pro-sports leagues in the same sentence where you question why college athletics was brought up.

 

[ferrarinycfc]

the problem with the supporters shield is that the schedule is unbalanced and every team doesn't play each other home and away which would be the only fair way to determine it.

with such a scenario the MLS CUP is the only thing that matters.

 

[MikeDatTiger]

MLS Cup gets you the star on the uniform. In North America, it's the team that wins the playoffs who is the champion. MLS cup is the most important. Anyone who says differently just is trying to justify why they don't have one (Oh, hi Red Bull fan!)

US Open Cup is more important than Supporter's Shield. Supporter's Shield is nice and a trophy, but so is the President's Cup in the NHL. It's meaningless in NHL, and more so in MLS. In MLS, you know why the Galaxy and Seattle aren't competing for the Shield and the Whitecaps and Red Bulls are? Because the latter two teams have the best quality of players not routinely called up for international duty. Seattle won last year because Nigeria doesn't know who Obafemi Martins is and Jurgen left Evans off the roster. Forget the regular schedule difficulties (all teams in same conference don't play the same schedule; think NYCFC could have used another match against the Chicago Fire instead of the Red Bulls right about now?), but the impact of who on your team gets called up and who you play during periods when teams have absences is so significant that it makes the Supporter's Shield as a measure of competitive strength meaningless. Give me the U.S. Open Cup instead.

 

[Gotham Gator]

the problem with the supporters shield is that the schedule is unbalanced and every team doesn't play each other home and away which would be the only fair way to determine it.

with such a scenario the MLS CUP is the only thing that matters.

That unbalanced schedule is not as big a deal as everyone thinks. Each team plays each other at least once. It's not perfect, but it's hugely better than a crapshoot single elimination tournament.