Random soccer discussion

[Chairman Wood]

[ QUOTE ]
There is already tremendous support for soccer on a community level, since it's one of the most popular sports for young kids.

In order to someday have a European-level professional competition, Americans needs to start from the ground up.

This means establishing viable and popular professional state championships, using the same system as all European championships, with relegation, ties allowed, scoring systems, etc. All according to FIFA rules.

The next step would be to have the American Champions Cup, with knock-out games, played at the end of the season, among all the states' champions -- which would the equivalent of an American Champions League. (Actually, it'd be a cup, since there wouldn't be much time for a group stage.)

Finally, as you know, there is already a relatively less known competition taking place now every year, around fall, the Intercontinental Cup, which is a one-game match between the winner of the Champions League in Europe and its counterpart of Latin America, the winner of Copa Libertadores. The American champion should be making that a three-way competition in the next fifteen years.

Mickey Brausch

[/ QUOTE ]
How about instead just letting an MLS team or two play in Liberatadores? There are already Mexican teams that play in it. Why not add two more?

Also there already exists a "US cup" of sorts in the United States that is sort of an FA Cup styled thing where MLS teams (and other higher division teams I believe) are given byes. One time the team from my hometown, the Mid Michigan Bucks, beat the New England Revolution in New England in the Quaters (I believe) of this tournament. They then won the right to host the Tampa Bay Mutiny at home. It was one of the best sporting events I've ever been to in my life. There was Carlos Valderama playing on the same exact field that I played High School soccer! It was amazing. If I remember correctly we lost 2-1.

[drexah]

maybe random, but wow...clint dempsey is the [censored] man. i live in boston so i've always been a revs fan but damn, not only is this dude so nasty and one of the best u.s. players in the world, hes complete balla.

www.clintdempsey.com

highlight reel (his dance after the goal vs japan is awesome)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAr6m-mD5W8

oh and on his site you gotta check out the music video he's in.

[ThaSaltCracka]

Dempsey is a nasty player. I think he will do pretty well in the EPL if he gets enough starts. Too bad we don't get to see him this year in MLS.

[Fallen Hero]

I'm bumping this to point out that Portugal-Belgium this weekend just turned from a pretty boring game to awesome.

Belgium goalkeeper: Ronaldo doesn't scare us, we'll have him out of the game by the 2m mark.
Belgium teams arrives in Portugal and all hell brakes loose in the airport, team + portuguese journalists get into some sort of fight.

The game is actually worth watching now.

[gusmahler]

This question is for the American soccer fans. How do you feel about the lack of playoffs?

I was explaining to a friend of mine how exciting the EPL season is: with only 8 games left, there's only 6 points separating #1 from #2, including 1 game between the two of them.

He asked, "how many teams make the playoffs."

"There is no playoffs."

"So who's the champ."

"The team that has the best regular season record."

"So the championship isn't decided by #1 against #2 on the field, but is instead judged by how the top two teams fare against teams in the bottom half of the league?"

Here's who Man U plays (by current standings):
10; 9; 17; 12; 6; 15; 2; 19

Here's who Chelsea plays:
20; 7; 19; 11; 5; 3; 1; 6

His point was that a game between 1 and 19 shouldn't be the game decides the championship. My point was that, first of all, 19 had beaten 1 already this season. Second, because of the completely balanced schedule, every team plays every other team the exact same number of times. So it's not like the NFL, where a strong team in a weak division can feast on divisional opponents (e.g., Seattle in the NFC West in 2005).

His other point was that every sporting league he's ever seen has playoffs (let's leave college FB out of this), and it's just weird not to have a playoff at the end of the year.

[midwestkc]

There are lots of things about soccer that typical American sports fans would call "weird". No TV timeouts? A team can't call timeout during the game to setup a play? The clock doesn't stop (and counts up)? You have to play for longer than 15 seconds at a time before getting a break? You can tie? It's the way it is.



Furthermore, there are also lots of other "playoff" type formats in soccer. You have your league cup, first of all, which may satisfy that need in and of itself. You then also have the FA cup as well. And then, some of the best teams get to play in the Champions league, or in the UEFA Cup.

Personally I love not having playoffs. Who really thinks that the Steelers were the best team in the NFL when they won it? They got hot at the right time, and became champions. So in that case no.1 vs. no.2 didn't happen. That's the case more often than not in a playoff format. This format forces you to be at the top of your game all year long. Not just at the end.

[Fallen Hero]

"So the championship isn't decided by #1 against #2 on the field"

this is so [censored] rare in a playoff format

[TheRover]

Hi, I'm American, I don't care, and your friend is stupid.

[GuyIncognito]

[ QUOTE ]
"So the championship isn't decided by #1 against #2 on the field"

this is so [censored] rare in a playoff format

[/ QUOTE ]

This is true for single-elimination tournaments (NFL/NCAA), MLB playoffs (the basic unit of measurement is 3-4 games because of pitching staffs, so a best-of-7 series is really only 2 units), and NHL playoffs (because referees swallow their whistles during the playoffs, making it literally a different game). It's not nearly as true for the NBA playoffs.

[gusmahler]

The fact that US playoff systems have too many teams is a topic for another thread. MLS used to have 8 team playoffs even when there were only 10 teams in the league.

I think my friend was thinking about the old playoff systems where the top 2 teams play against each other. But those days are long gone.

But there are two ways of thinking about this:

1) it's a shame that the EPL championship is decided because Chelsea had a bad game against Boro (or Man U had a bad game against West Ham).

2) It'd be an even bigger shame if a team that finished 15-20 points ahead in the final standings still had to prove themselves on the field in a playoff.

American sports fans are used to playoffs, but they lead to bad things. Such as teams not taking some regular season games seriously because of their lack of effect on playoff seedings.

And they normally don't lead to #1 against #2. For example, the best teams in the NBA this season are Dallas and Phoenix. Yet there is a 100% certainty that they won't meet in the Finals.

OTOH, don't you look forward to the NBA playoffs in a way that's different from your reaction to a random Dallas vs. Boston game.