Friday is here and we are faced with the somewhat surprising reality that the first team eliminated from this year's MLS playoffs is the defending MLS Cup champion Columbus Crew. You can complain all you want about the playoff format, and the fact that Real Salt Lake barely edged its way into the playoffs, but RSL played great soccer when it mattered most, while the Crew bumbled and stumbled to the finish line and ultimately paid for its inconsistency.
Something we might want to start taking seriously is the possibility that the relatively small MLS rosters are proving to be inadequate for teams taking part in multiple competitions. Consider the fact that the last five teams to win first-round playoff series over the past two years have all been teams that didn't compete in international tournaments in the given season. Meanwhile, multiple higher seeds have lost playoff series after having taken part in multiple competitions.
This isn't to take away from Real Salt Lake's accomplishment. RSL's victory is a refreshing one because it shows that a team can succeed without playing ultra-conservative soccer. Columbus' loss, coupled with the losses of Houston, Chivas USA, New England and Kansas City last year makes you wonder if teams that have the burden of in-season international competitions are doomed for playoff disappointment as those extra games take their toll.
That theory will either gain more traction or lose some steam this weekend, when the Dynamo face Seattle and Chivas USA plays the Galaxy. Houston competed in the CONCACAF Champions League, giving it a loaded fixture schedule this fall, while Chivas USA competed in this summer's SuperLiga. If both teams fall, that will make mean three teams will reach this year's conference finals after not having to play in international tournaments (New England and Chicago both competed in SuperLiga). Last year, All four conference final participants were teams that didn't have in-season international tournaments to play.
The fixture congestion the Crew faced isn't the sole reason for its early playoff exit. Head coach Robert Warzycha will bear the burden of some very questionable decisions in the series vs. RSL. He could also be accused of tinkering just a bit too much late in the season as he tried hard to figure out what was wrong with his team down the stretch. In trying to find a solution he may have done more harm because the team nevery had a chance to build any momentum or develop any continuity as a group. Ultimately, Columbus may have been hurt by its depth because it gave a young coach too many options.
That being said, if teams without extra international tournaments to play in keep on winning in the post-season, while the supposedly stronger teams with more matches to play due to tournaments keep on losing, MLS will be hard-pressed to ignore the hard evidence that MLS rosters are simply inadequate in size and good teams are ultimately paying the price for their success.
What do you think of this theory? Starting to wonder if teams aren't better off not playing in tournaments like CONCACAF Champions League and SuperLiga? Hoping MLS does something about this by expanding rosters and salary caps in the next Collective Bargaining Agreement?
Share your thoughts below.
Salary cap is the major obstacle, not roster size. For the national team’s sake MLS needs to start paying these players to keep them here. Increased cap and 2 DP’s would do wonders for MLS.
MLS teams already tank it in Champions League. They play all their subs and don’t care about winning. They would win if there is more quality on the bench. increasing the cap is the solution.
There is an added aspect of MLS that is not often talked about in the need for more depth and strength of rosters. This is the issue of travel. The distances traveled by teams in the States for MLS league play far outnumber those traveled by European teams in their league matches and this adds quite a toll on the endurance of rosters. When you add this to inter-league play and the even longer travel associated with that, then it is certainly an argument that MLS rosters need even greater respective depth than their European counterparts.
The idea of a regional reserve league + a larger salary cap is a start, but I also wonder if it wouldn’t be a bad idea to introduce some regional aspect into the structure of MLS, much like is already in place in the rest of the American Major Leagues, with teams playing other teams in their region more often than those outside of it. Sure it is not how the rest of the world does it, but there is a reason the regional system has developed in American sports and that very much has to do with the size of US + Canada.
The league may not have enough teams yet to break down into the 8 regions like NFL, but four regions of four teams each is very workable. Even just using the current division of two regions (East and West), besides just for playoff seeding, is a starting point. Make it so that western teams play a higher percentage of games against western opponents and same for east. The soccer structure purists may disagree with this idea and I even struggle with it (it doesn’t prove best team overall, i.e. Supporters Shield, because strength of schedule is different for each conference), but it does start to address some travel fatigue issues.
Bigger caps and rosters cost money. How much money do champions league and superliga bring in? Enough to cover the proposed costs? If not, perhaps MLS should drop the extra competitions. I would rather see CCL ended which takes more games, against worse teams, on the road and in more important parts of the season. Plus I saw some MLS teams getting robbed by officials. With Superliga you get to see good Mexican teams play at the stadia here. I would like to see it expanded to as large as possible.
what is even worse is that there are no games for the subs which is new this season.
Bigger rosters would be great, though as all have said a higher cap is probably more important. I like the USL-2 as MLS minor league idea – sort of the like hockey was run for a while with the IHL as the USL-1, while the AHL and ECHL were more explicitly prep for the NHL. I will note for Cbus that they were also losing key players – Moreno, Marshall, Rogers, Hejduk, Oughton – to the World Cup qualifiying in addition to the extra league games, which only makes the argument for bigger rosters better.
Why wouldn’t they choose to tank in MLS instead? After all, a team could play its worst players in MLS and finish last, but win CONCACAF, and then get the top draft pick, allocation money, lottery odds, etc.
That would be a more effective way of sticking it to Garber.
I don’t think it’s premature at all.
In England, a lower division team on a good FA Cup run will set aside its goal of promotion to go a little further in the cup. A Premier League team playing in the UEFA Cup will put its strongest lineup on the field in European competition rather than trying to scrap for a top four finish.
Even if MLS were quite a bit stronger, it would STILL be hard for a team to go all out to win more than two competitions in a season. Payne was either hedging his bets, hoping that by going all out in all competitions, DC would win at least one trophy (which worked, but probably at the expense of the playoffs and other competitions), OR he was trying to shoot the moon, which is just crazy thinking.
But it’s reasonable to think that an MLS team might WANT to concentrate on CONCACAF at the expensive of the Supporters Shield, etc. That possibility makes following an MLS team more interesting.
MLS is probably never going to be the kind of league that has teams who are so talented and deep that they can go all out to win every single competition that they play in. Delusions of some fans aside, we don’t have a Manchester United, even in relative terms.
if Garber doesn’t act on roster size, MLS coaches should tank these int. competitions.