Photo by Peter G. Aiken/USA TODAY Sports
By RYAN TOLMICH
With the addition of two franchises and the removal of another, Major League Soccer is set to have a new look ahead of the 2015 season.
The league announced Monday that the conferences will be realigned ahead of the 2015 season, with the Houston Dynamo and Sporting Kansas City joining the Western Conference. Expansion teams Orlando City and New York City FC will be placed in the Eastern Conference, creating two 10-team divisions.
Each of the 20 teams will play 34 games, with each team playing the opposing conference for five home and five away matches. In addition, teams will play their nine conference foes at least twice each while also playing six additional intra-conference games.
The 2015 changes will be the first conference shakeup since the addition of the Montreal Impact in 2012. With the realignment, the Western Conference will now feature each of the past five MLS Cup champions.
Take a look a the new conference alignments after the jump:
EASTERN CONFERENCE
Chicago Fire
Columbus Crew
D.C. United
Montreal Impact
New England Revolution
New York City FC
New York Red Bulls
Orlando City
Philadelphia Union
Toronto FC
WESTERN CONFERENCE
Colorado Rapids
FC Dallas
Houston Dynamo
Sporting KC
LA Galaxy
Portland Timbers
Real Salt Lake
San Jose Earthquakes
Seattle Sounders
Vancouver Whitecaps
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What do you think of the league’s realignment? Looking forward to seeing the Dynamo-FC Dallas rivalry renewed? Think the Western Conference will be too strong with the addition of Sporting KC?
Share your thoughts below.
What I don’t understand is, with 20 teams in the league next year, why we can’t have a balanced schedule, and have everybody play everybody else?
* everybody else, home and away, that is.
I wrote, what I hope is a reasonable explanation on Soccer Blood’s comment. Travel is the main reason. It costs more to travel a long distance and it affects player fatigue. The hope of unbalanced schedules is that it will reduce both of these issues. How successful it is at reducing cost and fatigue is probably up for debate. But I think that is why MLS chooses to use an unbalanced schedule.
OK I still don’t get this part?
Why can’t ea team simply PLAY AWAY one game and HOME one game?, irregardless of being East West or the middle of the frikkin map?
Please explain that to me? Are we the ONLY league that has this strange divide and need to “create” a false rivalry every time someone sneezes?
IE Is it so cool that the Sounders HATE the Timbers or that DC HATES the Union etc.. Ahh Rivalry , really?I t’s a false anomaly. I may lke Houston but hate DC no matter if they are West East or Central? Please explain this logic in this Mickey Mouse League?
Thank you
your comment was kind of hard to follow, but i do hate the manufactured rivalries.
dcu doesn’t hate philly just because it’s close by. just speaking for myself, i usually forget about them for some reason.
The easiest explanation comes down to two reasons: economic and player fatigue.
With a balanced schedule, the teams on the Western (or Eastern) seaboard would have to fly to the 10 farthest away teams every year. With an unbalanced schedule, they only have to fly to 5 of those teams each year.
This means reduced cost for travel. MLS needs to have reduced costs since they continue to struggle to post a profit as a league.
The second and more meaningful reason to us is that it is simply taxing on players to travel that much. And fatigued players means less quality on the field.
MLS continues to need to schedule mid-week games. Otherwise they will play deeper into December and start earlier in February when the weather (and profitability) is much harder to predict. Because of the mid-week games, it is feasible that LAG could play at NE on a Saturday, play in LA on Wednesday, then play at Orlando on the next Saturday. That is a 9,000+ miles of travel in a week.
I would love to see a balanced, single table schedule. I hope MLS will find ways to overcome the traveling expense both on cost and on players. But until then, unbalanced schedule will probably be the way forward.
“Why can’t ea team simply PLAY AWAY one game and HOME one game?, irregardless of being East West or the middle of the frikkin map?”
Because jet lag and the laws of physics have conspired to force us to always consider our location on a map. Once you work out the details of teleportation, then we can disregard geography.
Travel costs and jet lag could be mitigated by having “road trips” for teams. Have your 2-3 games in 8-10 days, all on the road. For the west coast teams you have trips to NYRB, NY2, NE, then Phil, DC, OC, then Clb, Chicago, then TFC, Mont. For the east coast teams LA, SJ, then RSL, Col., then FCD, Hou., SKC, then the Cascadia teams. This way you cut 10 cross country trips to 4 and minimizes jet lag as the “road trips” are all in the same time zone. Everybody has to do it so there is no real advantage for any team.
Go to round robin, do away with the playoffs. The bad teams not caring by the end of the season is b.s. These are all professionals and the vast majority are uber-competative. They are going to play hard regardless.
The US Open Cup maybe then takes on more importance for middling teams that aren’t good enough to win the supporters shield but could make a run in a knockout style playoff.
Sounds like a scheduling nightmare. Teams have other constraints on the use of their stadia, making this idea of ultimate fairness and equality in scheduling inevitably impossible to implement.
As for advantages, I would have to say that Chicago, KC, Dallas, and other central wouldn’t suffer nearly as much as coast-to-coast teams.
The crazy thing is that it is not just the winners of the last five MLS cups in the west now, but also all the runner ups!
It also has 12 of the last 14 MLS Cup winners.
Make it 13 for 15..go Sounders !
Expected. At first I am thinking, heck no, the west was tough enough already. But KC had 48 points, above the West avg of 47 ish. Houston had 39 below the East avg of 45ish
So KC/Houston together 43.5 brings down either conference.
Houston without Dom and future KC without injuries….we will see.
Geographically, this makes sense, they’re the two western-most teams in the Eastern Conference. It also sets up more RSL-SKC games, which has become a good rivalry, and more Houston-FCD games.
The West has seemed better over the past few years, but relax, it’s cyclical.
Single table, get rid of the conferences, MLS doesn’t have to be like NFL/NBA, etc.
Oh, and get rid of Garber!
I don’t agree with everything Garber but the league’s growth the past ten years is pretty amazing. He has to get some credit for that.
Why do people think that league commissioners operate on their own? The owners have grown the league. Garber (and goodell, selig etc) are figureheads and have no power over the direction the leagues take,.
I don’t buy that. Obviously, he’s not a dictator but he (and commissioners in general) have considerable power and influence even though they ultimately serve at the pleasure of the league’s owners.
and we dont have to be like europe either not everything european works here,
The funny thing is you added here.
I would have just left it as not everything in Europe works.
Oh really? What do you propose instead?
And don’t say, single table, 20 teams, no salary cap, pro/rel, and superclubs so we can “just like Europe.” Let Europe be Europe and we can be ourselves. They don’t have leagues that span entire continents there. (90% of the people and pro soccer teams in Russia are in one time zone west of the Ural Mountains) They simply don’t have the crazy travel that MLS has even under the current schedule which was designed to reduce travel from the round robin form in 2011.
They also don’t have 30ish viable major league markets that are spread across an entire continent. Even the most populous countries like England, France, Italy, Germany and Russia have one city that is between Philadelphia and New York sized, a second one that is Washington, D.C. sized, and then a couple more that are half the size of Salt Lake. Most struggle to have 18-20 teams that can play in the major leagues. The Dutch League had a team from a 5,000 person town last year. Not the same at all.
Finally, pro/rel works in an amateur league. In an amateur rec league, a group of people get together to form a soccer team and you don’t really change the roster multiple times per season to get the best possible team. Amateur teams also don’t deal with money and how to pay players. It makes sense to promote and relegate amateur teams so everyone is better matched against similar competition. Not so much with professional teams. Then you just end up with a game of Monopoly where a couple lucky clubs get all the best real estate and everyone else hopes that they don’t land on Boardwalk.
Pro/Rel only works in leagues formed by sports clubs; not in leagues with franchises.
In sport clubs, members are the team’s owners, which is the case in most European clubs (except the big ones). Sometimes they do have an investor -more like a benefactor-. But they aren’t for-profit enterprises.
The American way is with franchises and location based on maketability. Completely incompatible with the pro/rel model. The most similar thing would be what happened to Chivas USA, they got “relegated”
Single table is a desirable thing in terms of the fairness of the competition, but I can see how convenience/travel arguments can outweigh it. And by the way, Brazil is comparable to the US in terms of territory and they have a single table format for Campeonato Brasileiro despite travel distances. And they, like the overwhelming majority of countries, have promotion/relegation. The real reason for the absence of promotion and relegation in this country is that MLS is a single entity structure, which was set up to avoid antitrust laws. It does not operate on the same principles as the rest of the world. The MLS clubs are not real independent clubs, rather they are part of the single entity (quasi-franchises). I don’t view the absence of the single table as a huge problem, but the single entity closed system with no promotion/relegation is bad for the US soccer. Which clubs make it to the top division should be decided on the field, not in the corporate board room.
Please, how is MLS’ closed system bad for US soccer? I genuinely do not understand that position.
The open pyramid with promotion/relegation allows the best clubs to rise and mediocre to go to lower divisions. It is sort of like the free market, some companies fail, others excel. Because of the possibility of relegation, each team is forced to put a better product on the field and hire the best coaches. You can put together a strong team either by (1) buying the talent; (2) identifying/developing talent through youth system; or (3) some combination of both. Because the team’s budgets are limited, most teams will not be able to simply just buy more talent. Accordingly, most teams will invest more in youth development and provide opportunities to their young players (because it is more cost effective). Further, promotion allows teams from many markets, even small ones (e.g. Swansea) rise. Wouldn’t soccer in Atlanta or St. Louis be better off in they had a team competing to make it to the top division? This is how the rest of the soccer world operates, it is an open system based on merit. It operates on the same principles as free market. If you make good decisions and work hard, you have a higher probability of advancing. In contrast, MLS is a closed command and control system (similar to non-market economy systems), where the select few enjoy entitlements such as the right to play in the first division. It is not based on merit. An MLS club can field a mediocre squad year after year and have no real downside. It is bad for the soccer development in this country and for the fans.
Makes sense. The real question is whether SKC will stay in the West when ZombieChivas is reborn. My guess is yes, with Atlanta coming in and Sacramento or whoever still a few years off.
2015: 10 in each conference
2017: 11 in each (+Atlanta, LA2)
2019: 12 in each (+Miami, Sacramento)
“ZombieChivas”
I would support that team and buy the shirt.
there is a surprising amount of google image results for “zombie goat”.
make it happen, mls!
Single table and removal of conferences, please.
its too hard on players to be on a plane for another hour
*league schedules 3 games in 8 days*
Bingo.
So you can get NY playing in Seattle on Sunday, back home for a mid-week game against Vancouver on Wednesday, and back in LA for a game on Saturday. That would be insane travel.
Why?
Unless these conferences are going to exclusively play within itself, then I find the concept of conferences and Conference Champions awkward, out of place and unneeded. I’ve yet to hear a compelling argument on why we need the conference system.
Of course, the more clubs we add the more realistic I think exclusively playing within conference could happen. After all, our league is always trying to manufacture rivalries and what better way to help promote/create them by focusing more closely on regional match-ups and cutting down on travel?
“our league is always trying to manufacture rivalries and what better way to help promote/create them by focusing more closely on regional match-ups and cutting down on travel?”
You just answered your own question. That’s mostly why conferences exist: To cultivate regional rivalries and cut down on travel expenses.
if you did that MLS would have to move to a 38 game schedule (19 home, 19 away)
their long term plan is to have 2 conferences of 12 and a 34 game schedule (11 conference home, 11 away, 6 other conference home, 6 other conference away)
Yeah,…that’s called an unbalanced schedule. The point of a single table is to have a balanced schedule,…home/away against every team in the league. This way,…at the end of the season,…the team at the top of the table is THE champion. It is a very simple concept.
The problem is,…without promotion/relegation the regular season can become a bore when the bottom teams have no incentive to play when they are out of the hunt for the top spot in the table. Without the posibility of relegation, they can simply go through the motions.
Since the Supporter’s Shield winner is not considered the MLS champions, there’s even less reason for a single table. Conferences work well with playoffs and vice versa. It’s the American system. It’s not perfect, but it’s the recipe American sports have followed forever.
You know what is the real bore? The silly and repetitive comments about how pro athletes and their fans no longer care about games toward the end of the season. What, you think that if Chivas or Montreal had been facing relegation that suddenly they’d be the most exciting thing in town and fill their stadium? Of course, this utter apathy would somehow explain why Chivas defeated RSL late in the season, right?
Perhaps we should institute promotion/relegation in the comments—otherwise, without the possibility of relegation, commenters can simply go through the motions without thinking things through.
And… MLS finally solved the age old debate. Move to the East… relegated… move to the West… promoted!
YAAAAAAAAAAAAA!
*yes, this is tongue-in-cheek for those of you who don’t understand sarcasm… or trolls
awesome. I love it.
TFC still won’t make the playoffs
This move will make the West even more dominant
Um, no. The two conferences were pretty close together both last year and this year. I don’t get why fans of some of the western teams like to trash the east just to make themselves feel better.
Look at the recent form of the top 3-4 teams in both conferences. They all look like they could beat each other in a home-and-home on any given day. It’s going to be a good playoff tournament.
I didn’t take the time to chart out the interconference games.
I would be shocked if the West wasn’t better against the East head to head. Four teams in the West have 9 losses or less, only DC in the East…and Seattle has 10.
I know SKC was much better vs West than East, this year