A Couple Easy Steps to Improve MLS

By: Bob | August 9th, 2007

Along with the never-ending chatter about which cities will be the next to land an MLS expansion team, one of the most frequently discussed topics amongst American soccer fans is how to make the league better. For a league that is just a decade old, MLS has seen its more than its share of changes, some good and some bad.

I happen to think the league has been moving in the right direction the past couple of years. It has done away with many of the gimmicks that drove traditional soccer fans nuts, while also maintaining its own identity. Martin Rogers on Yahoo! Sports happens to agree and he offers a couple of minor changes that could make the league even better.

The MLS does not need to Americanize the most popular sport in the world. It should do away with the contrived conference system and change to an all-in league with 14 teams for next year.

There have been mutterings that the U.S. public may not “get” a league that is not hacked up into various conferences, divisions and pools. Come on, how hard it is to understand the concept of every team in the league playing each other once at home and once on the road?

Exactly. In fact, the USL First Division has already adopted a single table format and with some minor scheduling quirks the teams play each other twice a season. No one has gone home scratching their heads wondering how the league works. The fact that some MLS teams play each other more times than others has always seemed unfair and unnecessary to me. With 14 teams the league could easily play a balanced schedule.

On the soccer side, the ludicrous shootouts to decide drawn games a few years ago have thankfully been ditched, but MLS still has some challenges ahead. A playoff system that sees eight out of 13 teams qualify for the postseason may keep interest alive for some clubs later in the season, but that number should really be trimmed down.

Less teams in the playoffs would make the regular season count more and that would be a good thing. There are some that might argue that the league should do away with the playoffs entirely, but until there is a relegation/promotion system (another can of worms that is much discussed) I do think it is necessary to have a playoff scenario to keep fans interested late in the season when the league starts competing for attention with the NFL, college football and baseball playoffs. Heck, the league should consider changing its schedule so it doesn’t have to compete with those sports at the end of its season.

What thinks you? Are these steps that would improve MLS? Any other suggestions?

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Badgerjohn

Single Table. Good. Do it.

Playoffs. Keep it just as is. Eight teams won't look so bad when we expand to 16/20 teams. We changed it five times in the first eight years, which gave off the air of Calvinball. The only complaint now is that the regular season champ always loses. Well, whose fault is that?

Keep the All-Star Game, the only All-Star game in American Sports with a point: Us against Them. The best move MLS ever made was to stop trying to create an East/West rivalry. Now, when the league plays a name-brand Euro team and tops them, we get to rub it in the face of the Eurosnobs. The ASG offers evidence of the talent present in the league.

Get FIFA's permission to cap the league size bigger than just 18 teams. Between MLS and USL leagues, we're taking in Canada, Bermuda and Puerto Rico. Since we're offering a pyramid for four different associations, Shouldn't our top flight have some more room?

Promotion/Relegation: Let's get MLS a finely-tuned machine, then get the USLs some consistency and stability, then we can talk. No American league could pull off pro/rel (except the NFL...a whole other rant).
Roberto

Scantly clad cheerleaders.
Julien

"It is one thing that really keeps me watching MLS."

I meant to say "keeps me from watching MLS."
Julien

I think youth-development should be used more by MLS clubs. That may help strengthen the quality of play on the field. It is one thing that really keeps me watching MLS.
Juliet

I agree, we need a single table system. I don't watch other American sports, so I don't get this conference thing at all. It seems like everyone plays everyone else at some point (like the DCU-Galaxy game I saw last night), anyway, so what's the point of a conference?
Gianfranco

Connoer NAPL is an EPL rip off the league needs its own identity.
Rasheed

Stop throwing those damn streamers at opposing players and goalkeepers! So bush league.
Connor

lol @ sam's post

also, I agree that MLS isn't the best name. "Major League" just doens't go with...soccer IMO. I prefer North American Premier League, or American Premier League (I know there's a Canadian team, but the continent is North America so it still works).

the schedule also needs to be sorted out, fixed times would be nice, i never know when anyone is playing
Connor

I agree completely with this article. I think the conference system should be dissolved. Ultimately, I think playoffs should be done away with and a relegation/promotion system should be established with USL, and the US Open should be given more emphasis, like England's FA Cup. However the relegation/promotion system is at least a decade or two away. Investors would have a fit if their new franchise could be promoted in its first season. Until then, playoffs are a good idea, and they're still fun.
Gianfranco

Kev, great point, I am an RBNY fan and seek out their games but it would be nice to have a sat fixture and a primetime game on thurs and sat.
Kevin

I always thought that having the fixtures be so 'unorganized' was a bad idea. I'm fairly new to following the domestic leagues, but it seems like there's something to be said for people tuning in to see their teams every week at the same time.

Instead, we get a couple games during the week and 3 or 4 teams getting weeks off. The Galaxy have played 13 games after 4 months of the season.

Basically, my idea would be to play all the games Saturdays at 2:00, with a feature game (on ABC/ESPN/ESPN2) either Saturday afternoon or Sunday night.

The one-table thing is a must, too.
Sam

The American Premier League? The American Super League? THE NASL? Don't forget there is one Canadian team in the league, maybe another on the way. And by the way, aren't the playoffs already aggregate?
john

Whatever the method, the schedule needs to be ironed out. Looking at a table that has one team leading another by twenty points, then realizing that the leader has played 7 more games makes it hard to gauge who the actual leader is. It makes the table not entirely meaningless, nor very meaningful.
Karl

Gianfranco- I agree with you. Aggregate game formats seem to me to be another one of those ideas that sounds like it would work great in theory, but in practice I think the games fall flat a lot of the time. There's too much strategizing between the two games, instead of the teams just going out there trying to win.
Gianfranco

A single table system is the way to go becuase it makes all the games mean more in a 26 game season. The playoffs are OK but they need a champions league home and away format with a single game final. But with the home and away leg they have to do something better than aggregate which can be confusing, frustrating, and anti-climatic at times especially to people who are new to soccer.
Nick

Call it something other that Major League Soccer. That's just pandering.
Karl

I think the round-robin single table tournament would be a good move. I've never really been able to figure out how the NFL playoffs works, it always seems like near the end of the season there is always some bizarre mathematical way for every outside team to still qualify for the wildcard playoff spot.

What I think MLS could do is go to a single table round-robin tournament and have the winner receive an elevated supporter's shield. With 14 teams, that would be 26 games (if my math is correct), for the rest of the games they could still have an MLS cup playoff tournament. So there would still be two major awards a season (and a potential "double" winner).

A couple of Americanisms I would like to see MLS preserve are the lack of advertising on the front of uniforms and not having promotion/relegation. I think the lack of advertising is just classier. I always groan when I here announcers during European league games chide a player for worrying too much about the name on the back of his jersey and not the front. And I always think why should he be thinking about AIG, Emirates, or Carlsberg? It's bad enough stadium names have become commercialized, at least we could make some token effort to keep it off the field.

About promotion and relegation... I think in the long run it might be a bad idea (I assume it's impossible in the short run). I have to believe that the promotion/relegation system, while appealing to me in theory, has led to the development of 3-4 elite clubs in each league, and it's usually only these clubs that has any realistic chance of winning the league. Was it really that exciting that Real Madrid won the La liga for the Nth time? or whenever Manchester United wins the premiership again will anyone not a Man U fan care? I think parity is goal worth keeping in mind, to give hope to fans everywhere. And I think it has to be part of the reason the NFL is so popular, and maybe why baseball is losing ground (and this is why everybody hates the Yankees).

So while I would consider myself, a bit of an association football purist, I don't think we should too quickly through away possible lessons we could learn from other American sports. They just might be the key to making soccer in America one of the best/most entertaining/most interesting/competitive leagues in the world.
Shane

Since American sports are all about money, the promotion/relegation system would kill any MLS team the first year they are sent down to wherever (USL?)

Americans won't be able to grasp that concept and fans won't show up to the games. It's something that has to be eased in over time by making winning the league more important.

They are moving in the right direction though. hopefully.
Eddie

A single table would be a good first step. Hiring television announcers that know the sport would be another. Doing more to promote young Americans who most people have never heard of would be another. The list could go on and on.
Cajun Nick

Make the Offside required daily reading!

Okay, so wouldn't improve the level of play in the MLS, but I like the idea anyway.
Sam

"And we're going to have another Cingular Wireless corner kick!"

"Here's our first Jack In The Box substitution!"

How about shutting the fuck up with dumb sponsors?