wrong thread
wrong thread
Last edited by leedsandTFC; 10-01-2023 at 12:59 AM.
https://www.fccincinnati.com/news/th...room-in-the-wa
Good for Nick Hagglund, nice to see.
Also good to see MLS teams treating the regular season title with the gravitas it deserves.
Yeh, Noonan saying today some pointed stuff about the Shield
Check out this tweet at https://twitter.com/char_cliff/status/1708880292511994230
This was bound to happen. As more and more players and staff who have experienced other football cultures come to MLS, they will obviously be influenced by the culture they were a part of, which will continue to influence the local football culture.Originally Posted by OgtheDim
LAG people under that post having fits at their one distinctive (most MLS Cups) being no longer what people care about.
I mean, everyone wants to talk up their own accomplishments. Without a balanced schedule or obeying the international breaks I’d say it’s still flawed but when 60%+ of the teams make playoffs it sort of makes a mockery of that format too.
MLS has to step back and decide that’s best here. Personally, I think there are too many games given the roster strength and the travel involved here in North America. And it makes sense to cut back, especially when your star marquee players skew to the older side.
I wouldn’t mind a home-away single table championship with no playoffs. Or, have an east-west divisions with that format with the champions to play in the finals.
Last edited by ag futbol; 10-02-2023 at 01:04 PM.
I don't think this tells us anything relevant beyond, if you missed it, who just won the shield
With an unbalanced schedule and an incentive to not care as much the Shield will never mean what a league wins elsewhere. If you're a point ahead of second place in the shield in the last day of the season but 10 points ahead of third place, and you're carrying a bunch of knocks and tired players, you'll rest your players. That, obviously, wouldn't happen in any league. Until that's not the case, we can't just pretend the Shield is the same thing as a league win or bigger than the cup. Basically, I'll believe it when teams are running their injured players ragged to win it knowing it's blowing up their play off chances
Nah, I'm with Noonan. Even unbalanced, 34 games is a test. A playoff cup run is just a cup run.
I don't think it's "pretending", I'd say it's the opinion of a fairly large number of fans that the cup is secondary.
I don't think too many teams who can clinch a league title are resting players, either. If a team is resting players, it's because they're already out of the shield running.
My question is simple
If a manager goes into the last day of the season 1 point clear of the top place with a load of injuries or tired players, are they ever resting those players? Or are they blowing up their play off chances for the shield?
If the former is 'yes' even for many coaches, not all, there's no discussion to be had for me, regardless of what we think (And I agree, a cup run is much more luck based than a shield win and a better sign of who the best team is, but it is what it is). In 2017 if we went into the last game of the season knowing playing Seba would make it very likely that he misses the play offs, he's sitting on the bench, I'd bet money on it. Obviously, in a league, he'd play every single time in that situation.
I'd also hazard a guess that if you polled MLS fans to list the last 10 shield winners and the last 10 cup winners that the cup winners are guessed correctly more often but obviously that's not something that I can prove
Either way, whatever you think, posting Noonans comments on it doesn't exactly prove anything either way. He's not exactly a neutral, logical source on this this week
Last edited by JoesphNdo; 10-02-2023 at 05:59 PM.
Doyle on LAFC yesterday:
The bad news: they lost 1-0 at home to RSL, which marks the fifth time in six they’ve been shut out. I don’t know what to say here aside from what I’ve been saying basically all year, which is that they 1) don’t move the ball quickly enough, and 2) don’t move in concert off the ball, and 3) don’t have any midfielders who break lines with their distribution. So it’s basically Dénis Bouanga on the breakaway or nothing. And lately, obviously, the scales have come down on “or nothing.”
Sound familiar? The length of the season is making them leggy... almost like trying to play Bob Ball with a group of older players.
There's nothing illogical in what he's saying. Not being neutral doesn't automatically make you illogical. And I've got a couple of friends who used to play in the league; players have ALWAYS taken the Supporters Shield seriously. They recognize it for what it is.
Again, I rarely agree with Doyle but this is the third time this week:
"I’ll get it on the record once more: The Shield is the single best trophy an MLS team can win. It’s the truest measure of who the best team in the league actually is, for one, and for two, it means you gave your fans eight straight months of sustained, winning soccer.
As someone who used to sit (stand) in the supporters’ section year after year, I would’ve given my soul to watch a season’s worth of soccer like that. It’s those fans, the ones who show up week after week to sing and chant and drink and cheer, and who have done so even in the depths of despair (a three-year-long trough of despair, in Cincy’s case), that give a club its soul.
There is nothing better you can give them in return than wins."
Should have said is not based on logic rather than isn't logical. This is as credible as asking the head of coke what the best soft drink is. Sure, you may agree with them and what their saying isn't automatically wrong, but it's utterly worthless in terms of credibility. Doyles words are more relevant. I don't agree with him, but he's a 100% neutral source, no question about it.
I just can't agree, as it simply *cannot* be the most important trophy imaginable if it's also true that there are MLS coaches that would knowingly lower their chances of winning it in order to maximize their chances of going deep in the play offs. I just cannot get past that, that's a contradiction, both things simply cannot be. I do agree if I wanted to determine the best team the supporters shield is more likely to tell me that (More likely, not guaranteed, but more likely), but that doesn't change the fact that some clubs and coaches would prioritize it lower than the cup which just completely shatters the integrity of it as a be all end all the way other leagues are
Basically I wish the shield was the most important trophy, in my ideal world it is, but I can't see it as we're there with the current set up between what I said above and the unbalanced schedule. Imagine a team wins by 1 point who played us twice while the second placed team didn't play us at all? Or they played each other once, at the winning teams stadium, who won that game. There's no immediate credibility there, not like when a team wins a league elsewhere, there'll always be an *
Put a far more succinct way, I'd love to poll each MLS manager at the start of this season and ask them which of the two trophies they'd most like to win. I'd hazard a guess, complete speculation on my part, over half say the cup
Last edited by JoesphNdo; 10-03-2023 at 12:51 PM.
To be fair though, by early summer when we start seeing players rested or saved, about 80% of the club's Shield hopes are realistically finished. At that point you might as well plan & prepare for the MLS Cup playoffs. Having shallow rosters due to the cap doesn't help since it's tough to manage at the best of times and now there's League's Cup congestion on top of everything else.
If anything that shows which is actually tougher to win and if you win both, then you're the legit best team.
^ I would agree with you here. For all intents and purposes, when teams line up the next season, the thing that is highlighted and talked about is MLS cup. That’s where the advertising emphasis is too.
I'll just put this here from MLSsoccer and Matt Doyle:
https://www.mlssoccer.com/news/what-...for-toronto-fc
Manning is very prominent in his assessment of what went wrong this season.
He should be, he's responsible for it.
Having said that, Doyle has no idea how TFC's front office works (or doesn't.)
Doyle isn't a real reporter, and Mlssoccer.com isn't journalism.
Having said THAT, he’s right about our tactical issues. We just don’t move the ball quickly enough to challenge anyone.
Last edited by jloome; 10-04-2023 at 12:53 PM.
Watching this team play on the weekend I was shocked how little movement there was off the ball. It was well below the standards you’d expect of professionals.
tidbit here is that people "with an ear to the ground" expect MB to retire.
Been this way off and on, mostly on, since 2018. There will need to be a huge roster turnover to put a stop to that trend.
3rd time through should do it.
Interesting MLS Shield vs. Cup discussion. My take... MLS is a business, so follow the money. How does the league's ownership or brain-trust and it's player association value MLS Shield verses Cup? IIUC, depending how you may choose to assess/calculate all the various club/player compensations/bonuses involved, perhaps about, quick and dirty, a 220K Shield verses a 1.5M Cup MLS investment- winner gets 300KUSD? IIRC, EPL Champions get about an extra 225MUSD! I'd laugh myself into a curl, if I wasn't already smh into dizziness in MLS footballer sympathy.
If you look back through all of it you can see that the constants are the problem. Biggest people slowing us down are Bradley & Osorio, especially Osorio, and they are our leaders on the pitch and off it. Bradley always did it but he used to be able to drop a long ball here and there but that's gone now since nobody runs at defenses anymore. Osorio has always done that, even when he was good he insisted on sideways passes and short interplays that went nowhere. Was covered by useful winger and FBs that pushed up the flanks. We have none of that anymore and without it, Osorio's game just isn't good enough.
This totally explains the four month stretch when neither of them were on the field!
I prefer the Shield even in an unbalanced schedule because it means that the team who wins it played hard all year and gave their supporters close to maximum enjoyment over the long haul. I would rather have a team that pushed for that and played good from February until October than one that could be semi-trash and barely squeezed into the playoffs, leaving supporters with only a few weeks of good football. We're paying for this so I would rather be entertained over the season than just the Fall. My thoughts may however be clouded by the fact that our entire seasons have been shit from front to back for what seems years & years now.
He’s a contract year player. Last year and the last time he came up for renewal he played twice as hard. We fell for it both times. I think he’s a useful player and people under estimate how many different midfield roles he’s shoe/horned into but this season he’s been meh at best.
I think if you have to continue with him (need lemonade from some of our lemons etc) we need more team speed across the park. Our group has forever been too slow and that has to change.
They set the standards that the rest follow. It's travelled through various managers and style of play so it's coming from somewhere and those two are notorious for it.
The owners will obvious value the Cup and playoffs. Playoff systems create scarcity, with the goal being to drive up consumer demand and revenues.
This is interesting a credit because an opposition player did not turn up.
https://www.theguardian.com/football...o-chicago-fire
Pitiful.
It's professional football. If a single player being absent is worth a refund, no matter who that player is, then the game shouldn't be played, because it's clearly valueless to many without him.
The home team won 4-1. If they were still saying "see Messi!" on game day and using it at the box office to sell tickets, sure, that' fraudulent, refund their money. Otherwise....
EDIT: Good lord, an entire thread is on reddit right now with thousands of Americans chasting Tata Martino, who has said he is puzzled by opposing fans wanting him to play.
Martino's right. No one who actually supports their club with passion should WANT to play Messi. Watch him against others? Great. But the point is to fucking win, not be dazzled by the GOAT destroying your club.
Fucking weak.
Last edited by jloome; 10-05-2023 at 04:18 PM.
Yes, there have been plenty of criticisms to officiating in MLS, but.......
https://www.espn.co.uk/football/stor...released-pgmol
https://www.espn.com/soccer/story/_/...-was-incorrect
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