Originally Posted by
OgtheDim
The shield wasn't awarded by the league at all - the league actively resisted such a thing. So, the trophy is a creation of the fans. Then somebody at the head office realised it was free content so might as well embrace it - the groups involved resisted the league controlling the trophy and insist the trophy is handed to supporter's to hand to the players.
When you dig down deep into what seems to have happened is somebody isn't enjoying themselves and decided to take their ball home. They literally said "See you in 2021". They have now backtracked and said "We will take the shield on tour" which is like saying "Instead of you players competing and some of you winning this trophy, we will share this trophy with our friends and talk about how important we are to this game."
Yes, they would rather take the shield to a bar in every city then award it to a team.
Turns out a large amount of supporters at a number of teams who are not near the top are unhappy with this season because they can't go to games. They consider this season meaningless because they can't support their team in the way they are used to. I get it...there are people not on here now because they just can't do this support thing during Covid. BUT, to change the rules a few weeks before the end of the season, without ensuring buy in from every supporter's group is...amateur.
The chairman of this group is a capo from NYRB
The vice chair is a Timber's Army guy.
See the trend.
They both went on Twitter yesterday indicating consultations happened when it turns out all they did was talk about it in a slack and expected reps to look at said slack, without telling them to look at said slack & then considered no response to be support.
The chair spent also a good chunk of yesterday afternoon liking tweets that said "this season is meaningless so I'm OK with this".
When confronted with "Maybe consider the work your own team players have done this season as being meaningful to them.", they have no response.
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4 years ago the league was provided a consultation that said the winning of the league should be almost completely abandoned as important. This group of performative supporters has given MLS the perfect opportunity to do so, along with making $250K or so from some sponsor for the new trophy to be awarded next season. The league winners will get the league trophy - the league winner's supporters will be given the shield. Slowly, the shield will die off in importance.
All because a group of people who said they valued what supporters do didn't think what supporters are doing during Covid is really being a supporter - I don't think they thought about the players at all.