Major League Soccer...How Does that Work?

For some time now, English football has adopted and has been playing, a simple play off system at the end of each season to decide the last promotion place from the Championship, League 1, League 2 and the Blue Square Premiership. It's structure has changed very little since 1987, the year that this scheme was adopted for deciding the final promotion place, the main difference being that, rather than over two legs, with the aggregate score deciding the winner, the final is now a one-off game played at Wembley. Swindon Town has featured many times in the play offs over the years, so it would be churlish to deride this method of promotion, but, personally speaking, aside from the excitement it gives to the involved teams' fans at the end of the season and the chance to have a day out at the English national stadium, it really is only a money-making exercise. After all, if your team has finished third (fourth in League 2 and second in the Blue Square Premiership), then haven't they won the right to be promoted above those that have finished below them in the league?

The Aviva Premiership for Rugby Union has adopted a play off system to decide the champion at the end of the season. Here, the team finishing first could have romped to the top of the table, stayed there all season, but then lose the mantle of being the best team in the Premiership, because they then lose to one of the three teams who finished below them that season. Such a system is patently unfair to the top of the table team and, as pointed out above, is in my opinion, a money-spinning exercise rather than an exciting end of season finale.




So where did this play off mentality come from. Well, we just have to look across "the pond" to see the way American Football, ice hockey and baseball finish their respective seasons to understand where the influence for our play off systems originated. With the USA being notorious for trying to squeeze as much profit from every professional sport within its borders, the play off process allows the governing bodies of each sport to introduce further competition at the end of the season, thereby wringing further income from the wallets of the fanbase. It's not surprising, therefore, that those persons in control of British sport looked at this money-making racket and decided that they wanted some of the action too.

All of the above takes me to the title of this blogpost; Major League Soccer...How Does that Work? It can only be this American mentality of squeeze every last cent out of a sport that has caused them to really screw up the notion of Association Football. In order to fit it in with the American psyche of how their existing professional sports are organised, the MLS is arranged into 2 conferences where there is no relegation or promotion, the prime raison d'etre of all other football leagues in the world. For a country that revels in competition, it seems ludicrous that there is no incentive in the form of at least an upper and lower division in the MLS. Further, not only do teams play each other within their own Conference, Eastern or Western, but they play the occasional match against the odd team from the other Conference. The MLS version of the FA Cup is not simply a knockout competition either. Rather than stick with a tried and tested system of organising a sport, the Americans take it, meddle with it and come up with something that bears little resemblance to the original article. For instance, in the early days of football in the USA, the notion that there could be a fair draw as a result at the end of a game seemed a difficult idea for them to grasp and the 35 yard, 5 second shootout was implemented. The "win at any cost" mentality meant that those tasked with converting the locals to the beautiful game in the USA bastardised the rules to the point where the English looked across the water and were left bewildered with the way our "cousins" didn't get the point of one of our national sports.

As a football fan, I would like to see the MLS develop and become the successful football league the USA needs and deserves. However, I feel that the concept of Association Football that has been implemented in the USA needs a rethink. Hopefully, and as we say over here, "third time lucky"!