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| I have my limits.... |
Several times in prior posts in this series, I’ve talked about Major League Soccer becoming the league it is today (e.g., 2020, only without COVID-19), with established rules and practices that carry over from year to year (I devoted a messy paragraph to this argument in my 2013 post). As I keep discovering, oh, every time I look to the next season (or five), that doesn’t hold up. There will always be the next stupid idea, another cheapening of the competitive structure that will devalue the regular season until the ice caps melt and we all drown. The circle of life, etc. Happily, we get relief from the worst ideas here and there and, the league did make one little big tweak to the rules of competition for the 2014 season and that one caught all of my eye:
“The first tiebreaker remains total wins, but the second and third tiebreakers have been swapped—goal difference is now second and goals scored is third.”
The first time I considered goal differential as (perhaps) a key tell for future success specifically in the MLS playoffs showed up in my post on the 2010 season. And, yes, this change feels like validation…which is why I assume it won’t last. All the same, when I finally wrap up 2019 season, I will create an index/summary post that links to all of this “history project” shit and tie it all together with some details that stand out. The goal differential thing will get explored, along with a number of others. There was one other tweak to the rules in 2014 – MLS decided that away goals would count a little more in the playoffs. And they would.
While some big shifts await – mostly thinking TAM and GAM, but also how the league managed the playoffs –2014 was a curious mix of old and new. On the “old” side, the Los Angeles Galaxy (again) battled the new-model New England Revolution (again) in an MLS Cup at the Galaxy’s home ground (again; 6th fucking time at that venue, people). Because the Seattle Sounders had been reliably good since joining the league in…wow, forgot already…2010(? nope, 2009), seeing them lift the 2014 Supporters’ Shield twists the “new” side of the above into another step toward Seattle’s eternally bright future…yeah, yeah, you can hate it, Portland Timbers fans, you just have to swallow the reality of it.
When Seattle won the Supporters' Shield, they pulled off their…shit, fourth or fifth trophy as an MLS team (the U.S. Open Cup ends before the playoffs, right? So, their first Shield was their 5th trophy) by running up the score all season long. The forward tandem of Obafemi Martins (17g, 13a) and Clint Dempsey (15g, 10a) did the heavy rowing to get them to 65 goals over the regular season. A couple teams kept up nicely – the Timbers among them (just four goals behind at 61), but the Los Angeles Galaxy makes the greater point of interest. They topped Seattle by four goals (69), and pulled a highly-similar trick with Robbie Keane (19g, 14a) and Landon Donovan (10g, 19a) leading the way. The difference was, those two made more players better than Dempsey and Martins: it starts with Gyasi Zardes hitting higher numbers than Lamar Neagle (16g, 2a for Zardes, 9g, 9a for Neagle), but it carried all the way down to about the 8th spot on the statistical ladder for the Galaxy. Still, in both cases, your better DPs raise all boats.
“The first tiebreaker remains total wins, but the second and third tiebreakers have been swapped—goal difference is now second and goals scored is third.”
The first time I considered goal differential as (perhaps) a key tell for future success specifically in the MLS playoffs showed up in my post on the 2010 season. And, yes, this change feels like validation…which is why I assume it won’t last. All the same, when I finally wrap up 2019 season, I will create an index/summary post that links to all of this “history project” shit and tie it all together with some details that stand out. The goal differential thing will get explored, along with a number of others. There was one other tweak to the rules in 2014 – MLS decided that away goals would count a little more in the playoffs. And they would.
While some big shifts await – mostly thinking TAM and GAM, but also how the league managed the playoffs –2014 was a curious mix of old and new. On the “old” side, the Los Angeles Galaxy (again) battled the new-model New England Revolution (again) in an MLS Cup at the Galaxy’s home ground (again; 6th fucking time at that venue, people). Because the Seattle Sounders had been reliably good since joining the league in…wow, forgot already…2010(? nope, 2009), seeing them lift the 2014 Supporters’ Shield twists the “new” side of the above into another step toward Seattle’s eternally bright future…yeah, yeah, you can hate it, Portland Timbers fans, you just have to swallow the reality of it.
When Seattle won the Supporters' Shield, they pulled off their…shit, fourth or fifth trophy as an MLS team (the U.S. Open Cup ends before the playoffs, right? So, their first Shield was their 5th trophy) by running up the score all season long. The forward tandem of Obafemi Martins (17g, 13a) and Clint Dempsey (15g, 10a) did the heavy rowing to get them to 65 goals over the regular season. A couple teams kept up nicely – the Timbers among them (just four goals behind at 61), but the Los Angeles Galaxy makes the greater point of interest. They topped Seattle by four goals (69), and pulled a highly-similar trick with Robbie Keane (19g, 14a) and Landon Donovan (10g, 19a) leading the way. The difference was, those two made more players better than Dempsey and Martins: it starts with Gyasi Zardes hitting higher numbers than Lamar Neagle (16g, 2a for Zardes, 9g, 9a for Neagle), but it carried all the way down to about the 8th spot on the statistical ladder for the Galaxy. Still, in both cases, your better DPs raise all boats.
