Over the past week or so, I've found myself pondering the playoff structure that MLS uses to determine its champion. I'm both solidly American (and no, that's nothing to be ashamed of) and a fan of the "traditional" aspects of the world's game; this means I'm a touch conflicted over the issue of single table versus playoffs as a way to crown America's top club.
As an American, I understand the benefit and shortcomings of the system. I appreciate that holding a post-season playoff tournament is just the way we do things here when it comes to professional sports, and that decades of history have conditioned the American sports fan to expect one. I also get that most (but certainly not all) top soccer leagues around the world just don't do it this way; the best team over the course of a season is given the title, as a acknowledgement that it's not just about getting hot for a few weeks but about being the consistent best team over the course of a long journey.
Part of what makes a single table champion viable in most football competitions is a balanced schedule; there are twenty teams in each of the top tier European leagues, a nice round number that allows for a full season of home-and-away matches. The inherent fairness of that system means that the team with the most points at the end of the year deserves their reward. Without a balanced schedule to this point, thanks to both a small number of teams and a desire to leverage rivalries as much as possible, Major League Soccer could never consider a true single table.
In 2010, MLS will finally go to the balanced schedule. Philadelphia's entry brings the number of clubs to sixteen, and home-and-away matches across the league makes for a nice round thirty league games. The time seems right to move to the single table, crown the top point-getter at the end of the season the league champion, and get on with the business of lining up with the majority of the footballing world.
Not so fast.
The playoffs serve a purpose for Major League Soccer, balanced schedule or not. Americans, despite becoming more and more familiar with football as played around the world, are still comfortable with them. While the club on top of the standings after a full regular season certainly deserves to be crowned champion, the knockout style post-season tournament brings an additional level of intrigue and drama still helpful to selling the American product. MLS still needs a showpiece game, a massive "show off" event once a year that will hopefully draw a little mainstream media attention. I'll admit that there's an element of pandering to the non-soccer media there; though it's distasteful, it's unfortunately necessary. The MLS Cup Final is the league and the sports marquee event, and without a serious knockout up tournament, won't be going anywhere anytime soon.
Don't forget that US Soccer, and not MLS, runs the under-appreciated US Open Cup; even if the final of the tournament was a proper showpiece, it does the league no good. If the playoffs were to go away, the league would need to fill the void left by the loss of the MLS Cup Final. There doesn't seem to be an easy answer for how to do that. It becomes a case of the tail wagging the dog, if just a little; the league needs the final, therefore the playoffs are here to stay.
We've established that the playoffs aren't, and probably shouldn't, be going away. We know that MLS has committed to a balanced schedule for 2010. It only makes sense then, with the travel and regional concerns no longer at play in scheduling, to abolish the conference system and move to a single table with playoffs. Play the season out, thirty games consisting of home-and-away with every other team, and send the top eight to the playoffs. It's clean, simple, and without all of the complicated nonsense of incomprehensible tiebreakers. If you need a tiebreaker, goal differential will do nicely.
I think there's a chance MLS will do the right thing and move to this system for 2010. Conferences mean nothing now; they're just arbitrary delineations that have no bearing on the competition. Holding onto something that literally has no bearing would not only be ridiculous, it would only serve to bring MLS more criticism. Surely the league knows that labels like "Western" and "Eastern", when the schedule is not affected by them, is ridiculous beyond comprehension.
