Getty Images The MLS East is a pretty little pony this year, while the West is a majestic and muscular stallion. Or so it seems. Western Conference teams are a well-documented 9-2 against the East so far.
But there’s more at work here than conference flag waving and media talking points. The imbalance of relative conference strength, married with the newly unbalanced schedule, will affect competition and title chases.
Now one prominent manager has spoken out about it: Real Salt Lake coach Jason Kreis says the Supporters Shield has lost all value in his mind.
Kreis said so last week on Extra Time Radio. (Sorry … I’m peddling fast to keep up with all matters of domestic soccer, and I just heard his comments last night, catching up on some podcasts from Major League Soccer’s official website.)
Here’s what Kreis told the fellows at Extra Time Radio:
To be very honest, it has lost all appeal to me.
“It was something last year that I was all gung-ho for, something I had not done before and something I really wanted to tuck into my belt and say that I had accomplished. But to be frank, I think it doesn’t make any sense now. When you have an unbalanced schedule and are playing opposing teams an unbalanced number of times, a different number of times home and away, it doesn’t make any sense. And I think it’s something the league needs to review and needs to get rid of.”
The entire interview can be found here at the Extra Time page.
Kreis said he hasn’t shared his discontent around the locker room, preferring players focus on the match in front of them and not much else.
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- dreadpirate82 - Mar 20, 2012 at 11:56 AM
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Peter Vermes and Dominic Kinnear disagree with Jason Kreis, as do fans of their teams. As one of those fans, it’s kind of exciting, even if we know the new schedule will greatly cheapen the Supporter’s Shield, assuming an Eastern team wins.
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- turrbotom - Mar 20, 2012 at 1:32 PM
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I respect both Peter Vermes and Dominic Kinnear and all the fans of both teams. But what do you expect from all the fans from the east? When the top 3 or 4 teams are all from the west and will spend the season beating up on each other how do we ever get a true picture of who the “Best” team is in MLS? It seems that a balanced schedule is the only reasonable way to accomplish that. Instead, all we’re left to is debate. I respect everyone’s opinion but until we have a balanced schedule and/or go to single table the Supporter’s Shield will just be someone’s (fairly meaningless) opinion.
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- dreadpirate82 - Mar 20, 2012 at 2:26 PM
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I fully agree turrbotom. My comment was supposed to come off as tongue in cheek. It’s a bit silly this year, but I imagine they’ll come up with a new format next year.
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- drchale - Mar 20, 2012 at 12:47 PM
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Just one of the things you have to deal with in a growing league. When MLS finally secures that 20th team, I imagine they’ll go back to a more balanced schedule or one that makes more sense than what they have now.
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- rm1r0 - Mar 21, 2012 at 12:30 AM
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The MLS regular season is 34 games. Why couldn’t they extend the season by 2 more games and have it as 36? That way, every team would play each other home and away. If their concern was the winter, then just have teams in colder cities play in warmer cities. Obviously their concern with the winter had nothing to do with the play-offs because they decided to have the MLS Cup Final at the location of the team with the best record in the final.
As long as there’s more money to be made through conference rivalries (i.e. Portland/Seattle), I just don’t see MLS going to a more balanced schedule and bringing true value to the Supporter’s Shield. In the future, I see MLS going with a balanced Conference schedule, where all teams in each conference play each other the same number of times and same number of times home and away, and a more balanced non-conference schedule where all teams play each other the same number of times but not the same number of times home and away.
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- rm1r0 - Mar 21, 2012 at 12:02 AM
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The winner of the Supporter’s Shield still qualifies for the CONCACAF Champions League. Thought the process for awarding the SS is not perfect, the SS still has some value, right?
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- inetsalesmaestro - Mar 26, 2012 at 10:24 AM
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Absolutely not. By switching to an unbalanced schedule the SS turns into a mini-MLS Cup. The problem is ultimately that the SS was the closest we had to knowing who was really at the top of the “table” (which is made by combining the tables for the conferences to resemble something closer to most of the world). Now, by forcing Western teams to fight against each other, the stakes are considerably higher for Western teams and lower for Eastern ones; effectively forcing the conference system on single table fans by “equalizing the results” for teams that are not equal.
This has serious long term consequences as our MLS Cup winners are not always the best teams to send to regional championships like CCL, and skewing our standing damages our public visibility to the rest of the world. It also effectively offers Eastern teams a disincentive to try to become the dominant team in MLS, knowing they simply have to win their conference and plan for a couple of out of conference games.
