Short seasons

[Chivas]

What do you all think of short seasons for MLS

if you don`t know what that is here`s the link.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clausura

[tankfantry]

in one word NO....I suggest we stay with a more Europa style system. Football was developed in Europe and we should stay with there styple of rules and regulations. But I can not wait till we go to a one table system.

[acdc]

I dont mean to offend the mexican league, but thats one of the reasons I dont tune into it. It's kinda confusing because for every MLS season you have 2 seasons?. The MLS is suited to be kinda like tankfantry said, a European style anyway. The single table thing would be awesome. Again, we americans have this custom of putting conferences and division in our sports. But If the MLS wants to get better, they'll adjust to single table. Does the mexican league have a single table? Im kinda confused.

[Chivas]

They have three random groups of six teams play, single round robin, top two teams qulify for play-offs with the qualifed team with the most points playing the one with the least and so forth, in two legged matches. The next half-season the groups stay the same until the next one with 0 points.

The reason i asked is because half-seasons force teams to get better results on a shorter amount of time.

[tankfantry]

I understand that but thats not how I think the seasons should be set up, to much table and groups then playoffs. I like our system, well once we go to a single table.

[acdc]

To me, it would take away from the prestigious once a year cup. The team gets to be the champ for one year. Here's the single table stats as of today.

[tankfantry]

I don't think anyone will catch NE this year.

[acdc]

I consider them to be on a good streak. Eventually they'll snap out of it. We got 15 something games left, thats plenty of room to catch them. Man, its really going to come down to the wire, only a difference of 4 pts between 12th and 3rd.

[tankfantry]

going to make for a gret season, I thought for sure that the top 3 would pull away mid-way thorught the season.

[CyMoahk]

just dusting off this thread since talk of an MLS Apertura/Clausara schedule seems to be picking up again.

I know most people are suggesting this since it appears to be a way to relieve scheduling stress for the teams (I don't really see how, but I'm accepting that as a fact). So I guess that would be a good thing, since many MLS teams are complaining of being over-scheduled, and it will only be worse once more teams enter the league. However, I REALLY don't want MLS to become a two-trophy league, it would really take away from the end-of-the-season buildup, and it would greatly decrease the value of being able to hold that trophy.
In my opinion, to relieve scheduling stress, they should just extend the length of the season to, say, 40 weeks or so. That would be more than enough time to fit in all regular season games plus cup competitions, right?
If they really wanted to use A/C to relieve scheduling, though, I would hope they don't treat each half like its own season. Maybe give the winner of each half a bye to the playoffs, and take the top six teams otherwise, as long as they just keep it at one title per year.
That's assuming they make it a single table league, though. If they want to keep the conferences and not have schedule problems, I say make a team's conference-mates more important: each team plays other teams in its conference twice and teams not in their conference once per year. For an 18-team league in two equal conferences, that would be 25 games/year, very easy to fit into the current 31-week schedule.

[acdc]

you bring up great points. Extending the season to 40 games would be an immediate solution. The Premiership has 38 games. But then again they've got 20 teams, we have 14 teams. But that only means you play a few teams more than twice. I'd like the 40 game season...for a short term solution. I do not like the idea of A/C at all. Thats just weird in my opinion. It works great for the Mexican league but i dont know that it would be successful here. Here's my solution. The MLS should have a fall to spring schedule. That means the season would start in August and end in May just like the EPL. Now you might wonder why about the wintery weather. In my opinion, the players will play a faster paced game in cold weather. Just look at those 95+ degree games the MLS has. They are terrible...far to slow. The problem is the fans, but I think they wouldn't have a problem. Just look at american football, fans still go to games don't they?

[CyMoahk]

umm.... I said 40 weeks for the season, not 40 games in the season; the complaints going around right now are too many games in not enough weeks, making a very crammed schedule and very tired players. I was saying keep the same system for number of games (playing each opponent twice), but give more time to fit the games in.

A fall-to-spring season would probably produce better games, but it would be very hard to implement with our current system - we either get a six-month gap somewhere, or one 18-month season, or something weird that would even the timing out.

[acdc]

oh sorry I misread your post. 40 weeks would definitely relieve the scheduling problems. They would probably start the season a bit earlier than usual and end it later than usual. Plus that would give teams time for in between FIFA international match days.

The transition into a Fall-Spring schedule is difficult. I think we'd probably have sort of like a A/C type thing for just that transition part but after that the scheduling would be normal and in sync with all other leagues in the world.