By Jason Davis - WASHINGTON, DC (Nov 2, 2011) US Soccer Players -- This MLS playoff season has a theme. Folded in along with the narratives of LA’s dominance, RSL’s return to form, Seattle’s annual playoff failure, Sporting’s surprising favorite status and Houston’s Kinnear-inspired grittiness, is the obvious truth that the playoffs have an edge. Tension is high, players are subject to pressures with which they’re not usually faced, and the results are there for all to see.
Over the weekend, in the first legs of the Conference Semifinals and with teams locked into do-or-die battles to take an advantage in their respective series, certain players cracked under those pressures.
There might have been more noise than substance in most of the incidents during the first-leg games, but the underlying truth is that Major League Soccer players, like players in any other sport or league with the crucible of playoffs in place to decide things like promotion or - gasp - the season’s champion, react differently when advancement is on the line.
Nerves are frayed. Tempers are short. The natural inclination to lash out an an opponent who does something illegal or out of bounds isn’t so easily suppressed. Every individual is different, but it’s obvious that the playoffs themselves have something to do with the rash of bad behavior.
Rafa Marquez might have thrown a ball at Landon Donovan in a regular season game, causing the resulting fracas that ended with red cards for Marquez and LA’s Juninho. Osvaldo Alonso may have shoved down RSL’s Alvaro Saborio in a regular season game, pushed to his breaking point by Saborio’s supposed gamesmanship. Those players involved in the short-lived blustering in between Colorado and Kansas City and Philadelphia and Houston might have reacted just the same if this was late June instead of late October.
But with the stakes raised and any ejections potentially devastating to their team’s chances to lift the MLS Cup, it’s seems irrational that they would react so poorly, thereby risking so much.
For better or worse, all the pushing, shoving, and wild punches makes this playoff season among the more enthralling in recent memory. The format itself leaves a lot to be desired, but the potential for classic showdowns between natural rivals and quality teams has ramped up the drama in short order.
It’s not good that Alonso shoved Saborio or that Marquez let his petulance get the best of him, but it’s not entirely bad either.
For all the grousing about the lack of interest some cities have shown in their playoff MLS teams and the continued angst over the League’s TV ratings, there isn’t enough appreciation for the effect events outside of the usual run of play can have on the level of interest. As long as there are playoffs, MLS needs moments that fall under both the “positive” (great plays and stellar goals) and the “negative” (spontaneous eruption of raw emotion) umbrellas to prove to a wider audience that they are worth following. Professional sports are a spectacle, professional soccer included.
It’s worth wondering if the same boiling atmosphere would exist if MLS did away with playoffs, as single-table advocates would prefer.
The Galaxy clinched the Supporters Shield on October 9th while sitting idle, which means that the balance of the season would be rendered meaningless from a championship standpoint. Considering that LA’s nearest competition for the points title was Seattle - a team they had already played twice by the beginning of July - and it’s hard to fathom how any games would have any edge at all.
A single table balanced schedule competition without playoffs is the fairest way to crown a champion. Yet without the pressure at the bottom of the table between clubs facing relegation, it has the potential to render too much of the season meaningless. More meaningless than it is now, that is.
Every choice the League makes on the structure of the competition is fraught with pros and cons. The cons of holding a postseason tournament after a 34 match schedule lie mostly in the “wrong” team getting hot, winning the championship, and “invalidating” the regular season. No playoffs might mean less matches played at the fevered pitch we’ve seen thus far in the Conference Semifinal round. That, for lack of a more nuanced explanation, is why playoffs appeal to those in charge. The number of potentially explosive matches is controllable, something that isn’t true with a single table. Call it manufactured drama if you will, but it’s drama all the same.
Is the rash of on-field spats a corollary to the playoffs structure? Perhaps not directly, but without relegation threatening the weaker sisters of MLS or big money and prestigious international tournaments coming to the top handful of finishers as is the case in the high profile European leagues, there’s little other opportunity to place players in pressure situations. And since neither promotion and relegation nor a sudden boost in the reputation of the CONCACAF Champions League is forthcoming, the playoffs give MLS an edge it wouldn’t have otherwise.
Fighting, if that’s what you choose to call it, isn’t a item we’d have on a list of what we’d hope to see during the MLS playoffs, particularly if it results in good players missing important games via suspension. Then again, emotions boiling over is proof that MLS players are playing in tense matches where nerves and tempers are raw and explosive. It's the playoff structure doing what it's supposed too.
Jason Davis is the founder of MatchFitUSA.com. Contact him: matchfitusa@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter: http://twitter.com/davisjsn.
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