A reason for RSL fans to cheer for Seattle on Tuesday
by K61 on Oct 3, 2011 9:30 PM MDT
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PrintTomorrow night is the 98th annual U.S. Open Cup Final. It will be played in Seattle between Sounders FC and the Chicago Fire. So why am I creating a fan post (my first) at RSL Soapbox? To explain to RSL fans why they should be rooting for Seattle to take home their 3rd trophy in 3 years.
Jason Kreis recently commented on how important it was for his club to finish second in the Supporters Shield (SS) race (since RSL can no longer win the SS):
In particular it would be nice to finish second in the Supporter’s Shield race because then we give ourselves a little insurance policy to qualify for CONCACAF.
He's, of course, referring to the CONCACAF Champions League (CCL) which you are all familiar with since RSL became the first MLS team to make it to the championship round of the tournament earlier this year before losing to Monterrey. That was the 2010-11 edition of the tournament. RSL did not qualify for the 2011-2012 edition. Clearly Kreis wants to get another shot in the future (next year if possible).
US based MLS teams can qualify for CCL 4 different ways: (1) win the SS, (2) win the MLS Cup, (3), win the U.S. Open Cup, and (4) be the MLS Cup runner-up. Occasionally, the same team will achieve one or more of those in the same season. The most recent occurrence of this was in 2008 when the Columbus Crew won both the SS and the MLS Cup. When this happens, the available spot goes to the next team in the standings after the SS winner. As a result, in 2008, the Houston Dynamo qualified for CCL.
So why does Seattle winning the U.S. Open Cup have anything to do with this? If Seattle wins, they'll seal their entry into 2012-13 CCL. LA has all but clinched the SS (Seattle still has a remote chance of winning it they're perfect and LA falters repeatedly). This means that if RSL remains in 3rd place for the SS (or passes Seattle to get 2nd), then they will qualify for CCL if either LA or Seattle make it to the MLS Cup final since both will have already qualified via other means. Obviously if RSL makes it to the final they'll be in anyway.
I know denz has mixed opinions on CCL, stating both how proud he was of RSL making it to the final and also stating that teams who compete in the CCL group stage have poor performances in the MLS Cup playoffs. Nevertheless, RSL players, coaches, ownership, and many fans have made their desires known at various times and they want another shot at CCL. If Seattle wins the U.S. Open Cup tomorrow night, this can only help RSL achieve that goal.
So even if it's sanctimoniousness (something I was accused of this weekend), RSL fans should root for Seattle on Tuesday.
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Oh I am all in favor of sanctimonious support
Support is support, and while I would have loved to gotten you guys (and ourselves closer) to LA it just wasn’t meant to be. Yes you are correct that RSL fans should be supporting the Sounders bid for their 3rd straight US Open Cup title, and yes I still think the Champions League takes a ton out of a team in MLS and it will be interesting to see how many of the 5 MLS teams taking part can do well in the playoffs.
No team who has finished 1st or 2nd in their CCL Group has ever made it to MLS Cup, most teams lose in the first round of the playoffs. I still think the travel, extra matches, and stress of the additional competition does a number on MLS rosters which lack the depth of many of the teams they face from Mexico. Maybe this will be the year someone proves me wrong, but neither Colorado or Dallas is looking real good at this point. :)
Well, we know Toronto won't be doing well in the playoffs :)
I agree that CCL puts a strain on teams during the regular season, but I think there are reasons to believe that might not be as big of a factor as in the past. Also, the anecdote about teams finishing 1st or 2nd in their CCL group not making MLS Cup only applies to four teams overall, so I don’t know how much stock to really place in that fact.
MLS rosters aren’t as deep as FMF rosters, but the roster size is larger this year than it has been in the past and I think tha teams (especially the top teams) have generally taken advantage of that so that they have been able to rotate through players a little more than in the past. I am not sure how proactive MLS was in the past, but they clearly accomodated CCL teams with the schedule this year, giving RSL fewer games at the beginning of the year, and SS/FCD/CR/LAG more games at the beginning of the year and fewer towards the end. I think they’ve also relaxed the rules on allowing charter flights a little bit so teams can use them more for traveling to/from Central America, which should help some.
In the long run, I’d guess we’d all agree that MLS depth should improve, and the CCL should be nothing but good for teams, giving them more competitive games to develop/improve their players.
In my opinion...
CCL > MLS Cup all day long.
Yeah, trying to complete successfully in both is difficult, but I don’t think that any other path will increase the quality of MLS as quickly and completely as focusing on CCL. The extra games, travel, preparation, quality of opposition, stress, and hostility our players experience in this competition will surely improve the players, coaches, and teams more than playing in the same situations we do all season, right?
I have a dream that every soccer fan in the US will one day support MLS teams first, and Euro teams after that, and the best teams in the world anticipate the Club World Cup as a premier competition, and the world is at peace, and the beer will flow like wine!
I don’t want to come across as a Eruosnob; I love that MLS has playoffs. But I am not disappointed in the slightest that RSL focused more on CCL in the waning months of the season and fizzled out against Dallas. Well, maybe I should say I wouldn’t want them to change their focus should we be in the same situation next year, because it was definitely disappointing that we didn’t get further in the playoffs last year. But the disappointment felt after we didn’t beat Dallas at home to move on was NOTHING to the crushing blow that was the loss to Monterrey.
This comment quickly got away from me. What I meant to say from the beginning is thanks, K61, for the post! And here I thought you only visited Denz’s blog to antagonize him ;). Go Seattle, both tonight against Chicago and in CCL!
Just out of curiosity, does anyone really know how the CCL tiebreakers work?
I don’t think that it’s quite this simple:
If Seattle wins, they’ll seal their entry into 2012-13 CCL. LA has all but clinched the SS (Seattle still has a remote chance of winning it they’re perfect and LA falters repeatedly). This means that if RSL remains in 3rd place for the SS (or passes Seattle to get 2nd), then they will qualify for CCL if either LA or Seattle make it to the MLS Cup final since both will have already qualified via other means.
While I agree that a Seattle victory helps RSL in some cases, other cases are less clear. What happens if Seattle wins the USOC and MLS Cup, but not the Supporters’ Shield? The MLS Cup winner gets a berth straight to the group stage, so obviously Seattle would rather have that than the USOC berth, so then would Chicago get the USOC berth as the USOC runner-up?
What happens if Seattle wins the USOC and is an MLS Cup runner-up? Neither gets them straight through to the group stage, but then which slot do they give up? It seems like the most straightforward thing to do would be to give up the USOC slot since there is a clear runner-up to USOC, but not a clear runner-up to the MLS Cup runner-up. Personally I think that SS runner-up would be more deserving than USOC runner-up, but it’s not clear that they would look at the tiebreakers from that broad of a perspective.
What happens if Seattle wins the USOC, misses MLS Cup altogether, and LAG gets SS and MLS Cup? LAG would have to give up either the SS or MLS Cup entry, both which get you straight through to the group stage, but would seemingly have different impacts on who gets the next spot and who gets the second MLS berth straight to the group stage.
Basically, the whole tiebreaker situation seems as clear as mud to me.
My understanding is that, regardless of which berth(s) a team gets, if they have more than one it goes to the highest team on the combined table without a berth.
E.g. the only way Chicago is getting a CCL berth now is by making the MLS Final. On the other hand, I was wondering myself what would happen if say LA wins both the SS and the MLS Cup (i.e. both of the auto-group stage berths). If Seattle finishes second in this hypothetical, would they get one of the auto-group stage berths? My guess is, yes; 3rd place would than get a playing bid.
You Don't know
Listen it is up to US Soccer to allocate the 4 spots that are given to the US for the Champions League, and while we can speculate all day long on what they might do if one team were to occupy two of the normal spots:
MLS Supporters Shield Winner
MLS Cup Winner
MLS Cup Runner-up
US Open Cup Winner
I don’t believe they have published what the criteria would be beyond that and in the past talk of taking the automatic spot away from the US Open Cup has been tossed around, and I will just say this. If by some fluke of luck should New York win the East, and one team end up with two slots I have little doubt that they would amend the rules to allow they to put New York in. It is just how MLS and US Soccer are, in fact they may just take the winner of the East anyhow and there is nothing that would stop them. Yes you have to think the logic would be to take the next best overall team, but when has US Soccer or MLS used logic in their decisions?
That's the thing
I think they deliberately don’t publish the criteria for the fallback scenarios when a team wins more than one berth. I remember reading several articles (can’t find any of them now unfortunately) in 2009 before the Open Cup final that it was an open question whether or not the winner would receive a Champions League berth. I think they were holding out to ensure that an MLS team won the competition so that they wouldn’t waste one of the U.S. spots on a team from a lesser league. After the Sounders won in ‘09, they happily announced that they had earned a spot in the Champions league. Since Seattle has continued to win the USOC (3 years in a row), I think U.S. soccer has been pinned down on this one, and probably won’t be able to pull it if a USL or NASL team wins at some point in the future. I actually really like this as the USOC is the only link for these teams in lesser leagues to the continental championship. In the absence of promotion relegation (which I don’t want to see in the US), this is a very important connection.
All that said, I think U.S. Soccer and MLS will very likely allocate “at large” berths to the best teams possible and not the runner up in the USOC. The Supporters Shield race has historically provided the candidates for the fallback scenarios, and there’s no reason to expect otherwise now.
So, in the end, RSL’s chances of getting into CCL improved ever so slightly last night when Seattle lifted the Open Cup.
by K61 on Oct 5, 2011 9:54 AM MDT up reply actions 1 recs
SS runner up but,
in 2007 (which determined who would be in the 08-09 version of the tournament) DC United was in for winning Supporters’ Shield, Houston was in for winning MLS Cup, New England won the US Open Cup and was runner up in MLS Cup, so they gave the 4th spot to Chivas USA which was the runner up in the Supporters’ Shield race.
in 2008 Columbus got in as they were winners of both the Supporters’ Shield and MLS Cup, New York got in for being runner up at MLS Cup, and DC United got in for winning the US Open Cup. The 4th spot went to Houston as the runner up in the Supporters’ Shield race.
As K61 said there is no published criteria from US Soccer, who controls the spots. I have reached out to them to ask if there is an established standard or if it is decided each year as different situations arise, I have not yet heard back from them.
Thanks for checking it out
I was pretty sure that the situation was a little more complicated than this post made it out to be.
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