September 1, at the SuperLiga final at Gillette Stadium where Mexican side Monarcas Morelia were crowned 2010 Champion, MLS Commissioner Don Garber said MLS is rethinking the MLS schedule due to increased prioritization of tournaments, specifically CONCACAF Champions League (CCL), SuperLiga, and Open Cup. Wednesday night, the New England Revolution fell 2-1 to Morelia and earlier in the week all four MLS sides lost games in CCL group play. Despite the results, a crowd of over 22,000 attended to watch Seattle drop 2-0 to Monterrey at Qwest Field on August 25.
“We’ve got to reassess the calendar quite a bit and we’ve been spending a lot of time doing that,” said Garber. “I’m up here today actually, with our competitive guys doing some planning, just talking about how could we do a couple things – capitalize on the excitement that took place during the World Cup that clearly proved that Americans loved this game and how do we build on that? Do we need to look at different formats? Do we need to look at our schedule again? How do we ensure that our teams are at full strength while we’re playing in very, very crowded schedules? We’re spending a lot of time planning and I want to be sure that we do well in all these tournaments. The first priority is our league tournament [MLS Cup], but certainly, so is the Champions League and again, I’d like to see the U.S. Open Cup be a bit more important to all of us.”
“How do we ensure that we could perform well in these competitions? Doing well in a closed market, meaning our own league, isn’t good enough,” said Garber. “We’ve got to be sure that we can continue to do well in all these other competitions and not be disadvantaged. The schedule disadvantages us a little bit. In Champions League we’re playing at the key time in our preseason, but at the same time we just have so many games and right now probably need to take a look at how we can be competitive in all those different tournaments.”
One of the initiatives MLS is looking at is re-launching a reserve league, largely staffed with MLS academy products. Read more about that here.
Wednesday night’s low attendance of 10,414 for the SuperLiga final contrasts with Seattle’s crowd of 22,513 for a CCL group match, and Garber acknowledged improvements could be made. Both tournaments play on the U.S. National Team’s intense rivalry with Mexico.
“We’ve always very much believed in trying to build a rivalry against the Mexican club teams, similar to the rivalry that we have on a National Team level and SuperLiga was our attempt to do that,” said Garber. “Now we have a bit more of that with the Champions League and we look forward to seeing that grow in importance. Certainly we believe [SuperLiga] has got value and we’ll sit down as we do every year and figure out what we need to do to continue to make it popular and satisfy the goals that we have and also the goals that the Mexican Federation has.”
Specifically, the commissioner saw a benefit in broadcasting the SuperLiga tournament in English as well Spanish language. “I’ve looked at the ratings for the Champions League in Spanish and English language,” said Garber, “and they're actually higher on Fox than they are in Spanish language, so I think there’s a market for it.”
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Comments
Good to see that MLS is trying to prioritize CCL. Schedule is important in that MLS teams leave off key players in away games so that they can prioritize the end of the MLS season. Ahother thing that would help is increasing the number of roster spots and increasing the salary cap so that the teams could have enough depth to compete in multiple competitions at the same time.
Unfortunately I think the English TV ratings for CCL may be due to a lack of interest by the Mexican and wider Lation audience. They are likely rightly focused on the Copa Libertadores. I think the only way we will interest the Mexican audience in this competition is to consistently beat them IN MEXICO and win the competition.
BTW: Tip of the hat to RSL for actually trying to win in Mexico. That game was a fantastic and exciting game. Wag of the finger to Columbus for sending a skeleton team and playing for the tie.
SF Earthquakes, Good points. Wednesday, Don Garber said that MLS is looking to expand the roster. Click on the link above that says "Read more about that here" or read, "Garber: MLS 'very focused' on re-launching reserve league" - also on US Soccer Examiner.
“We’re seriously evaluating the return of the reserve League and that would require us growing our rosters a bit and making commitments there." - Garber
This is good news to me. As a Galaxy fan looking forward to this years CCL, I was extremely disappointed in their loss to PR Islanders at home and the lack of effort the team displayed out on the pitch. That week , Galaxy players had 4 games in one week: Two games scheduled for MLS, PR Islanders, and the All Stars vs Man-U game (which was on the following day after PR Islanders).
Mexican teams sometimes have a great advantage in these international championship competitions. For example, when Chivas de Guadalajara were facing Inter of Brazil for the Copa Libertadores (CONMEBOL's version of Champions League), their league allowed Chivas to postpone their domestic league games during that week in order to be better rested for traveling and competition.
MLS could already start doing the same; they should postpone games for MLS teams in the CCL so they can send a strong A squad to compete.
MLS is a representative of US (and Canadian) soccer. For MLS to fail in these international competitions, especially after a good showing at the World Cup, deostrates to the world that US Soccer sucks. How will MLS continue to try to improve it's image, bring YOUNG international star talent (i.e. NOT Henry, Beckem, Marquez), and do good against Mexican teams if we do not prioritize this.
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