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November 14, 2005
A New Idea For The MLS Cup
With D.C. United having been rudely dismissed from the MLS playoffs a couple of weeks ago, I only watched a few minutes of the first half of yesterday's MLS Cup, which means I didn't get to see the winning (and only) goal scored in injury time by Guillermo Ramirez. But Dave Landry, one of the two Daves from Daves On Soccer, had some brief thoughts on said game: * the Galaxy got their goal from a striker who had taken 62 shots this season, and scored exactly once. Why do the networks bother with halftime shows like that? They always come over as plastic and contrived, and I can't imagine that they actually increase ratings. Dave is onto another thing as well -- namely, the fact that only a little more than 21,000 fans attended the game. Though that means it was a sellout in one of the league's new Soccer-specific stadiums, it was one of the smallest crowds for an MLS Cup ever (click here for the Cup history). I understand the league wants to show off the new stadiums in an effort to get MLS cities from around North America to agree to build their home teams one of their own. Still, I think it's time to stop pretending that MLS Cup is an event so big -- that like the Super Bowl and major college bowl games -- that it needs to be held at a neutral site. Instead, it's time to award home field advantage to the team that makes it to the Cup with the best regular season record. It isn't any accident that the two best attended MLS Cups came when one of the finalists was playing on its own home field (1997 in D.C. and 2002 in New England). What the American public needs to see aren't shiny new -- but dinky -- Soccer-specific stadiums. What it needs to see is that Soccer can stir the passion of sports fans in America just like football, baseball, basketball and hockey. And while the MLS won't be able to approach attendance figures anywhere near the NFL anytime in the forseeable future with any sort of regularity, American fans understand championships, and they'll show up in droves if the home team is in the big game. It was a joke that LA, a team that finished the season at .500, got to play for the Cup on a neutral site. And it was a joke that New England, a team that dominated the Eastern Conference for most of the season, had to play at a neutral site as well. By all rights, this is a game that should have been played in New England at a stadium that every sports fan in America is familiar with before a sellout crowd about three times larger than the group that saw yesterday's final in Texas. As I've mentioned before, I was at MLS Cup in 1997, and watched as 57,000+ stood for a couple of hours through a dreadful Noreaster to cheer United on to victory. And it was as loud and boisterous as any sporting event that I've ever attended. It should be that way every year. UPDATE: And what happens when the team that's got the best record comes from one of those dinky Soccer-specific stadiums? Give them the option to move the match to a larger facility nearby -- one of which is available in each and every MLS home city without exception.
Eric
04:25 PM
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