On Three Week Layoffs, Unbalanced Schedules, and Continental Champions
The Chicago Fire just played their first match in 20 days, a 1-0 victory over a ten-man NYCFC side. This three week break was partly their fault, and partly the fault of the league. The Men in Red’s match against New England was moved at the request of the Revolution, and agreed upon by the Fire. A week later the league decided to postpone the team’s match in Montreal to give L’Impact a fighting chance at winning the CONCACAF Champions League. This bizarre anomaly in Chicago’s schedule has had positive and negative consequences for the team, the league, and Fire fans. What’s more, the scheduling decisions in play during this bizarre month of April serve as a great description of MLS in a nutshell in 2015- a rapidly growing, ambitious soccer league that often can’t seem to get out of its own way.
Last night’s match was the first in a doubleheader on Univision Deportes. Spanish channels bring MLS its highest TV ratings, and adding the SAP feature this year for English viewers has brought in more viewers. Toyota Park had a big crowd, despite heavy rains. The game was even broadcast on several channels overseas. Many of the new fans tuning in were, no doubt, looking for David Villa, but NYCFC was playing their fourth match in twelve days and Villa, as well as several of his teammates, was out with an injury. The match featured a red card to NYCFC’s Andrew Jacobson, multiple injuries which will add to City’s long disabled list, and a rusty Fire squad who couldn’t break down a ten-man team. It was hardly a ringing endorsement for the league.
No Balance Palace: Chicago Fire Deal with Bizarre Schedule
“But wait” you say, you supporters of this new NYC team: “That’s hardly fair! Why should one team play four league games in two weeks while another sits idle for nearly a month, resting, recovering, and getting rusty?”
MLS scheduling has come under criticism every year since 2011. Back then, the league had a balanced schedule. Teams played each other twice, in a home/away setup. This is how scheduling is done in virtually every league in the world. The next season, with expansion happening again, and an odd number of teams, the league moved away from the balanced schedule. But if there were ever a year to embrace it again, 2015 would have been it. There are a perfect twenty teams in MLS. That’s the FIFA limit on first divisions (a rule MLS will be breaking in a couple years). With a weakened East, two expansion teams, and the constant issue of cross-continental travel, a balanced schedule could prevent the kind of ugly game we saw in Bridgeview.
Another issue with the league’s schedule process is their insistence on playing through FIFA international dates. The Fire have had two matches moved to June, where for at least one, they will be missing Shaun Maloney and probably David Accam, two very effective players. Both of them will likely be called up for big national team matches. The other game comes just a few days before the Fire enter the coveted US Open Cup, where they are four-time champions. The New England match was initially moved because it, too, rested on a FIFA date. The Revs would have been missing Juan Agudelo, Lee Nguyen, and potentially Jermaine Jones as they played Mexico. As more and more quality players enter MLS, the policy of playing on FIFA dates looks worse and worse each year.
Fire fans can take some solace in the fact that while Accam and Maloney will be gone for that rivalry matchup, Patrick Nyarko and Mike Magee could very well be back in the 18 at that point. And that match was moved with the Fire’s blessing – after all, the team wouldn’t say no to a full week of rest before they played a tough road game on turf in Montreal.
But that Montreal match was the second one moved into the summer due to bad scheduling. MLS badly wants a team to win the CCL, and Montreal is the league’s first finalist since Real Salt Lake a few years back. When Frank Yallop had a press conference last week, he alluded to the fact that his team had no say in the schedule change. “The match was moved” was all he would say.
Montreal Impact are currently 90 good minutes away from winning the Concacaf Champions League. This is an accomplishment in itself. Many Fire supporters are quietly rooting for Frank Klopas, Dilly Duka, Dom Oduro, and the injured Justin Mapp to bring a little glory to MLS. Their success in CCL has also been directly influenced by MLS’ poor scheduling decisions.
L’Impact is the worst team in MLS league play over the past two years. They have not won a match this season. This terrible performance has freed them to pursue continental glory with a vengeance. While D.C. United was struggling to field a strong team during group play, Montreal was putting out their first choice lineup every time, and fielding reserves during MLS play. Unbalanced schedules, especially the one MLS had in 2014, lend themselves to mid-week games. Midweek league games make it much tougher for teams who are playing in additional tournaments. When MLS does not take CCL into consideration when making its schedule each year, it says something about the front office. As Kevin Egan pointed out on Chicago Fire Weekly last week, it appears that MLS didn’t expect any of their teams to make the finals this year. Bye weeks for Montreal and D.C. could have been added to the schedule before the season started, in anticipation of the knockout rounds of CCL, preventing the awkward maneuvering we saw this month.
Now, if Chicago had just lost to NYCFC at home, these issues would be discussed ad nauseum by Fire fans. But since the Fire are now the only team remaining who are undefeated against conference opponents (especially important with an unbalanced schedule), everyone in Chicagoland can breathe easy. Their team is grinding out wins. Their team has quality depth at most positions for the first time in years. And we now know that the 2015 Chicago Fire can handle the unexpected as well.[secondbox][/secondbox]
