As NYCFC embark on a three game road trip, taking them from the Pacific Northwest to our nation’s capitol to DisneyWorld, at a time when they are tripping desperately along the ledge – or rather, even more desperately than usual – for points, it seems highly appropriate to ask this curious question: Can you name the one and only MLS team that has a winning percentage on the road?
And yes, looking it up is cheating. And no, it’s not NYCFC. Not even close.
Isn’t that weird? Only one team in the entire league. Not just the east or the west or among playoff teams. In the entire league. Weird, right?
How weird? Well, not to get all Rainman on you, but lets compare MLS to this year’s Major League Baseball standings, where, of the 30 teams, 11 are at .500 or above on the road. And that’s a reasonable comparison, right?, because, like soccer, the home fields are different sizes and it’s not only likely but almost expected that a team will build itself to take advantage of the unique qualities of a place it knows its going to play half its games. A strategy which might, in turn, make it LESS successful at other venues – resulting in a potentially higher number of poor records on the road. But while 11 is low, it ain’t 1. (To be clear, this line of reasoning distinguishes soccer and baseball from other sports like basketball, football, and hockey, where the playing surfaces are, at least supposed to be, the same from city to city. And in case you’re wondering, in the most recent seasons, those leagues have – out of 30 teams – 10, 17, and a mind-boggling 22 teams, respectively, at or over .500 on the road).
But MLS? Just one. But wait, it gets weirder.
Because this isn’t just about bad teams being bad on the road (though there’s that; it’s late September and the Fire are still win-less away from Bridgeview, dating back to mid-2014). It’s about good teams – great teams – being terrible when they hit a HoJo’s (or where ever MLS players stay when they’re on the road. Probably not a HoJo’s. Though I would pay cash money to discuss the relative merits of the fried clam dinner with, say Didier Drogba or Andrea Pirlo).
Los Angeles, of course, is the most famous example of this phenomenon. Away from StubHub, they are 2-8 with 5 draws and, amazingly, -14 on goals (is Bruce Arena not giving Omar Gonzalez and Leonardo directions to the stadia? Because they’ve literally allowed three times as many goals on the road as they have at home, in the same number of games).
But the Galaxy are not alone. NYCFC, who as we know, have struggled wherever they play, actually have more road wins than 4 other teams – 2 of whom are playoff bound. And they have more draws on the road than another six teams.
An obvious explanation, of course, is, as we mentioned above, that the differing dimensions from city to city impacts a road team’s play. A team that is used to a small pitch, like, say, NYCFC, might find it difficult to adjust to a vastly larger venue on the road. Players might have a tendency to drift out of position, might misjudge touch lines or lose track of players on defense.
Like at Saputo in Montreal, for example, which is the largest pitch in the league and is as vast as the Plains of Abraham at 120 yards by 77 yards. Bad news for tiny little Yankee Stadium-playing NYCFC, right? You would think so – until you remembered that one of our three measly road wins happened there. And that we also won at PPL which is the league’s third largest pitch at 120 by 75. (And just to round out the list, NYCFC’s third win on the road was at BMO, the 14th largest pitch, at 115 by 74).
And while three games is a ridiculous sample size by anyone’s measure, it’s not like NYCFC’s road experiences are an outlier compared to the rest of the league. So why? And maybe it’s not about size. Could it be surface? 15 of the 20 venues use grass – could the five that don’t be what’s screwing everyone up? How about usage? Two of the stadia (Yankee and Gillette) are multi-sport/multi-purpose venues. But surely THAT’s not enough to skew EVERYONE’s numbers on the road. Altitude? Rio Tinto and Dick’s are both mile high, but again, that’s just two stadia. Hardly enough to be the reason for such woeful road records across the league.
Oh, and that one team in MLS who has a winning record on the road? That would be Vancouver. Who NYCFC play on Saturday. And guess what? They have a winning record at home too.
Photo by Matthew Ashton – AMA/Getty Images
