The Supporters’ Shield.
This Sunday will be the last game of the regular season for the LA Galaxy. To me this is the most important game the Galaxy will play all season. If they win this game they will take home the Supporters’ Shield, which to me is the most important honor to bring home. See, to me the Supporters’ Shield is even more important than winning the MLS Cup. Now don’t get me wrong, winning the MLS Cup is very important as well, but to most American sports fans it’s hard to understand, so let me break down 3 reasons why to me, the Supports’ Shield is more important than the MLS Cup.
1. Best Overall Record - To win the Supports’ Shield a team must have the highest ranking score compared to all the other teams in the league. For those of you who don’t know, in soccer a win gets your team 3 points, a draw gets your team 1 point and a loss receives no points. At the end of the regular season the team with the highest points has the highest record. If there’s tie for placement, then goal differential comes into play.
2. Flawed Playoff Set Up - If I’m not mistaken, MLS is the only soccer league in the world that has playoffs. Other soccer leagues around the world don’t have playoffs and stick to a single table set up where in the end the team with the best overall record is the winner of it all. Playoffs were implemented into Major League Soccer in order to appeal to the “American crowd”. That’s great and all, but the problem with this is the way MLS set up the playoffs. 8 teams go to the playoffs. The top 2 teams from each conference plus the next 4 teams from either conference with the highest records. With this it is possible for 6 teams from one conference and 2 team from the other to go to the playoff, which is happening this season. Now any normal playoff system would seed the teams 1 though 8 and have team 1 play team 8, team 2 play team 7 and so on, but not in MLS playoffs’ case. Instead the bottom 2 team move over to play the top 2 teams in the other conference. Lame man terms, the team seeded first could potential play a harder team than the team seeded 8, which is also happening this season. Overall, it’s a flawed playoff set up.
3. No Other League Has Playoffs - MLS is trying everything it can to build the sport of soccer in the US. They think that they have to change things here and there to help gain the support of domestic interest by doing thing like implement playoffs, but ultimately I feel if you want your league to be just like the English Premier League or La Liga in Spain, then do exactly what they do. Right? I mean if it works, then keep it.
Regardless of how I feel about MLS playoffs, I am ultimately supporting the LA Galaxy through it all whether it’s the MLS Cup or the Supports’ Shield. So the next time you watch a team raise the MLS Cup over their heads, look back and find out who won the Supports’ Shield that season as well. To me they’re the true MLS Champions.
