SB Nation 2010-11 CONCACAF Champions League
Real Salt Lake, Sounders have managed to thrive in MLS while also competing in CCL. Columbus and Toronto have watched their seasons fall apart under the same duress.
Oct 9, 2010 - One of the biggest knocks against CONCACAF Champions League is that MLS teams have more to lose than they do to gain from playing in the international tournament.
Unlike their Mexican counterparts, MLS teams have much more restrictive budgets, fewer players and generally have to travel farther distances. Unlike the Central American and Caribbean teams, MLS teams aren't really dying for the increased exposure.
There is a potentially compelling argument that playing in CCL actually harms the MLS product by diverting the focus from league matches onto relatively poorly attended matches that have a negative carryover effect and bring down the overall quality of play.
There is the obvious financial expenses that comes with flying entire teams to countries with difficult-to-access airports. There is an equally obvious physical toll that comes from spending untold extra travel hours on planes and going through customs. Then there are things like players being exposed to injuries -- or worse -- while competing in the lower-quality facilities that most teams call home outside of Mexico. Tales of players not getting postgame meals while playing outside of the United States are also not uncommon.
There are, of course, potentially offsetting benefits as well. Even MLS's biggest supporters won't deny that the league suffers from a perception problem. Beating international competition can only help, while avoiding it will only make it worse. There's also something to be said about raising the level of competition through playing in adverse situations. One of MLS's founding principles, after all, is to provide a boost to U.S. soccer as a whole, and exposing players to this kind of competition is an absolute must in that regard.
All of which leads to MLS potentially being able to make more money, whether through TV rights and gate receipts from extra matches or through longterm gains.
In the meantime, it's still worth asking whether or not MLS teams competing in CCL are demonstrably hurt by playing the extra matches.
The answer, at least based on the performance of the four MLS teams that made it to CCL Group Stage play, is mixed. The Columbus Crew and Toronto FC have seen their seasons come apart at the seams; Real Salt Lake has managed to secure advancement to the CCL quarterfinals with a match left to play, while still making a push for the Supporters Shield; and the Seattle Sounders have actually improved as their schedule got more crowded.
Why this has happened is hardly an exact science.
"To me the most important aspect of getting us through this stretch is that we’ve become a deeper team," said Dan Barlow, RSL's fourth-year strength and conditioning coach. "I’ll take a little bit of credit, but we really had a good rotation going. If you look at the minutes, we were able to rotate a lot of guys and still play well. You really don’t see a big spike in the number of minutes guys played because we did have a pretty good rotation."
While players such as Alvaro Saborio, Javier Morales and Jamison Olave were regularly playing 90 minutes for the first half of the MLS season, once CCL play picked up they were used more sparingly. At the same time, players like Collen Warner, Kyle Reynish, Chris Schuler and Rauwshan McKenzie were basically ignored until CCL play began, but all have logged significant MLS minutes -- and played well -- in the past six weeks. No player has competed in as many as 33 of RSL's 35 competitive matches (two in the U.S. Open Cup, five in CCL and 28 in MLS) and only three have played in more than 30.
That rotation has allowed RSL to post a +2 goal-differential and go unbeaten in their four MLS matches that were played less than a week after CCL matches. They've also managed to go 3-1-1 in their CCL matches, with their one loss coming in a virtual typhoon at Cruz Azul.
"We looked at how we could give guys a break so that they weren’t playing more than two games like that," Barlow said. "To expect a guy to play three games for 90 minutes at 100 percent is an unreasonable expectation at that point. You’re just asking too much of the guy."
Seattle has used a similar -- although less extreme -- rotation to even better success in MLS play -- although not as good in CCL.
No MLS team has played more competitive matches than the Sounders' 39 (four USOC matches, two preliminary round and five group stage CCL matches and 28 MLS matches). They too have relied upon a rotation that has kept any player from appearing in more than 37 matches (Fredy Montero) and just five have appeared in as many as 31. The Sounders have used 28 different players this season, all of whom have played at least one MLS match and 21 of whom have played in at least eight MLS matches.
Despite -- and maybe because of -- this roster churn, the Sounders have actually been better in MLS matches played in the same week as CCL games than they do in their other matches. The Sounders are +7 in their four MLS matches that came directly after CCL Group Stage matches and are 4-0-0, as opposed to -4 in their other 24 matches. For the entire season, the Sounders are +5 in their nine MLS matches (claiming 19 points) that have followed other competitions and -1 in their 19 others (26 points).
Sounders fitness coach Dave Tenney actually seems to think the congested schedule is not a huge problem in and of itself. He's more concerned about the travel and the lack of quality facilities that accompany some of the roadtrips.
"The advantage of playing Saturday, Wednesday, Saturday is that you’re basically in a recovery mode after you play, then you play, then you recover, then you play, then you recover," said Tenney, who also has worked for the Kansas City Wizards. "From that standpoint, what you do in a training program is not as important.
"Again we’re looking at assessing and evaluating everyone’s fitness on a daily basis. So at this point you know you’re at this point where it’s game, recovery, game, recovery. Now you’re looking at individuals and saying OK which guys are falling behind and might need to rest. And (Sounders coach) Sigi (Schmid) is looking at it as eight or nine guys recovered well, no issues, and you have one or two that look kind of fatigued. Maybe we want to make some kind of change."
Of course, the idea of rotating players and making sure not to push guys beyond their limits borders on pretty standard operating procedure at this point.
Both Columbus (26) and Toronto (24) have also used more players than RSL (20), but the results have been far less impressive.
The Crew have a -2 goal differential in their five matches that have followed CCL Group Stage games and have won just one of those matches (six points), which was their first such game on Aug. 21. That is in contrast to their +8 goal differential and 40 points in their 23 other matches.
"It’s hard," Crew midfielder Eddie Gaven told the team's website. "We’re playing so many games right now, it’s hard to be up for every single game. We have to try to go out and make sure we’re at or best. It starts with working hard … and usually things will be good from there."
Toronto has struggled even more.
The Reds entered the main draw of their first international competition with high hopes, and sitting in good position to make their first postseason appearance in four MLS seasons. In matches following CCL Group Stage games, they've posted a -4 goal-differential and claimed just four points in those five matches. Overall, TFC has claimed just nine points in their past 13 matches, a stretch that has cost their coach and general managers their jobs and threatened to throw the entire organization into disarray.
Clearly playing in multiple tournaments is not without risks. But playing in multiple competitions has been a part of soccer for a long time and it doesn't appear to be changing anytime soon.
To hear one former coach tell it -- even if it's with tongue slightly pressed against cheek -- maybe the problem is that current coaches don't push their players hard enough.
"There's a big deal in the coaching ranks called man management and I appreciate that," said Alan Hinton, the former NASL Sounders coach who also played 440 matches as a professional in England from 1961-1975. "But in my day we played everybody all of the time until they got injured or looked very, very tired. And when they were tired we suggested they weren’t very fit so we would train them harder to make them fit.
"I think games are better than training and for me 50-60 games a year is pretty common in Europe and it should be the same here in America. Players shouldn’t have a problem playing in most of those games. I think for the most part Sigi Schmid is doing that here and I hope some of the other coaches look at Sigi and his success and say, 'I should handle it like this guy, it’s the way to go.'"
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