Now that all three professional soccer leagues in the US have settled on a common point system, I'd like to see if we can get standardization on a two related issues.
Namely how the results and tables are presented.
1) Home Teams Listed First:
Most of us here on the North American Soccer list and on the Web pages will use the FIFA international standard of listing home teams first. We know _Soccer America_ will continue to do so, and we hope that the three leagues do too. The North American convention of home team LAST before the game and the winner FIRST AFTER the game does not let fans know whether a win was an upset or not. The way the AP handles such results for European leagues in the Sunday papers in some US cities is quite acceptable, namely the phrase "Home Teams Listed First" at the top of the column of scores. Please give this a try.
2) Standings format:
There is a wide variety of reporting the standings in North American professional sports, some of them useful, others providing too little information, and others providing too much virtually irrelevant information.
I'd like to suggest the adoption of a format that is based on the one used around the world for soccer (see Reuters for an example), but one that also takes into consideration the Shootout system in use for all three US leagues.
This is how the first two weeks of the MLS season could look (completely hypothetically, of course):
1. Major League Soccer 1996
Week: 1 4/6/96
San Jose Clash - DC United 2:1
Week: 2 4/13-14/96
Tampa Bay Mutiny - New England Revolution 2:3
Los Angeles Galaxy - NY/NJ MetroStars 1:1 HSW
Kansas City Wiz - Colorado Rapids 3:1
Dallas Burn - San Jose Clash 2:2 ASW
Columbus Crew - DC United 1:2
HSW = Home Shootout Win ASW = Away Shootout Win
Table: MLS Eastern Conference 1996
Pd W WS LS L GD G+ G- Pts
1. New England Revolution 1 1 0 0 0 +1 3 - 2 3
2. DC United 2 1 0 0 1 0 3 - 3 3
3. NY/NJ MetroStars 1 0 0 1 0 0 1 - 1 0
4. Tampa Bay Mutiny 1 0 0 0 1 -1 2 - 3 0
5. Columbus Crew 1 0 0 0 1 -1 1 - 2 0
Table: MLS Western Conference 1996
Pd W WS LS L GD G+ G- Pts
1. San Jose Clash 2 1 1 0 0 +1 4 - 3 4
2. Kansas City Wiz 1 1 0 0 0 +2 3 - 1 3
3. Los Angeles Galaxy 1 0 1 0 0 0 1 - 1 1
4. Dallas Burn 1 0 0 1 0 0 2 - 2 0
5. Colorado Rapids 1 0 0 0 1 -2 1 - 3 0
OK, here are some annotations for the rationale:
a) Record Shootouts as Draws.
Shootouts should actually be recorded as draws, since that's what they are; with the proviso that there is a simple way to designate which team actually won the shootout. Please do NOT record the Galaxy "win" over the Metrostars as a 2:1 win for LA. Why? Who "scored" the winning "goal" for LA? Answer: nobody! It is NOT a goal! If such a result is recorded as a 2:1 win for LA, many local papers will get the Goals For and Goals Against wrong (and maybe the total points too). The AP has been notorious for doing this with the A-League for at least the last 4 years.
b) Pld (Games Played) column
If US pro soccer were like many European and Latin leagues where all matches of a round were on the same day, this might not make a difference. But precisely because there will literally be no one moment during the season when all 10 teams will have played exactly the SAME number of games (until the end, of course) we need to know the number in this column to quickly determine who has games in hand, and who doesn't.
c) Wins Shootout Wins Shootout Losses Losses
Why have all 4 columns here, and why in this order? Simple, array the results in the order in which points are awarded. It's a lot easier to put Shootout Wins and Shootout Losses in the middle, so we can see at a glance how the points are arrayed, and also to see which teams are better at this tiebreaker and which aren't.
d) GD (Goal Differential)
Since this is the second tiebreaker after points, this needs to be here too and not just Goals For and Goals Against.
e) GF / GA
Since goals for is the third tiebreaker, we need to see this as well.
Whats the league needs to avoid is the 'minimalism' of the A-League standings of last year:
W L GF GA Pts
The problem with this is that there was a mixing up of real wins and shootout wins as well as real losses and shootout losses and there was no way to figure out after the fact how how the points were determined. Also, because the A-League would record shootout wins as 2:1 for one team, the points and goals scored were wrong about 75% of the time on the AP wire.
What the leagues also need to avoid are the irrelevant clutter that baseball, the NFL and other leagues use. Namely data such as night games, day games, conference record, division record, etc. All of this is meaningless in terms of figuring out where the teams stand and just adds needless clutter to the standings.
Please folks, arrive at ONE COMMON STANDARD so that fans can tell the most important information at a glance, namely:
"If we win, where are we in the standings?"
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