By Jason Davis – WASHINGTON, DC (Feb 26, 2016) US Soccer Players – The MLS season gets underway in just over a week, bringing us to that magical time of year when disappointment exists only in the future and every team is an MLS Cup champion waiting to happen. New players have yet to underwhelm. Each one remains the perfect addition to their teams, the missing piece (or one of the missing pieces) that will turn a middling team into a powerhouse, or an MLS Cup contender into a sure thing.
Hope springs eternal in the dawning of… well, spring.
Who knows what to expect? Despite a buildup that includes game after game, the MLS preseason isn’t much of a guide. The schedule is a hodgepodge of exhibitions and scrimmages that don’t really inform anything that’s to come once the real season begins and there are points on the line. Because of the way roster building works in soccer, some teams aren’t even complete when the season opener arrives. The primary transfer window remains open well into the season, and clubs can add unattached players at any time. More than a few roster spots will turnover between now and the middle of May.
Let’s not even get into the changes likely to come in the summer, when teams add players who have just finished European campaigns. The half-season player is a staple of MLS in the modern day and a wrinkle in the works that makes handicapping anything a fool’s errand.
Major League Soccer shares a lot spring traits with its namesake, Major League Baseball. Baseball teams are in the midst of their own preparations for a new season, and much of the “hope springs eternal” lore emanates from that sport’s rich American history. The rhythms of the season are part of the culture of sports in this country, with seamheads everywhere emerging from the frigid winter anxiously waiting for the day that pitchers and catchers report.
Like soccer, it’s tough to take much away in the area of predicative data from baseball’s preseason rituals. What baseball does have on MLS is a spring that follows an old familiar format, pits Major League teams against one another to the exclusion of almost anyone else, and doesn’t require a handful of clubs to follow a dramatically different schedule as they work towards being ready to start a new year.
Although the 2016 MLS schedule doesn’t kick off until March 6, four teams have already commenced their seasons. The four MLS clubs participating in the CONCACAF Champions League quarterfinals didn’t have the luxury of working through a process aimed at their first game against league competition. Instead, they found themselves on a rushed timeline with a superior, Mexican, opponent in front of them. Again, these are not complete teams at all. That’s not even considering the number of reps it takes to actually find chemistry among a changing squad.
It’s only logical that the staggered preseason between teams will have some impact on the regular season. Does trying to fire up the engines early help these four CCL participants get a better start? Or does the longer, more intense preseason mean fatigue will hit earlier for those teams than for others? Time will tell, but at least one thing is sure: Bruce Arena, Sigi Schmid, Jeff Cassar, and Ben Olsen have a tougher job than any of their MLS peers. Reaching the quarterfinals of the Champions League is a notable accomplishment. Still, it’s worth wondering for some teams if it’s worth throwing the start of the MLS season out of balance.
Of course, if MLS performed better in the Champions League, the issue of how the tournament impacts the preseason schedule wouldn’t be so pressing. A continental title would mitigate any disappointment caused by damage done to a league record.
Never mind. MLS teams still prioritize MLS Cup, a fact that won’t be changing anytime soon. Preseason preparations are as individual as the teams themselves. The plans ran a gamut, with different clubs taking very different tacks in getting themselves ready for the arduous march to December and (hopefully) a place in the final game of the season.
It’s sort of beautiful, in a way. Baseball’s rigid spring format makes for a predictable process, but it doesn’t allow for some of the fun and creative approaches MLS teams use to run players through their paces. Games against college teams, amateur teams, lower division teams, foreign teams–the variety of matches preseason brings is at least interesting, even if that same variety precludes us from learning much. Trialists. Rookies. New systems which can morph over just a few weeks. Unclear roles, shifting starting XIs. Nothing about the MLS preseason is certain, especially with teams are the best coming out of preseason.
That’s a good thing, really. It allows for all that hope, not just on the part of a handful of “big” clubs, but all the way down to the lowly teams that finished at the bottom of the standings last year.
Hope springs in MLS, 2016.
Jason Davis is the founder of MatchFitUSA.com and the host of Soccer Morning. Contact him: matchfitusa@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter:http://twitter.com/davisjsn.
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