The Only Constant Is Change
Leave it to me to add a bunch of new subscribers to this newsletter—a thing I created as an outlet for the extra flotsam of soccer thoughts floating around in my Star Wars garbage level excuse for a brain—and then go quiet for a month.
Anyway, a special welcome to anyone seeing their first new edition of Soccer Eagle after clicking the link during the insanity to the World Cup. The insane World Cup made me insane for a bit, hence the need for a reset over the last month. I spent some time powering down, visiting my wife's family in Puerto Rico (anyone looking for Puerto Rico recs, hmu) and thinking about the future.
The future. What a concept. One of the things I love most about working in American soccer is that the future is impossibly unknowable in a way that isn't true in almost any other sport we pay attention to in this country. Sure, LeBron signing with the Sixers surprised a lot of people, but it still fit within a finite number of possibilities. The NBA is weird, but it's weird in mostly predictable ways.
American soccer isn't like that. So much of the type of structure that we take for granted in American football, basketball, baseball, et al is still forming as our sport grows and changes in this massive and messy country. That's why it's so easy to fall into the pit of tired American soccer tropes (PAY TO PLAY! PRO/REL! WHAT IF OUR BEST ATHLETES!) when we get slapped across the face with a desultory end to a home World Cup. Everything is slippery and shaky and there's nothing to hold on to, so we grasp at whatever feels like it might provide some purchase. Reductive thinking feels right in soccer because we're measuring ourselves against the elite footballing nations; conversely, there's no desperate inquisition of the pathways to the NFL or NBA (outside of issues of equity) because we treat those pathways as self-regulating.
Forgive me for the long-winded lead up to the story of the day, the reason for the headline, and my foggy-headed musings about the unknowable. This is me, being back. Apparently.
Also back? A flashing neon sign of an example of the unpredictable, unknowable, and uncertain in the form of a proposed new MLS playoff format. That's right, MLS is doing it again, according to Pablo Maurer at The Guardian. Grab onto something, quick.
While I'm certainly interested in the details of the proposed format and how it works, my prevailing thoughts tend towards being irked by Major League Soccer's consistent inconsistency. MLS has made massive progress over the last 30+ years and it's at least arguable that some of that progress happened because the league dodged, dipped, ducked, and dodged unlike any other professional sports league—much less soccer league—that has tried to pull the trick of making it in digital age.
But dammit, it would be nice to know what to expect from season to season. I think a lot about how the consistency of the sports I grew up on, chiefly Major League Baseball and big time American football, allowed me to anticipate a new season in the build up to it because I could imagine it playing out like any other season before—but with my team on top. Sports lore relies greatly on the ability to connect the past to the present and while there are always exceptions, it's much easier to do that when things stay the same. If not forever, then for long enough.
Major League Soccer doesn't do "long enough". While talking about the proposed playoff format with Arman Katai on The Best Soccer Show last night I expressed my belief that the league's adaptability is both a strength and a weakness. As a newcomer in both American sports and the global soccer scene, MLS's approach to its structure and rules was/is largely the right one. There's no point in getting bogged down in being precious about competitive integrity and tradition when there are hardly enough fans who care about the former and you'd only be borrowing the latter from league faraway.
But MLS is now well past worrying about its long term future. Churn and change that can be excused as part-and-parcel of the growth phase of the league now feels unnecessary at best and potentially damaging at worst. Rather than settle down and act like the established league it can now claim to be, MLS is again unbalancing fans with drastic changes to its calendar, playoff structure, and spending rules. Those ideas might seem like game-changing ideas in a boardroom (and I agree with enacting some of them, for the record), but that doesn't mean its not worth considering how being so nimble means no fan will have the luxury of taking MLS for granted in all the best ways.
Or maybe MLS is change. Change is MLS. Who knows how I'd feel if MLS stayed the same for more than a few years at a time. Boring.
To be fair, it's not just MLS that is caught in this trap. The reasons for it differ—MLS's quickness to make format and other big changes is institutionalized—but a complete rejection of longstanding tradition and structure is a feature of our modern age and the battle for power to run big time sports. College football is the most obvious example of this in the United States (I'm honestly not sure which conference my favorite college football team is in without looking it up), but the fallout from Gianni Infantino's crimes and misdemeanors this summer continued today with word that Uefa and Concacaf are pondering a massive combined Nations League-style tournament featuring all 96 nations.
That tournament would be a massive plus for the USMNT (not to mention Mexico and Canada) as proposed, but I can't help but feel uncomfortable with the guardrails potentially coming off when it comes to the organization of international football. This jockeying for position as Uefa stares down Gianni and FIFA is easy to get excited about from a narrow perspective, but I can't argue in good faith that it's good for the health of the global game.
As mentioned above, there's a new episode of The Best Soccer Show out, the first new episode post-summer vacation.
Get it from one of these places:
Check out The Best Soccer Show Patreon, where I dump random soccer thoughts, do regular Office Hours (back after the summer) and occasionally post videos of myself playing FIFA 18.
Read Arman Kafai's work at Footy Analytics Musings.
Listen to SiriusXM FC and keep me employed talking about soccer on the radio.
Support Morning Kickaround, the show I do with Robert Kerr focused on the ever-changing landscape of the game in the United States. There's some MLS and USMNT talk there, but we're mostly focused on keep track of the explosion of new clubs/leagues/etc. below the biggest league. If you're at all interested in the Soccer Wars, MK is the show for you.
MK is live Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 9:30 ET on YouTube and is available as a podcast wherever you get those.
