NASL's split-season model, now in third year, offers unpredictable thrills
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Version 0 of 1. Last week, Bill Peterson, commissioner of the second-tier North American Soccer League (NASL), offered his support for the introducing promotion and relegation into American soccer. The announcement would, as expected, grab retweets and headlines - despite the limitations he would also mention. Introducing a promotion and relegation system, Peterson added, is something that will take time. One criticism of delaying the introduction of such a structure - or just not implementing promotion and relegation in general - is that it leads nothing games at certain parts of the season. (Major League Soccer, with 12 of its 20 teams qualifying for the end of season playoffs, for example, has been accused of this. With such a high percentage of teams making it into the final stages, some regular season games may carry less or no meaning.) But until such a system can be put in place, the NASL feel that they have the best structure to help counter the problem faced by closed leagues, adding a sense of meaning to almost every game and benefitting fans in the process. “Since I have been here, we have always had a battle go down to the last weekend,” Peterson, who was announced as commissioner of the league in the latter half of 2012, said. “Everything can be tinkered with and toyed with, but I think this is perfect for what we are doing and how the game is meant to be played.” The NASL operates under a split-season model, with the league schedule separated into two competitions: a spring season, which is played from April to June, followed by a fall season, which takes place between July and November. Though not common in Europe or other American sports, the split-season model is used in a number of South American countries including Colombia, Mexico, and Uruguay. The winner of each season, both of which start with teams on zero points, is guaranteed a place in the four-team end-of-season playoffs, known as the Championship. An additional two teams qualify based on a league table that combines both the spring and fall records. This combined table also helps select seedings for the playoffs: season winners are guaranteed seeds one and two, with the top seed being allocated to the team with the best combined record. (The top two seeds also gain home field advantage in the two semifinals, with the highest seeded finalist guaranteed home privilege again.) Seeds three and four are selected based on their finishes in the combined league. “There were some questions, certainly in my mind, about how that would all work out,” Gary Smith, manager of the Atlanta Silverbacks, who had previously worked in England and the MLS, said. “But, I have to say, it makes for a really exciting start to the season.” The added excitement, Smith said, first comes from having a spring season that is much shorter than the fall. This segment consists of just 10 games - one against each of the NASL’s 11 teams - allowing every team to go into that season knowing that a good run of results could potentially help secure them an early playoff place. “Every game we played [earlier this season] was really cut and thrust,” Smith, who is in his first season in the NASL, said. “The preparations that went into the preseasons for some of the teams where real substantial.” Since the split season model was introduced, in 2013, the spring season champions have won that title by a single point every year. At the end of this segment, a break of roughly a month allows teams to regroup. One advantage of this break, Bill Peterson said, is that teams can address and strengthen their rosters, the timing coincides with the international transfer window. NASL teams can use this period to play friendlies against international opposition who may also be on their summer breaks. The fall season currently consists of 20 games – home and away against each opposition. It is during this period that most fans’ attention turns to the combined table, Jason Bruzzichesi, CEO of Ralph’s Mob, a Tampa Bay Rowdies supporters group, said. “We assume that somebody will win the fall season,” he added. “That still leaves two more seeds – three and four – for the playoff positions. So it’s not just a matter of going for the win [of the fall season], but also jostling for position [in the combined table].” Last season, six points separated FC Edmonton, in third, and Indy Eleven, in seventh, in the combined table. Currently, five points separate the teams in the same positions. Most teams, Bill Peterson said, are still in with a chance of winning the fall season or qualifying for the playoffs with two or three games left to play. “It’s fascinating, and without promotion and relegation, I think it’s necessary to maintain fan interest for the latter part of the year,” Peter Wilt, president of Indianapolis Eleven, said. “Ultimately, it comes down to fans being more interests – and that’s best for everybody.” Of course, there is no perfect model. It could be argued that the winner of the spring season has less need to try in the fall, given that their playoff place is already booked early on. On paper, this appeared to be the case in 2013, when Atlanta, who won the spring season, finished second from bottom in the fall, going on to lose the championship final, the Soccer Bowl, to the New York Cosmos. That year, the winners of each league went straight to the final, though; there were no semifinals or combined tables. Bill Peterson said that the addition of two extra teams and seeding was aimed to combat the outlier of 2013, giving even certs for the playoffs something to play for in the latter part of the season. “The only negative I can think of is that you suddenly move so dramatically away from what is seen as the norm,” Gary Smith, who grew up in England, said. “It’s very different, and could be looked at as something that is going off in a major tangent.” The biggest difference for fans of other leagues to get used to, perhaps, is the idea of wiping the slate 10 games into a 30-game regular season. Until now, no spring strugglers have gone on to win the fall season – something that could be seen as an argument against the model. Currently, though, Ottawa Fury, who finished ninth in the spring, sit top of the fall table by five points with a game in hand. Were they to win fall season, it would be seen as another positive point for a system that the majority of fans, players and owners feel works best for the league. Even the coaches, begrudgingly, have come to like it, Bill Peterson joked. “They used to complain about it [because of the competitiveness], so I thought, Well, we must have a pretty good system,” he said. “What it does is force teams, each and every week, to go out and try and get three points - and that forced them to play hard each week, which is a benefit to the fans. Ultimately, it’s bringing a lot of exciting soccer to our league.” |