What's everybody's opinion on promotion and demotion play offs? The Dutch-system is very old fashioned in my eyes and allows for way too many quirks and I like the German approach.
Dutch:
- #18/last in the eventual first division ranking gets demoted directly.
- #16/17 are forced to go join the promotion play-offs of the Dutch second division - and thus still risk demotion.
- #1 of the Dutch second division gets promoted directly.
- Four 'period title' winners go to the promotion playoffs and the 4 other best teams are going to that as well. If a team already has a period title, then the runner up that period gets that period title and thus a chance to promote during the play-offs.
It looks like this:
Round I:
- Match A: Two of the lower teams of the 8 second division teams go against each other, the winner goes to Match C.
- Match B: Two of the lower teams of the 8 second division teams go against each other, the winner goes to Match E.
Round II:
- Match C: The winner of Match A goes against the #16 of the first division. The winner goes on to Match G.
- Match D: Two of the better 8 second division teams go against each other. The winner goes on to Match G.
- Match E: The winner of Match B goes against the #17 of the first division. The winner goes on to Match H.
- Match F: Two of the better 8 second division teams go against each other. The winner goes on to Match H.
Round III:
- Match G: Winner of Match C vs. the winner of Match D: The winner goes to/remains in the Dutch first division.
- Match H: Winner of Match E vs. the winner of Match F: The winner goes to/remains in the Dutch first division.
As you can see, it's very contrived.. In Germany - iirc - the bottom two get demoted, and the #16 plays a play-off match against the #3 of the German second division. The winner goes to/remains in the Bundesliga. Which is a very clean system.. I mention this, because the eventual #16 of the Dutch second division got period title
by default and thus was allowed to play for promotion and got to Match G, but thankfully lost. In every sportsmanlike scenario, a team that's that low on the ranking shouldn't be allowed to play for promotion, yet it happened - hence why it needs to change (at least in the Netherlands).
It's not even that the period titles give you access to the second round of play-offs, but just to the play-offs.. But what's the point if you get the second period title (and in the above case by default!) and then suck the rest of the season? There would be teams more deserving of the play-offs based on their season ranking, but are not allowed to.
So long story short, how do other competitions do this? And if somebody is from Belgium, can they please explain the whole Play Off I, II and III thing? It's really confusing.. xD
I saw some of the Chicago vs New York game a few days ago, it was more entertaining than most European games, plenty of attacking. Shame there was so many empty seats though.
I'm going on a bit of a tangent here, but oh well.. Don't take this personally, I think MLS has quality football.
I've been to a MLS-game and saw quite a few reported on when I was in the states and I go to approximately four European games a year since I've come back home. So I know the difference, but the two really shouldn't be compared.. I'm absolutely not saying the MLS is crap, but it did in my opinion try to Americanize football in a way I believe actually detracts from the (romantics of the) sport. Stereotypical American sport coverage is very statistic orientated, which isn't bad - it's just a way of doing things. For example, a typical pre-game analysis most of the time looks at the star athletes and teams like this: Athlete X had so many turnovers, athlete Y has consistently hit X percentage in the first 3 innings, athlete Z's post-season record is tied with the franchise all time record, etc.. European sports coverage in my opinion used to be laidback.. For instance, in the Dutch football report, there's no need to go into an indepth discussion of the key players statistics before the game review playback starts - just stuff like, these teams have played this many times in this competition, these are the players they're sending in, and
the guy commentating on the match is X.. Well, for major European competition matches they do have lengthy table discussions, but they never focus on individual statistics.
Maybe it's just me, but going into those typical indepth statistical discussions about which team has the better Def/Off and thus will come out on top is hurting the romance of the sport.
The most glaring comparison can be made when looking at the coverage of the public broadcasting networks on sunday and Fox' coverage on monday, because the guys at Fox have been told to go in depth on stats, on order of a man named Murdoch.
That being said, I think European football is very much influenced by a lot of factors.. Teams like Barça and Bayern have been influenced by the Dutch school, in which the whole team works as a whole to bring the ball forward, while the Italian school has influenced trainers like José Mourinho who tend to have a key offensive duo/trio while focusing on their defensive prowess. Then there's Russian influences and thereby massive gaps in budgets between certain competitions. So when you have Barça and Bayern against each other, you have two teams that really want to play the ball around, while when you get Chelsea and Real, you have two teams that tend to stay back and try to counter. I know these strategies are used in the MLS as well, but in Europe, these are just that much more culturally imbedded. You'll almost never see a 3-3 game in the Italian competition for example.. I think Europe is just more diverse in football culture. So it's not as if the European football teams don't focus on attacking, just a few cultures a lot less.. and sometimes that's the best strategy, though in Holland, we call it anti-football..
That barca team is seriously poor though tbf, their best chances came from crosses swung in from deep which is practically unheard of. Simeone's record at Atleti is unreal though, Europa League, Euro SuperCup, Copa del Rey, League. And Champs Lg final to come. In 2 & half years.
I think there's more to Simeone's success then just him and his team. We saw last year that Barça is getting relatively old and needs to switch a lot in order for their system to work. Meanwhile, for some reason, Real came up short in the most important matches.. Something in me hopes that Real wins the Champions League.. Giving them their 10th CL-win is what the world needs in order for Ronaldo and Real to shut up for once..
That being said, I'm grateful that what used to be a very, very, very boring competition the past decade has become a bit of a dark horse the past year.. I mean, it was always either Barça or Real, and now there's a third..
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