When the trophy is lifted at the end of the 2014 MLS season, the league will celebrate not just a new champion, but the end of an era. Beginning next season, MLS will get a polish and be left all shiny and new. A new Collective Bargaining Agreement and spending. A new TV deal and riches. New teams and fans. Finally, they will be able to take aim at some the world’s best leagues. MLS 3.0.
The conference finals are an MLS dream come true
MLS has a dream final four, and they’re set to put on the best finale for which the league could have hoped.
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First, though, MLS 2.0 must come to a close. And it is set to finish it as incredibly as anyone could have possibly imagined.
This weekend brings the first leg of the conference finals, and no matter which team emerges victorious at the end of the MLS Cup Playoffs, this is a dream final four for the league.In the Western Conference, it's the two best teams in the league: the LA Galaxy and Seattle Sounders. Meanwhile in the East, the glitzy New York Red Bulls and red hot New England Revolution remain.
The league dreamed up MLS 2.0 in 2002 after folding two teams the previous year. MLS’s future was in doubt and a new approach was needed to keep the league from joining the two teams that had disappeared. It was a matter of surviving in a world full of critics predicting the league’s imminent demise. They had to make sure they wouldn’t join the slew of failed American soccer leagues, and from there build a foundation from which the league could grow.
To do so, MLS set out to build soccer-specific stadiums, just like L.A.'s StubHub Center and Red Bull Arena. In the absence of soccer-specific stadiums, they wanted to ensure that stadiums offered favorable terms to the clubs and an opportunity to draw big crowds, like Seattle's CenturyLink Field and New England's Gillette Stadium. They also wanted to grow the teams they had, like the Galaxy, Revolution and Red Bulls, while bringing new ones in, like the Sounders. And finally, they wanted the teams to have star power, both from the US -- Clint Dempsey, Landon Donovan and Jermaine Jones -- and from overseas -- Thierry Henry, Robbie Keane and Obafemi Martins.
For the last 12 years, MLS has been developing a blueprint and executing it, all in an attempt to put the league on stable footing and give it a chance for astronomic growth. They have done just that, and it will be on full display in a conference finals that will be so good and so big that there is no way they could have dreamed of these heights back in 2002.
This, friends, is MLS’s perfect final four.
Big markets?
The first-, second-, seventh- and 13th-biggest markets in the country are represented in the conference semifinals, and while Seattle is the smallest of the four, it may be the best MLS city in the country. The league could hardly ask for bigger markets, bigger audiences or more attention being drawn its way. Check.
Great teams, great stadiums and great crowds?
MLS also couldn’t ask for better teams. The Galaxy and Sounders have proved themselves to be the class of the league since May, which also happens to be when most people in the league started wishing that they would square off in the playoffs. They are the league’s two best attacking teams, averaging 2.03 and 1.91 goals per game, respectively, and will be backed by a sell-out crowd in MLS’s biggest soccer-specific stadium -- 27,000 seat StubHub Center in Los Angeles -- as well as at least the 42,000 Sounders fans that make them the best-drawing team in the league.
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On the opposite side of the country, the Red Bulls will play in a $200 million palace, where they will unleash the best attack in the Eastern Conference led by Bradley Wright-Phillips, who tied the MLS record for goals in a season. Of course, the Revolution are the hottest team in MLS, winning 12 of their last 13 matches thanks to an attack that is averaging 2.15 goals per game in that stretch. Check.
Giant stars?
And it just so happens that many of the league's biggest stars will be featured in the conference semifinals. For the Galaxy, it's MVP finalist and Ireland captain Keane and Omar Gonzalez, not to mention the retiring Landon Donovan in his last hurrah. The Sounders counter with U.S. captain Dempsey, as well as MVP finalist Obafemi Martins. In New York, Wright-Phillips is joined by Henry, arguably the most accomplished player ever to play in the league, who may also be its most productive since joining the Red Bulls four years ago. Oh, and the Revolution just so happen to have Jones, who rose to fame with a string of outstanding performances for the U.S. at the World Cup, and the third MVP finalist, Lee Nguyen. Check.
With these four teams, MLS is set for a final they can gush about. No matter who gets there, it will be two big markets, a pair of good teams, stars aplenty and goals by the truckload. It will be a finale the league will love.
MLS will take a big leap next season. It will be a new era, and an exciting one, as MLS 3.0 takes shape. But before the league gets there, they have the final days of MLS 2.0, and it will be the best damn curtain call MLS could have ever imagined.
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