By Ridge Mahoney, Senior Editor
U.S. coach Bruce Arena was holding forth, deriding the MLS playoff system.
''You could have a situation where the ninth-best team in the league wins the championship,'' he said. ''That's ridiculous.''
Although Arena made news two weeks ago criticizing the MLS system, he uttered that quote last year during the playoff series between the two California rivals.
The Galaxy, which finished fourth in the Western Conference with a 9-12-9 record that was the ninth-best record (or second-worst, depending on how you look at it) in the league, led the Quakes 4-0 on aggregate before San Jose staged the most incredible rally in league history to advance, 5-4.
Heading into the final weekend of the 2004 season, whichever team — San Jose or Dallas — finishes last in the West will have a better record than the fourth-place team in the East (Chicago or New England). And thus the ninth-best team will again have a chance to win the title.
CROWDED CALENDAR: The league doesn't have plans to suspend play next season during the FIFA international dates, three of which will conflict with league play if MLS opens play the first week of April.
During meetings last week, according to a source, a 32-game schedule was discussed to balance a schedule in which teams would play four games with the five rivals in their own conferences and two games against teams in the other conference. The season would start the first weekend of April and a Western team, probably Kansas City, would move into the Eastern Conference to accommodate the additions of Real Salt Lake and CD Chivas USA.
About two dozen players missed league games last weekend to play for their national teams. There is another way.
If the league was willing to start play in mid-March, it could accommodate a 32-game schedule with the regular season concluding Oct. 1 and still leave open the FIFA dates of March 26-27/30, June 4-5/8, Aug. 17, Sept 3-4/7, and Oct. 8-9/12. (The playoffs would begin Oct. 15-16.)
Leaving the FIFA dates open would necessitate teams playing on Memorial Day and the Fourth of July holidays as well as several midweek dates. An earlier start might pose some problems with weather and other scheduling issues, but it could also accommodate a request from the players' union that the preseason be cut down to six weeks.
MLS teams would have to play through the CONCACAF Gold Cup and fitting in the U.S. Open Cup would require further compromises, but since most MLS teams play a lot of their reserves anyway in Open Cup games and put little or no effort into marketing them, the inconvenience would be minimal compared to the headaches of coaches planning for competitive matches without a few top players called away for national duty.
A 22-game schedule by which the 12 teams played each other twice, once at home and once away, has little support. There is also little chance of the league aligning 12 teams into three, four-team conferences as was the case in 2000 and 2001.
OTHER CHANGES: Under a plan discussed next week, rosters next season would be expanded to include an additional four players per team, increasing a team's allotment to 28 players and theoretically, incorporate some form of reserve team. The MLS reserve teams would occasionally play each other as well as A-League and PDL teams.