SuperLiga Brings Out The Best of MLS
The SuperLiga — a series of games now being played among four top Mexican and four top MLS clubs — has looked from the start like a tournament too far.
With its season already disrupted by the Concacaf Gold Cup, the Copa America, and the FIFA under-20 world championship, surely the last thing MLS needed was yet another distraction?
But the SuperLiga is confounding its critics. Crowds have been excellent, averaging over 17,000 for the eight games so far played, including a 37,337 attendance at the Rose Bowl to see Chivas de Guadalajara beat the hapless, and still Beckham-less, Los Angeles Galaxy 2–1.
That win for Chivas highlights another plus for MLS because, so far, it is the only Mexican win. MLS teams are riding high with three wins and four ties. The final four games of the first round will be played today and tomorrow, all of them games in which MLS teams play MLS teams, and Mexicans play Mexicans. These will decide which four teams go through to the semifinals. Only the Mexicans of Club America have been eliminated, and the current standings would see three MLS teams (D.C. United, FC Dallas, and Houston) in the semifinals, along with Chivas.
The success of the MLS teams should not be unexpected. They are, after all, playing at home (though the Galaxy, confronted by the overwhelmingly pro-Chivas crowd at the Los Angeles Coliseum, might wonder about that). And the MLS teams, in the middle of their season, are playing at peak level, whereas the Mexicans are at a preseason preparation stage.
But the success of the SuperLiga is a joint MLS-Mexican effort. For some years, MLS people have been watching the big crowds drawn by Mexican club teams when they play each other in exhibition games in America. Not only the size of the crowds, but their exuberance and colorful passion, too.
One of the reasons cited by MLS Deputy Commissioner Ivan Gazidis for creating the SuperLiga was a wish to bring some of that atmosphere of passionate fan involvement to MLS stadiums.
That, too, seems to be working out well.
But, for my money, the biggest positive aspect of the SuperLiga has been in the quality of the soccer played. Simply put: When MLS teams meet Mexican teams the sport itself has a more attractive look than when MLS teams play each other.
We got a hint of this earlier in the year, when D.C. United met Pachuca, and Houston played Chivas in the Concacaf Champions Cup. The MLS teams lost both those encounters, but it was the intensely competitive aura of the games that impressed and the high level of skill involved.
That last point is key. Critics of MLS play, myself among them, have long zeroed in on its overtly physical nature, and the fact that MLS coaches seem to rejoice in that attribute. When MLS coaches say, "This is a physical league" — which they have a habit of doing — they mean it as a complement. Sadly, this complement comes with a downside: In MLS, skill comes second to muscle.
That is a philosophy that makes the average MLS game a rather biff-bang, helter-skelter affair full of high-pressure defense and promiscuous tackling. Whatever may be the strengths of such an approach — they are certainly difficult for me to see — it does not make for a pleasing spectacle.
But the Mexican teams bring something different. For a start, they are much less inclined to play a high-pressure, fore-checking game. In turn, this means that MLS teams have something — almost a luxury — that they do not get in their own league games: Time to play a more thoughtful game and time to introduce some subtlety and rhythm into their attacking game.
The Mexicans also bring a level of ball control that is not matched by MLS teams. I am not arguing that this automatically makes the Mexican teams better. It may or may not do that. But what it does do is force MLS teams to rethink their high-pressure, tight manmarking, heel-snapping approach. That works well when the opponents do not control the ball easily and fluently with a single touch. Then the ball always seems to be on offer, it is not quite under control, a situation that invites the tackler to step in.
But the superior Mexican control makes that risky. Either the tackler will be simply outplayed and his intended tackle adroitly avoided, or his tackle will result in a foul and a free kick against his team.
In short, playing against Mexican teams, MLS teams have to adapt with an application of soccer intelligence that is rarely called for in MLS games, in which the cruder requirements of the high-pressure physical game dominate.
Of the four MLS teams in the SuperLiga, D.C. United has little change to make — its soccer has traditionally been a cut above the rest of the league. Los Angeles and Dallas have looked like teams discovering themselves, almost as though learning to construct attacking moves through intelligent passing of the ball. But it is Houston that has proved the most adaptable, giving us speedy, intelligent soccer — a well-tempered version of the gung-ho style that enabled it to win last season's MLS championship.
It is highly significant that MLS teams have been able, almost immediately, to make the adjustments called for. That speed of reaction has to come from the players. That seems to me logical. I regard it as unlikely that the MLS coaches — a heavily European-oriented clique — would change their stylistic feathers so quickly.
How much of the altered style will MLS teams carry over in to league games? Not much, I fear. There, the physical game will reassert itself along with the need to play at high speed and high pressure.
But the more attractive Super-Liga games will have opened some eyes and hopefully will lead to more pressure from the MLS biggies on its clubs to diversify the league's coaching ranks. A big step forward came with the recent announcement that MLS will now enforce its own version of the NFL's "Rooney Rule," ensuring that minority groups are given fair consideration for future coaching appointments.
