I spent much of my childhood in Alabama, where folks had a saying regarding all the bad headlines the state eternally generates: “Thank God for Mississippi.” If something terrible was happening in Alabama, odds were that it was one degenerate step worse in Mississippi. In all manner of national rankings, Alabama could count on Mississippi as buffer from the very bottom.
When you’re lowdown, you’re grateful for whoever rests just below you because, when affronted, you can always point to them, say: “Hey, check that out!” and then quickly exit the room. In fact, this is an exercise that’s quickly internalized, a rationalization that will zoom around and around inside your head. Table rankings in soccer bring out the phenomenon in pristine Platonic condition, and this season the really bad team all the simply bad teams are grateful for is LA’s Chivas USA.
They’re so thoroughly bad, in fact, that even though DC United is a full ten points below them (though in the Eastern Conference and therefore not in direct competition for playoff spots), they will be remembered as the real garbage of the MLS year. And of course, despite their horrific league record, DC United did win the Open Cup.
For those uninitiated with the extent of Chivas’ ruin, it is … well, comprehensive. They’re bad on the pitch, and the organization is a shambles outside of it. Attendance has been dropping for four years straight and at an average of around 8,000 (the league’s lowest). They share the Home Depot Center with the LA Galaxy, and so when Chivas play, it comes across as a few lonely people in a large stadium. The team has become synonymous with failed marketing strategy, intransigently strung out over a decade. They’re under the same ownership as Liga MX’s popular and historic Chivas Guadalajara, and were conceived as a kind of child club that could reach a Latino audience in the US and funnel talent back to the mother club. It hasn’t worked that way, with talent or audience. The icing on their failure cake came earlier this year when Chivas USA were taken to court by former coaches claiming that they’d been fired because they weren’t of Mexican descent. The lawsuit made it to HBO’s “Real Sports” program and caused a nationwide stir and embarrassed the entire league.
It’s a sad situation, and while organizational ineptitude and discrimination isn’t the players’ fault, they haven’t been playing well, either, and have been at the foot of the standings for most of the season. I imagine it would be hard to play well in those circumstances.
The Portland Timbers, of course, have had a breakout season and sit on the opposite end of the table. Depending on results, there’s an outside chance they could even snatch the Supporters Shield from the New York Red Bulls. They could be looking down the standings at absolutely everyone, kings of the season. One year ago, they finished 8th of the 9 teams in the Western Conference. The 9th placed team? Chivas, of course.
It’s a relief not to have the “Thank God for Chivas” sentiment floating around the Timbers. They’re so far removed from those depths, it seems like a joke. But it’s only been a year, and last year the team was pretty dire. The emotions are now those associated with actual achievement, actual competition. Since the MLS lacks a relegation/promotion device for the teams on the bottom, the perennially bad ones just kind of loiter, become irrelevant and lost, without fire. While I have mixed feelings about relegation, maybe because I have a hard time imagining Major League Baseball without the Chicago Cubs; it would do the MLS a janitorial service in cases where teams are truly mismanaged and broken, as Chivas appears to be.
It’s also looking like the Timbers will never be really stuck in a “Thank God for Chivas” spot. There will be bad seasons along with the good, but there’s so much going well with the club outside of the pitch it’s hard to imagine a negative trajectory. For all the magic that Caleb Porter has worked this season- and he’s getting recognized internationally for it- long term success is predicated on a strong fanbase, a strong brand, and reasonable business practices. All of which the Timbers have.
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