J Hutcherson wrote a good article about Colorado Rapids' coach Gary Smith's comments recently, where Smith compared Major League Soccer to the English Coca-Cola Championship.
Smith told the League's official site that his MLS Cup champions would beat a team like Coventry "seven times out of 10," taking it that next step by criticizing the physical style of play that dominates the Championship.
England's second division exists for two reasons, winning promotion and not getting relegated. There are no style points involved, no long term sense of security for simply surviving.
No, that's not the dream of the Football League's top division, who would probably prefer to think of the Championship as almost an alternative Premier League. A lot of established teams who understand what it takes to win at Championship level content with their lot in life and not all that interested in a one and done season in the Premier League.
Once upon a time, the lower divisions were stocked with teams more than happy to play relative to scale soccer. They were willing to entertain at whatever level they happened to be at, with promotion not exactly a by-product but also not exactly the point. When a club decided to run up the divisions, it was almost looked at as arrogance with the rest of the English football setup waiting for that club's inevitable slide.
Instead, the current version of the Championship - rebranded and ready to give England that footballing alternative - is about the grind of a lengthy season with clubs responding in kind. For enough, that means the kind of soccer easily identified by lobbing the ball up field and rolling the dice on 50/50 chances.
Call it pragmatic soccer, in too many ways similar to what happens in a Major League Soccer stadium near some of us. What historically keeps MLS from sliding into the doldrums of lower division English soccer is the facade of competitive balance. The League table doesn't offer enough punishment for teams playing badly. All are still technically a win streak away from respectability even very late in the regular season.
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