There's something about people who are able to write as easily as they piss that's always bothered me. I have to be in near-mental and physical anguish to get a few words out, and the beginning of the thread is always the worst. Just getting this article started was its own kind of medieval torture.
I walked around the house, I tried talking to my dog about it. I went outside, surely touching grass would do something, but I ended up just staring at a wooden board, thinking some immaculate conception might birth out of the knots.
Then, as the unreformed English lit graduate I am, I started thinking about Samuel Coleridge and Lord Byron. Which is really an exercise in reality and expectation.
For Coleridge, writing was a lightning strike that dissipated into a puff of smoke, a streak of indiscriminate intensity that waned before he could finish most things.
The classic story is he composed 200 or 300 lines of "Kubla Khan" during an opium nap, awoke and began furiously writing one of the grandest poems of all time. Then he was interrupted by a postman or someone on business who knocked at his door and kept him busy for an hour. When he went back to finish, it was gone. Nothing there. "Kubla Khan" is only 54 lines.
Lord Byron is the other side of the coin. He wrote a lot and finished a lot, but did it only half-seriously and found almost instant fame. People wrote love letters to him, strangers followed him around, and his casual writing style was part of the joke. In Don Juan, which was also never finished because he died, he kept stopping to speak to the reader about how badly the poem was going.
For what it's worth, Coleridge outlasted most of the romantic poets, living into his 60s. Byron died at 36. Keats at 25.
Which brings us to the Leagues Cup. Or something like that. My expectation going into the tournament was that both MLS and Liga MX would take it seriously, and that fans would indulge in it. It is a trophy after all, between the two best men's leagues on a continent.
Maybe it's because it's a World Cup year and we've had our fill of elite soccer, or maybe it's just the perception of the Leagues Cup, but my expectation was not reality. It seemed like soccer sickos were resigned to watch it with a sigh, but that casuals probably didn't know about it, or were confused by a cup beginning immediately after the season restarted, immediately after the biggest tournament on earth.
When teamsheets started rolling out, there was another reality that hit, not even the leagues or teams could agree on how seriously to take the tournament. Nashville, who currently lead the MLS Supporters' Shield race, started their youngest XI ever, an average age of 24.3. Meanwhile, Tigres, a team with an actual trophy case, fielded their best eleven.
My assumption was that MLS took it less seriously, that Liga MX took it more seriously. But more so that it would show in results, even as 16 of 18 matchday one games were played in the US. The reality was a lot more interesting.
First, another assumption. I figured matchday one, alone, was a good case for measuring this, based, probably feebly, on the idea that if you were going to take this tournament seriously, it would be from the outset. Most folks assumed you'd need at least seven points to move on from Phase One, with the top four heading to the knockout round. Lose on matchday one, and you're aiming for six points max.
After the World Cup, Liga MX began their season and played three matches and MLS restarted their season and played three matches. Because of injuries, transfers, and general chaos, I measured the starting eleven in the Leagues Cup matches against those three previous games. I checked the lineups against a second source and they agreed.
The takeaway is that, compared to their previous three matches, Liga MX did make fewer changes, by about two players per eleven. In fact, nine of the 18 Mexican teams made two or fewer changes to their starting XI, and Tigres made none at all. The average was 3.2 changes per eleven.
MLS, meanwhile, changed about five of eleven from the previous three matches, with four of 18 teams changing seven or eight players, and one team, Nashville, changing 10. Not a single MLS club made fewer than three changes, which Liga MX managed nine times.
As expected, anecdotally, at least, you can say Liga MX took it more seriously in matchday one. But the reality is that they lost more games, despite making fewer changes.
MLS won 10 of 18 matches in regulation, while Liga MX managed only six. Two games finished level after regulation and went to penalties, which the leagues split, so MLS won 11 of the 18 opening matches. MLS took 33 of 54 available points, Liga MX took 21.
In the end, the gap in changes didn't make a meaningful difference, in the aggregate at least.
Fourteen of the 18 matches had one team making fewer changes than the other. It split seven and seven. Four games had teams making the same number of changes, which is a fun, weird anomaly. Those also split, two wins for Liga MX, two for MLS.
Of course, this doesn't take place in a vacuum. Not all of these teams are created equally. Some were more affected by the World Cup. Some aren't playing for anything in their domestic league but survival on a weekly basis. Some are in a rebuild. Sixteen of the 18 matches were played in the US, and MLS won more. The two played in Mexico both went to Liga MX.
That's kind of how it ends. With a collective shrug, like a die sliced in half. Effort versus ease, or an exercise in expectation and reality.
Tigres didn't change a thing and needed penalties. Nashville fielded a young Frankenstein and lost. Neither answer was right, which is roughly where Coleridge and Byron stood.