The real MLS championship

SUPPORTERS' SHIELD

VS.

MLS CUP

DC United became the first club to clinch a spot in the MLS Cup playoffs with their eighth win in nine matches, a 2-1 victory over lowly Real Salt Lake.

They will face Chicago twice, Toronto, Kansas City and Columbus in their final five matches. All winnable games, despite Chicago’s recent resurgence. But MLS’s most decorated club also will begin their Copa Sudamericana campaign in September, playing the home leg versus Chivas Mexico (CD Guadalajara) on the 26th.

While the Copa Sudamericana is a prestigious tournament, second only to the Libertadores in South America, DC United should focus all of their energy on the final five regular season matches of the MLS season. It is in these games that United coach Tom Soehn will earn his paycheck (and where TYH will discover if he likes the taste of crow).

Now, some fans out there (those steeped in other American pro sports, for example) might be expecting Soehn to rest his starters in the final five matches and possibly even in the Copa Sudamericana to avoid injuries in preparation for the MLS Cup. But that would be a HUGE mistake for United, when they are just five winnable matches away from repeating as MLS champions.

I say “repeating” because although the Houston Dynamo won the MLS Cup last season, DC United won the true championship of MLS – the Supporters' Shield.

In 1998, a group of industrious fans petitioned the league to start awarding the MLS Supporters' Shield to the team that finished with the most points following the regular season.

But it wasn’t until 2006, that MLS decided to fully acknowledge the unofficial award by granting the Supporters' Shield winner a berth in the CONCACAF Champions’ Cup.

Now, the Supporters' Shield carries with it all same rights and privileges that the MLS Cup does. So why is the Supporters' Shield winner not considered to be the true champion of MLS? This is due to what I call ASR -- American Sports Retardation.

ASR is rampant among the so-called "Big 3" of American pro sports. Teams play an entire regular season (sometimes over a 100 games) and all those wins, losses and (rare) ties amount to little more than seeding in the end-of-the-season tournament. All those injuries, runs scored, steroids taken, scandals avoided amount to little more than whether you’ll be playoff bound as a two seed or whether you’ll be starting your offseason early. It seems silly and it makes the regular season akin to masturbation.

But in every major soccer league around the world, the team that finishes at the top of the table is crowned the league champion. Sure, Euro leagues have their FA Cups and their Coppa Italias, but the true champion is the team that is able to run the gauntlet of the regular season and come out on top.

Now, TYH is no Euro-phile. I love America and I support our league. Just because I believe that the Supporters' Shield winner is the true champion doesn’t mean I want MLS to abandon its Cup format in favor of some Brit invention.

On the contrary, the MLS Cup playoffs provides a perfect tableau depicting the great underdog spirit of America. Any team that manages to get in, whether an eight seed or a one seed, has a chance at the hardware and that kind of egalitarianism is what America is all about.