Supporters’ Shield Race Between Philadelphia Union, LAFC Exposes Flawed MLS Tiebreak

With two regular season games remaining, the Philadelphia Union are a virtual lock to finish with the fewest goals conceded this season and in pole position to score the most goals.

If they win their last two, they’re guaranteed to post no worse than a +42 goal differential that would be second-best in MLS history, and even the record of a +48 differential set by 2019 LAFC isn’t entirely out of reach.

And if they win their last two, they’ll also finish no worse than tied on points atop the standings for the Supporters’ Shield, a trophy intended to recognize the best regular season standings.

Yet manager Jim Curtin’s men could do all that and fall short of the trophy, based on misguided league tie-breaking procedures that give this year’s LAFC side the edge.

Unusually, MLS uses total wins as its first tiebreaker when determining league standings positions — including the Shield winner. The policy has never made a lot of sense. But more than ever, the current Shield race is exposing why the league should change how it breaks ties and get more in line with the rest of the world.

Here’s three reasons why:

1) It’s Out Of Step

While some critics blast MLS for having post-season playoffs, a closed league without relegation and a very large first division, you can find at least one other league using each of these mechanisms in the 15 highest-ranked first divisions on Earth (according to the Kick Algorithm.)

Well, using total wins to break ties in the standings is just as uncommon, with the Belgian Jupiler league as the only other division in that group of 15 to use it as the first measure.

Head-to-head results and goal differential are both far more commonly used among those divisions, and in a few cases like the Italian Serie A, leagues will actually stage a tiebreaking match to determine a league champion if points are even.

The latter isn’t a practical solution for MLS, where the MLS Cup Playoffs follow the regular season on a tight calendar. But it does suggest other leagues value what teams have done against each other. (For the record, Philadelphia and LAFC drew 2-2 in their lone meeting in Los Angeles earlier this year, which would throw it to another tiebreak anyway.)

2) It’s Double Jeopardy

Rewarding victories would’ve made more sense in the early 1990s and before, when most leagues counted two standings points for a win and one for a draw. In that old system, a tie was basically half as valuable as a victory, which makes intuitive sense since it is the statistical midpoint between winning and losing in terms of goals scored and allowed.

But when FIFA implemented a 3-1-0 points scheme ahead of the 1994 FIFA World Cup to encourage attacking play, it already added artificial value to each victory. The difference between a one-goal loss and a draw was one point, but the difference between a draw and a one-goal win was two.

In that light, you can argue finishing even on points with fewer victories is actually more impressive because the team with more victories is trading two additional defeats for every additional win. To go back to the MLS Shield race, the Union have lost only four matches (12.5%) so far, while LAFC have lost eight times (25.0%).

3)It Rewards Bad Defense As Often As Good Offense

On the surface, the best argument for prioritizing total wins might be that it gives yet another additional incentive to play an attacking and entertaining style. But dig deeper and the numbers don’t bear that out.

To date, Philadelphia has scored four more goals than LAFC entering each teams’ penultimate game of the season.

To take it further, Philadelphia are one of eight MLS teams as of Friday morning who were tied with another team on points but had fewer victories. Four of those had actually scored more goals, and Columbus had scored as many goals as Miami.

In descending order, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, Columbus and New England have all scored as many goals as the teams “above” them on the wins tiebreaker and also have a superior goal difference.