{"id":394,"date":"2013-04-29T23:40:14","date_gmt":"2013-04-29T23:40:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/team-bates.com\/littlerubberpellets\/?p=394"},"modified":"2013-04-30T19:28:24","modified_gmt":"2013-04-30T19:28:24","slug":"2014-voyageurs-cup-to-feature-nasl-play-in-round","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/team-bates.com\/littlerubberpellets\/2013\/04\/29\/2014-voyageurs-cup-to-feature-nasl-play-in-round\/","title":{"rendered":"2014 Voyageurs Cup to feature NASL play-in round"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_395\" style=\"width: 640px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/team-bates.com\/littlerubberpellets\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2013\/04\/vaned.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-395\" src=\"http:\/\/team-bates.com\/littlerubberpellets\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2013\/04\/vaned.jpg\" alt=\"The second division North American Soccer League&#039;s (NASL) FC Edmonton take on the Vancouver Whitecaps last Wednesday. Photo courtesy Lewis\/Canada Soccer\" width=\"630\" height=\"420\" class=\"size-full wp-image-395\" srcset=\"https:\/\/team-bates.com\/littlerubberpellets\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2013\/04\/vaned.jpg 630w, https:\/\/team-bates.com\/littlerubberpellets\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2013\/04\/vaned-300x200.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 630px) 100vw, 630px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-395\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">The second division North American Soccer League&#8217;s (NASL) FC Edmonton take on the Vancouver Whitecaps last Wednesday. Photo courtesy Lewis\/Canada Soccer<\/p><\/div>\n<p>One of the coolest things about cup competitions is the chance for big-league clubs and second-division dreamers to play teams they don&#8217;t often get to see and have a chance to fight it out. But when the Ottawa NASL expansion team debuts next year, they&#8217;ll be seeing second-div colleagues Edmonton in the Voyageurs Cup before they scrap with Vancouver, Montreal or Toronto.<\/p>\n<p>Canadian Soccer Association president Victor Montagliani thinks that, provisionally, a five-team Amway Canadian Championship will retain its current two-semifinal home-and-away format, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mlssoccer.com\/news\/article\/2013\/04\/29\/canadian-championship-nasl-teams-will-face-play-round-2014-tournament-may-ex\">according to MLSSoccer.com<\/a>.  But Ottawa and Edmonton will have to compete in a play-in round before the first round proper, where it will meet the MLS team with the best record from the previous year. <\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t know how I feel about this. I know I like to see inter-league play, but there could be benefits: You wouldn&#8217;t see NASL teams go home from the competition without even a win to their names less often. A play-in round could also weed out weak teams, ensuring that battle-ready squads make clashes between the tiers more competitive.<\/p>\n<p>Something probably has to be done about the Canadian Championship eventually; attendance numbers were bad last weekend and it&#8217;s probably not going to be better in BC Place Wednesday, as the game is head to head against Game 1 of the Canucks&#8217; first round playoff series. The CSA is dreaming of a third tier of regional leagues and Montagliani says that those teams might get a shot in the Cup eventually, which could work. <\/p>\n<p>Do you think it&#8217;s a good idea? Let&#8217;s hear it in the comments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of the coolest things about cup competitions is the chance for big-league clubs and second-division dreamers to play teams they don&#8217;t often get to see and have a chance to fight it out. But when the Ottawa NASL expansion team debuts next year, they&#8217;ll be seeing second-div colleagues Edmonton in the Voyageurs Cup before [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[117,95,151,91,118,119,99],"class_list":["post-394","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lower-divisions","category-mls","tag-amway-canadian-championship","tag-fc-edmonton","tag-mls","tag-nasl","tag-ottawa-fury","tag-victor-montagliani","tag-voyageurs-cup"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/team-bates.com\/littlerubberpellets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/team-bates.com\/littlerubberpellets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/team-bates.com\/littlerubberpellets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/team-bates.com\/littlerubberpellets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/team-bates.com\/littlerubberpellets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=394"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/team-bates.com\/littlerubberpellets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":397,"href":"https:\/\/team-bates.com\/littlerubberpellets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394\/revisions\/397"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/team-bates.com\/littlerubberpellets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/team-bates.com\/littlerubberpellets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/team-bates.com\/littlerubberpellets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}