Imagine for a second that you were designing a new soccer league. You get to have fun with the branding, recruiting teams, marketing the league to the world. Of course, with any sports league, you’d need to make sure the fundamental rules are in-place for things like standings and playoffs. As those things are well-established, the smart thing to do would be leave them alone so that it doesn’t cause a massive headache down the road, right?

Well the USL Championship decided to do the exact opposite of that. The amount of number crunching, league emailing and confirming without confirming that has transpired since our match with Charleston is insane. It’s been so hectic that I barley remember what happened with the match. All I know is with all the 13 different tiebreakers (none of which seem to come down to goal differential like every other league on planet earth) and Hartford drawing with Tampa Bay last night, Rhode Island FC will be in the playoffs in their inaugural season.

While this isn’t the end goal for this team, this is a massive accomplishment that everyone involved with this club should be incredibly proud of.

To the content:

I have no real gripes with Timmy’s Player Ratings this week which makes writing this sentence significantly less fun.

Matt Hands won Journalist of the week emailing the league office to confirm RIFC’s playoff berth and why it wasn’t announced. He proceeded to break his doing Journalism down on his Postmatch Beacon leading to…

… one of the biggest pissing contents of all time on the Quahog Corner. Who called that we were in the playoffs first? You’re not going to leave this episode with a better idea but it’s a hilarious listen

Finally, Matt and I broke down the match against Charleston and looked a bit ahead to the Eastern Conference playoff picture

Up the Tide!

Ryan and the Tide Talk Team