Golly! I'm sure glad MLS plays from fall to spring!

I'm with you. It makes no fiscal sense to split the season between the seasons. There is just now way MLS can compete against NFL, CFB, NBA and even College Basketball. Places like Portland and Seattle would be alright, but your not going to get ANYBODY to go to a Saturday Columbus Crew match. And any TV ratings would go right out the window. I am sure its just a matter of 'when,' but let the league get established a little bit better. Ptherwise, it will suffer.

 

Ummm ... Hate to break this to you but MLS already competes with football. In fact MLS competes with football in the most important month of the season ... playoffs.

And basketball really? Basketball is the dagger that destroys MLS? I don't get this paranoid fear of other sports.

This is the USA with a million sports and other entertainment options and a million weather challenges, travel challenges etc ... No schedule that you ever make will be perfect and avoid every conceivable issue. On the other hand you can try to make a schedule where players like Blas Perez and Saborio don't miss 1/3 of your season for NT call ups. That is unacceptable. MLS pays those guys a salary and the fans pay to see good players not minimum wage 3rd stringers.

 

******** the Eurosnobs.

 

It's not lame, it was suggested by the Commish hissownself as a potential benefit of the switch.

I'm not convinced entirely one way or the other. Obviously there are pluses and minuses to both schedules.

My biggest complaint is losing our best players during International breaks. This is only going to become a bigger issue as the player quality in MLS goes up. If that could be solved, the calls for a schedule change would seem less compelling.

 

Ooh playing tough over the internet eh, your hard aren't you! Look I don't care what you think I will give my opinion, I stick by what I say, football in the UK won't be moved because cricket is the summer sport here, but does it matter who plays when? I don't think so.

 

Also a valid point. I guess it's just a personal preference. However, if you've got to choose between one or the other, I'm guessing most people would agree with you, unless they mostly/only watch on TV anyway. It would be interesting to know how much those folks are factoring in to MLS's thinking.

 

No, but if I could invent a way to kick someone in the balls over the interwebs, well, lets just say I could retire.

You're not my kind of porn

And I will ridicule it for you.

It only matters to a bunch of dumb bitches

 

Perhaps, it's time to say there are enough to too many international breaks, and/or confederations need to arrange their competitions better, rather than put the onus on the clubs to deal with potentially 3 to 4 different confederation competitions

 

You are just a prick!

 

Yeah, we could say that... for all the good it would do.

 

It could be a lot worse. That's all I'm going to say in order to keep my point as simple as possible so that any one can follow.

 

Given the polar vortex maybe hell did freeze over this week?

 

So right now MLS is 40 weeks long from start to finish. If the schedule shifted to summer/winter and the season started on August 3rd then 40 weeks would take you to May 3rd of the following year. That of course doesn't account for the fact that there needs to be at least 8 weeks to break for the winter so that take you into the final week of June to keep the same schedule you have now (in terms of weekends vs weekday games). How exactly does a change of schedule exactly reduce fixture congestion? Or is this supposed to help avoid FIFA dates? In that case you can just take 4 or 5 weeks off in June to avoid the Gold Cup. Since every other international date takes place during either schedule I'm not really sure how switching schedules would help you avoid date.

 

Yes it did.

 

Worst kept secret on BigSoccer

About as much good as the griping over adopting the "proper" schedule.

Which we'll never get.

 

Seriously.

Right now we lose people during the mid season and our playoffs go up against football.
If we move it our mid season is up against football/basketball playoffs and we lose people during our playoffs.

Unless they cut the season down massively there is no good solution.
Which isn't going to happen until TV revenues jump massively.

 

Would it be like one of those sex toys where both users would have to wear it or is it something that just happens? If it's a feeling that just happens I can feel a little relieved and apologize to my girlfriend for the accusations I made.

 

Toronto's dome is due for conversion in 2016 or so to grass for baseball, which would preclude it's use for soccer, or NFL or CFL. Montreal's dome will be 40-years old by then, and is all but unused other than the occasional Impact game. I doubt there will be any usable domes in Canada by 2020 for soccer (other than Vancouver, which doesn't even need an indoor facility, given it's warmer than many English cities that they play year-round.

If you want to go year-round, your not going to be playing in Toronto from early December to early March. Though that wouldn't be too different from the break that some European leagues already take in the middle of the winter.

 

What's the longest break? Let's ignore Russia. What's the longest break West of the Ural Mountains?

 

From what I can tell Denmark seems to break after the second weekend in December until the first weekend in March. That's pretty much MLS's entire existing off-season. Ready to be corrected though.

 

No offense to the Danish, but I'm hoping MLS is aspiring to be more than their league. A break that long would simply be a waste of time.