I could be interesting but I don't think cold weather will do well with fans. It is not fun to be at a game when its muggy and hot, but we tend to be used to being outside during the summer.
China has the most people, but there are countries with under 10,000,000 people with better national teams and leagues than China has. If anybody on Earth could watch any soccer game whenever they wanted to, how many of the 100 most watched clubs would be in countries whose leagues play calendar year schedules?
How many of those clubs would be in a country with teams in 4 time zones and a league that stretches over 2500 miles?
Newcastle to Plymouth is nearly a 7 hour drive a journey that each team has had to make twice in the last 25 years. THE HORROR!!! If Man United ever play Legia Warsaw on a Wednesday and lose the following Sunday, they'll complain that the players were tired from the 600 mile round trip. THE HORROR!!!
How is that relevant to the existence or nonexistence of an "international calendar"? Point is, there's a significant portion of the world that doesn't schedule from August/September to May. That portion happens to include not only most of the world's population, but also the country that has won the most World Cups.
That is not a "Point" at all. What difference does it make that the "Country that has won the most World Cup" (with one World Cup win more than Germany) has a domestic league that doesn't follow an August to May schedule? You made that argument over and over, as if it was supposed to mean something. You could just as easily (and more accurately) say that "Most of the countries" who HAVE won the World Cups do follow the August to May schedule. If "winning a World Cup" is a criterion for the validity of your argument, then ONLY Uruguay (in the 1930 and 1950), Argentina (in the 1978 and 1986) and Brazil (1958 1962, 1970, 1994 and 2002) have won World Cups following the April-November schedule. In fact, those are the ONLY three countries that don't follow the August-May schedule who have ever even been to a World Cup Final. 9 World Cup winners (7 of which were prior to 1990) 5 World Cup Runners Up (3 prior to 1990) England, France, Italy, Spain and, of course, Germany follow the August-May schedule. Netherlands, Czechoslovakia (back when it a single country), and Hungary have also been to the finals. 11 World Cup Winners (including 5 of the last 7) 14 World Cup Runners Up (including 5 of the last 7) The one "northern" exception is Sweden (which does not follow the August-May) and made the 1958 Final, if that counts for anything. Three final points: 1) The majority of players who play for Argentina and Brazil play in leagues that follow the August-May schedule, since most play in Europe, not the domestic leagues. 2) For South America, a large portion of Africa, all of Oceania, they are still playing the Fall-Winter-Spring schedule. 3) As for "most of the world's population" I presume that you realize that "most of the world's population" are located in countries with pretty crappy domestic leagues. Top 15 most populous countries: China India US Indonesia Brazil Pakistan Nigeria Bangladesh Russia Mexico Japan Phillipines Vietnam Ethiopia Egypt Have combined population of about 5,300,000,000 people and none have a top 10 domestic league. Of those, it would probably be: Mexico Brazil / MLS/ Japan China ...and the rest barely register. So, while it may be true that the majority of the world's population does not have domestic leagues that follow the August-May schedule, the vast majority of the world's best football leagues do.
It should be a pretty easy hypothesis to check.. The Russian Premier league switched to a Fall-Spring in the 2011-12 season. If MLS switching to a Fall-Spring schedule is the panacea to what ails the USMNT, surely the Russian national team is rocketing up the FIFA rankings..
Russia's best FIFA Ranking in any month in 2011 or later was 9th, which they most recently did in January 2013. By November 2013 they were down to 22nd despite doing well enough in World Cup 2014 Qualifying to win a group with Portugal in it. They climbed up to 18th, but by October 2014 they were down to 30th. They were 23rd or 24th every month from November 2015 through March 2016, but the last two months they have been 38th, which is their worst ranking in almost 10 years. They were 39th in September 2006, and their worst FIFA Ranking ever is 40th. The FIFA Rankings started in August 1993.
Anyone who's all for this "FIFA/Euro schedule? Tell you what...come visit me in Minneapolis on the 23rd day of November, December, January and February. You're not allowed to bring your winter coat, though I won't make you wear shorts. If after all that, if you can honestly say you still think it's the best idea since Scarlett Johansson, I will personally eat a pan of lutefisk.
The fact of the matter is there is no such thing as an international league schedule. The scheduling of the top european leagues has nothing to do with their success. Each league schedule their tournament as it is most convenient to them based on their own make up as a league based in their country. I find it fascinating that people are more interested in having MLS follow a typical european league schedule rather than a typical concacaf schedule. After all the US is in the CONCACAF. If they're going to change their schedule it would be to align with what most CONCACAF league schedule is: Two seasons per year (regular season + playoff).
This is exactly right. What FIFA was trying to do when it established match windows was tell the big clubs when they had to release players well in advance. As long as leagues are releasing their players, it's only an issue in people's minds. Also, like all concepts born by FIFA in the mid to late 90s, it was a reaction to the big g14 clubs demanding consistency do they weren't constantly losing players.
Minnesota United should be all for this it will give them a huge competitive advantage. You didn't live here when the Vikings had a .802 winning percentage during the cold months.
I personally don't see MLS ever switching to fall/winter. But if it was going to happen, no way it happens until after the current lucrative TV deal is up. Fox and ESPN paid a lot of money, and they paid it for summer soccer. Change the schedule and you'd probably have to renegotiate the contract. ------RM
If you believed Wynalda when he lost his crap over this a few years ago, apparently Fox was ready to dump piles of money into MLS if it just changed the scheduled...
So in the leagues you'd have: Northern hemisphere summer schedule: USA/Canada China Japan Korea Egypt Brazil Sweden Northern hemisphere winter schedule: England Germany (25 day winter break) Italy (15 days) Spain (2 weeks) France (22 days) Russia (3 months) Belgium (1 month) Netherlands (25 days) Switzerland (2 months) Ukraine (2.5 months) Denmark (2 months) Greece (1 month) Turkey (1 month) Argentina South Africa Australia Split Season: Mexico
I got an alert for this thread. Someone must have written and deleted a post. I didn't check the date.