Or the fact that the Rapids canceled their charity game a week before the season started this year due to a major snowstorm.
I'll never forget RSL's first game, against NY, where someone had to hold the ball in place during a free kick.
I was there. That game should have been postponed, and would have been for sure had Giants Stadium not been turf. Had the Red Bulls season opener been two weeks before it was, that would have been postponed due to the epic rainfall that hit the Northeast. Of course, if it was a week earlier than it was, it would have been played in 65 degree weather instead of the 35 degrees that it was.
Indeed. We need to stretch out the season even if we don't add more games in order to have more breaks for international duty, but the weather is a challenge. On April 8, 1979, the former Toronto Metros-Croatia played their home opener under their new name, the Toronto Blizzard. Of course, it snowed buckets at half time. TFC could rename themselves Coconuts FC, but I don't think that would result in balmy home games in April.
I'm thinking of it from the player's point of view. Preseason starts in early to mid February. So a non playoff team has three months off while an MLS Cup team has 2. If we add 4 games, that's four additional weekends, or about a month. The offseason would go down to 1 month for MLS Cup teams. As for your other point, the league isn't shutting down for the whole month of June. Just the two weeks of the group stages and then the weekend of the semis and final.
The semi's are on a Tuesday and a Wednesday, and the MLS is playing the weekend of the final. Though the final is on a Sunday and the only MLS game on Sunday appears to be night game at Seattle. The 3rd place game is on Saturday at 2:30pm eastern (I think) with no MLS games scheduled concurrently, but plenty scheduled around it. Likewise, MLS has games on July 2 and 3, same days as the quarterfinals, but at different times.