There was an interesting suggestion in the week 4 continuous play by play thread: How many matches *could* that have affected this past week, if either team made such a choice? ORL at MON LAG at DCU NYR at CLB POR at VAN COL at HOU SEA at FCD TOR at RSL If the rule was that it can only apply if you have 3 more players than your opponent on national team duty, then it would become this list: LAG at DCU POR at VAN COL at HOU SEA at FCD
I'm pretty sure the rule is still in effect for all three divisions of the Football League, because they have too many teams to take league-wide breaks for FIFA dates. I'd support having a similar rule in MLS, though one might also argue that rescheduling large numbers of matches looks minor-league. Personally, I think losing large numbers of players to international duty looks worse than rescheduling matches, and rescheduling is much easier than before now that most MLS teams control their venues. (That said, I'm OK with the status quo, but I'm in the small minority that actually watches more games on FIFA dates because they offer a chance to see players who don't normally get on the field.)
Make the teams that go after big name talent suffer when they're gone. Just like all teams suffer when one of their players have an injury.
Yes, obviously we want to disincentivize elite talent acquisition. That this problem is seemingly reaching a critical mass is a great thing for the league.
League Championship (one level below the Premier League) takes off for FIFA dates while the next two levels down, League One and League Two, both play. Those three leagues each have 46 regular season games, the FA Cup, and the Capital One Cup. In addition there's the Johnstone's Paint Trophy for League One and League Two only. The first post of the topic listed seven games. If all seven (or even five out of seven) had been postponed, it could have gotten to the point where it would have made more sense to have all the clubs take off. Another factor is that the channels with MLS on national TV probably wouldn't want games postponed on short notice.
Here are the FIFA dates during the 2014-2015 League Championship season: September 1 to 9, 2014 (League Championship played no games in between Saturday August 30 and Saturday September 13) October 6 to 14, 2014 (League Championship played no games between Sunday October 5 and Friday October 17) November 10 to 18, 2014 (League Championship played no games between Saturday November 8 and Friday November 21) March 23 to 31, 2015 (League Championship played no games in between Saturday March 21 and Friday April 3) When I say "in between" the border dates such as August 30 had games with the first day of the break being August 31. http://us.soccerway.com/national/england/championship/20142015/regular-season/r25197/ is my source for the League Championship schedule and results.
Looking at the MLS schedule, it looks like on either side of the FIFA weekend of games, only 8 games were played each weekend. That means 4 teams had off weeks in each of those two weeks. And all 20 teams played on the FIFA weekend. And actually both of the two weeks before the break had only 8 games. Fill up those three weekends and you can take the FIFA break off. Then there's just 4 games to place elsewhere in the calendar. I know its not quite that easy due to stadiums and other events and travel etc.. but it could be done.
Part of those bye weeks were to give Montreal and DC some rest if they progressed in CCL (which Montreal did, which is why they have this weekend off). I think that's a better use of scheduling than the FIFA break.