News: MLS owners approve fall-spring calendar and season format changes: Sources

Putting Cascadia with Texas would make sense for winter/summer weather and keeping California together but weather relief doesn't seem to come into play for the North or Midwest. I like this even though Cascadia and Texas will be the biggest division when it comes distance traveled each season.
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From a rivalry standpoint it makes more sense and keeps everything together for current rivalries out west. Only DC United would lose current rivalries but moving into the South gets them some attractive teams for their fans to play.

 

I think they want to loosen the purse strings a bit. Slight raise in the cap, maybe a 4th DP/U22, etc. But they have to have the $$ to do it.

But they also want to maintain parity (like the NFL) and make sure everyone has a shot.

The stadium situations coming to fruition in Miami, NYC, and Chicago will be nice boosts. Those are premiere markets.

NE/Boston and a path forward for the Whitecaps are the next two big ones in the near term. Seattle SSS in the medium term.

 

I know DC United is an afterthought but an original MLS team getting booted from any sort of rivalry (real or MLS-driven) sort of leaves me here thinking what the F were they doing the past two decades?

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/68...-jose-lafc-galaxy/?source=user_shared_article
sources:%20MLS%20divisional%20revamp%20may%20split%20old%20rivalries,%20blend%20conferences%20

Thx,

Jay!

 

In addition, they’re dropping DC into a group of non-original teams that have had time to organically start their own rivalries. I’m afraid I don’t have another 20 years left to learn to hate Charlotte or Nashville. Two cities and geographic cultures I’m not interested in being from the Northeast.

Thx,

Jay!

 

I realize no matter what happens there are going to be fan bases unhappy with where they end up but please keep San Diego with the two LA teams. It probably doesn't matter to the LA teams, they have each other, but it's huge to SD fans. There is already a huge sporting rivalry because of baseball, and basically we don't like LA full stop so it goes beyond sports. So please Don let us chant "Beat LA"!

 

If they're really emphasizing geography over rivalries, why is DC separated from its three closest teams in what The Athletic is reporting?

 

They don't even have to add another DP. Just exclude the DPs from the salary budget completely. That opens up cap space (around $2.2M in freed up space give or take?) for the entire roster. Transfer fees and salaries for DPs are already paid for by the team anyway.

We know that not everyone has a shot. At least 8-10 are competing while the rest are just fillers.

 

That raises something that has been on my mind. It seems a no brainer that the cold weather games under the new schedule will be something more like 2pm local kick offs to make things as pleasant for fans as possible? Do we expect that to be the practice?

 

I'm already seeing this complain but what they don't get is that now every team will play each other at least once. That's a huge improvement over what we have now that several teams go years without playing each other.

Plus the divisions are just to round off the games to 34 by having your team play home and away against the ones in its division. The real kicker will be the single table, that's the one that will matter the most.

 

I hope so.

 

You say this, but per Paul Tenorio and Tom Bogert, San Jose is not with the CA teams, which likely means it is Vancouver, Seattle, Portland, San Jose, RSL, Colorado. With LAFC, LAG, San Diego joining Austin, Dallas, and Houston.

https://archive.is/XbrfO

 

Right, I was saying your first scenario of Cascadia with the Texas teams I didn't see happening.

 

DC is the fifth closest MLS market to Miami (excluding Miami), narrowly edging out Houston.

Geographic compactness on the East Coast is satisfied, although all the old school MLS fans will stay grumpy.

 

The New York - DC rivalry has lost most of its steam since NYC and Philly came into the league anyway. I’m not all that broken up about it being an annual affair going forward.

 

The first few weeks of the 2026, which correspond to one of the difficult parts of the schedule under the new system, have some indication of that, with several early games each week.

Week 1: STL, CIN, LAG
Week 2: CHI, NYR, COL, MIN, ATX, PHI
Week 3: NER, NYC, DCU, NYR, CIN
Week 4: ATL, CLB, NER, SJE
Week 5: PHI, CIN, NYC, MIN, POR, SD

Some of those are for FOX timeslots, but most of them seem to be just a scheduling choice.

 

No it's not.

 

Dang it. I completely misread your post.

 

What is then? Charlotte, Orlando, Atlanta, Nashville, DC? What did I miss?

 

Having watched the league literally since the inaugural game, seeing them split up the last 2 remaining OG 1996 rivalries for no good reason sucks.

DC might be trickier but there's no reason they can't group the 4 California teams with Colorado and RSL and then pair Cascadia with Texas.

 

Geographic compactness is not satisfied by keeping DC away from the three teams it is physically closest to.

 

The travel. Someone is getting screwed over no matter what pairing they do but getting screwed over for doing longer travels is worse than playing your rival only once in a year instead of two times.

 

What would your solution be that doesn't leave someone isolated?

 

The travel difference amounts to an average of 1.5 games per season. Everybody travels to half of their non-division oppenents anyway, so that's an average of 1.5 trips to Texas for PNW teams. If they got grouped in the same division, that number goes up to 3. As a share of the overall travel over a season, it's not that much of a difference.

Grouping San Jose with PNW instead of SoCal both increases San Jose's travel for those 1.5 games and splits it from rivals.

Also, SoCal + Texas isn't exactly a geographically compact, low-travel division.

 

Ok, I thought you were saying DC is the 6th or 7th closest club.

 

This was my suggestion that Andrew Wiebe amplified on Twitter and on an MLS Youtube show last month: