The Colorado Rapids site has been posting a new weekly column called, The Dark Side. It is a little cheesey but it is some of the only new content so I read it. This week's version entitled Another Step Closer has an interesting tidbit of info I don't remember seeing in the press release about expanded rosters. Does anyone else have information about a MLS reserve league tourney? It seems like this is instead of a reserve league.
I think he just used the wrong word. There will be some type of competative Reserve League in MLS this year. As far as I know there has been no official release of details of how it will be structured other that it will allow for match play for both Regular roster and DV roster players.
A couple of people inside the league told me that the "tournament" would be a very simple affair to start. Basically it will be a home-home series, 22 games total. The scheduling would depend on the senior teams' schedule, with the games being held the same day, possibly double-headers. The reserves would use a single table to figure out who would be the champions. Another option to be discussed would be that the teams play strictly inside their respective conferences. That would be 16 games, to be played the same day the seniors play, or possibly on off-set days. Obviously the difficulty with that would be the availability of stadiums or alternate sites to play the games. There might be a playoff setup within the conferences, which would lead to a Reserve Side MLS Cup. A final option would be to leave it in the hands of the teams. Each team would set up reserve games with whoever it desires - other MLS teams, USL teams, international sides, etc. All of this is going to be discussed at the Rules Committee during the off-season. Whatever is decided it should only improve the level of play.
I think the structure is quite secondary to the actually having it. The games for the bench/younger players are key. The way they figure out who you play exactly isn't that important. A league competition is a tournament in a sense, so the statement could be correct. And a reserve league wouldn't preclude those teams from also setting up games with USL or other sides as well. So we could have a hybrid of the three options mentioned.
Perhaps more to the point, in Spanish you'd call it a torneo, the same word for tournament. That might explain why the author (whose name is Arturo) said what he did.