Summer of Discontent — The Debate Over The MLS Schedule

Antony Scher's villainous Richard, deformed both in body and mind, was nothing like the real monarch...

“Now is the winter of our discontent, made glorious summer by this sun of York.”

Shakespeare’s Richard III has nothing to do with American soccer.  Still, if the Bard can use poetic license, for the sake of his art, to transform an effective, benevolent and visionary monarch, as most modern historians believe old Dick to have been, into a greedy and conniving blackard, then I say deal me in.  I’ll happily turn Bill’s immortal phrase on its head, to help illustrate how many pundits are not at all content with Major League Soccer playing its season under the – if not glorious, then at least blazing – summer sun.  And hey, if it makes me look cultured in the bargain, all the better.

Those who would see the league march in step with its European cousins are many and reside on both sides of the Atlantic.  They offer up a long list of benefits that, they claim, the switch to a winter schedule will achieve for the fledgling competition.

... But Pacino? This is taking it way too far!

Admittedly, playing in the summer does cause one headache for MLS, in international competition.  The CONCACAF Champions League qualifying begins during the off season.  Thus, the best clubs in a league attempting to gain relevance, in international discussion, are at a disadvantage in the early rounds of the competition most likely to help them gain that status.

With players not match fit and disgruntled at having to cut their vacation time short, US clubs are ill prepared for the CCL and, throughout their history, it has shown.  The only period in which they have had success was when the elimination rounds of the tournament were held entirely within the US.

There’s no arguing with that; it’s completely true.  As long as MLS takes its offseason in the winter, it will have to deal with this dilemma.  However, most of the other arguments offered in support of winter play are, to be polite, specious.

For instance, there’s the premise that MLS is out of sync with the FIFA transfer windows.  Supposedly, this scheduling snafu places the Americans at a disadvantage in attracting high profile players, through purchase or on permanent loan.  According to some, the summer window arrives when MLS, in mid-season, has settled its rosters and has no need of players.  The winter window comes in the off season, when the league isn’t looking to make any signings.

Remember, this drivel is coming from supposed fans of European leagues.  Don’t UEFA clubs use the summer window, in their offseason, to acquire new players for the coming year?  As well, don’t they use the January window to supplement their squads in the middle of the campaign?  Why can’t MLS, if it were of a mind, not approach this from the opposite direction, as in fact, they already have?  Just this summer, Thierry Henry and Rafa Marquez were both signed to improve the Red Bulls, while the MLS season was in progress.

Offered the chance to bid for the likes of Balotelli, MLS would say, "Thanks but no thanks."

It’s true that the January window, being half the length of the summer version, is typically less active.   American clubs might be at a disadvantage in finding talent for the new season.

MLS, though, is not too terribly interested in engaging in massive bidding wars for the best players available.  Their mandate is to develop as a league, with North American players, and thus improve the quality of both the US and Canadian national teams, rather than to chase themselves into debt, as any number of European sides are doing.

All they require is a few players, of slightly better quality with each yearly foray into the market, to raise the bar for the homegrown talent.  The Designated Player Rule permits the affordable signing of foreign talent (Henry, Rafa Marquez and, of course, David Beckham), while also addressing the need to keep elite homegrown players (Landon Donovan) stateside.

Having a league filled to bursting with Designated Players has already been tried (NASL & the NY Cosmos) and was a spectacular failure.

Apparently, the juxtaposed seasons inconvenience not only clubs but players wishing to transfer, because they will be moving either to or from a league in mid session to one on holiday.  Give me a break.  The player will either get a nice little vacay or will have to play his way into shape, to earn the pay raise that, like as not, motivated the transfer.

David Beckham’s misadventure in Serie A, admittedly instigated by the desire to play in South Africa, rather than for money, is often brought up in relation to this, with the suggestion that he played too much, leading to a serious injury.  The fact is, that as a dedicated professional, he knew to take at least a four week break in between his stints with LA and AC Milan.  The injury was simply unfortunate.  Landon Donovan had no such issue in his brief sojourn with Everton.

Another complaint is that the current MLS schedule conflicts with the World Cup and other competitions.  Sepp Blatter has been one of the most critical voices, on this issue, and has pushed for the Americans to move to winter play.  Sepp, however, also thinks that female players should wear more revealing kits and that referees should be hung out to dry, while the media pours over instant replay evidence of their mistakes.

This year, MLS suspended play, to allow players to train with their international squads and compete in South Africa, without the league sides suffering from their absence.  Play started up again, after the round of sixteen, when most international players were available to return to their clubs.  To do this once every four years, is surely not too serious an imposition?

As for other competitons, such as the Euros and Copa America, MLS will just have to do without some of its players.  UEFA clubs already endure the loss of  stars, to the African Cup  of Nations, every other year, with no interruption in their schedule.  No system is perfect and to demand more of a developing league than an established one is simply unfair.  As MLS develops into a nice fluffy omellette, rather than just the bunch of scrambled eggs they are currently perceived to be, some shells will be cracked and yolks spilled.

Then there’s what I like to call the Cole Porter Argument.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyWArxIbn7w

I keep hearing how the heat of summer wears down players in well under ninety minutes, lowering the quality of the game.  Funny thing, but the greatest player ever to grace a pitch, Pele, stayed in the hot Brazilian sun for all but the last two years of his career, when he finally came to New York, where the Cosmos played in, you guessed it, the summer.  He never went to Europe.

Athletes can and do train themselves to excel in extreme conditions at both ends of the thermometer, or else how could Brazil have five World Cups and Germany three?  Surprisingly, it’s the fans that can’t take the heat, at least in America.

In the late nineties, when Don Garber was appointed commissioner, MLS had expanded to twelve teams but were at a crossroads, financially.  After observing each club’s situation firsthand, he decided that the league would have to terminate its two franchises in Florida, the Miami Fusion and Tampa Bay Mutiny.

It wasn’t that the sport wasn’t catching on in Florida. There were plenty of fans.  I know; I live here.  Both cities have substantial minority populations from all over Latin America and the Caribbean, all starved for a little footy.  As well, if the ubiquity of youth leagues are any indication, the mainstream population is equally drawn to the sport.

Quality of play wasn’t the issue, either.  Both clubs were reasonably competitive.  In fact, in its lame duck 2001 season, the Fusion, led by Colombian World Cup star Carlos Valderrama, came very close to winning the MLS Cup, succumbing in a hard fought semi final, to the eventual champion, San Jose Earthquakes, featuring two young stars of whom you may have heard, American, Landon Donovan, and Canadian, Dwayne DeRosario.

... If the sun don't come, you get your chance gettin' drenched in the Florida rain.

Sitting in an empty stadium, waiting for the sun...

The trouble was that, even playing virtually every home game at night, the clubs couldn’t keep fans in the seats.  The conditions were just too uncomfortable.

Major League Baseball’s Florida Marlins suffer the same problem.  Despite being competitive year in and year out, even winning two World Series, the Marlins rank near the bottom in league attendance, of thirty teams, every season.  No sports fan likes to sit through three or more hours of searing heat and humidity, with the frequently realised chance of heavy thunderstorms.

After a decade of wrangling with politicians, the baseball club has finally struck a deal for a covered stadium that will keep the club in South Florida.  As upstart soccer clubs, the Fusion and Mutiny had neither the patience, nor resources, for such a protracted battle.  It was better for the league to step away and revisit the area when it was stronger.

All of that would seem to favour a conversion to a winter schedule but, remember, we’ve only been discussing two clubs.  Were MLS to make the proposed change, the severe American winters would adversely effect no less than ten of the nineteen clubs which will be competing in the league by 2012.

What do I mean by severely effect?  Look at the charts below.  They show the average monthly temperatures, as well as monthly high and low averages, for a cross section of  eight American, six European and three Latin American footballing cities.

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As you can see, only Germany and Russia, the latter following an [ahem] summer schedule, endure anything close to the severity of an American winter.  You might say that Germany appears to have just as nasty a winter as Chicago, by the evidence.  Look again, though, taking closer note of the ranges between highs and lows.  The Windy City’s range’s are six or seven degrees greater.

No, Garber does not moonlight as a Secret Service agent, he'd just prefer that MLS continue to bask in the sun.

Translation:  At night it’s a heck of a lot colder on the shores of Lake Erie, than on the banks of the Isar.   That makes scheduling mid week evening matches a much less profitable option.

When you also consider that North American winters typically endure higher rates of snowfall than the European variety, issues with quality of both pitch and play also enter the equation.

In order to overcome that, MLS would need to construct stadiums with retractable domes in more than half of its existing markets.  As Commissioner Garber told the NY Times in November of 2008, that just isn’t in the budget:

“Play(ing) a European schedule, to give you my best answer, would cost us millions of dollars, we wouldn’t be able to have a business. Basically that decision, if we were to schedule that way, (means) we’d have to fold the league because we couldn’t afford to do it.”

Simply put, MLS can develop a better, more entertaining and profitable product if they continue with a summer schedule.

If you just snorted at that statement, take another look at the Latin American chart.  As the region doesn’t have to put up with what those well north of the Equator call winter, children can play the game in near perfect conditions for twelve months of the year.  As a consequence, that part of the world has produced some of the most skillful and entertaining football on the planet.

Did I hear another snort?  I suppose that’s no surprise.  Proponents of European football do tend to look down their noses at other regions.  Loyalty and pride are  good qualities in a fan but facts are facts.  Clubs from Argentina and Brazil have more than held their own in both the current FIFA Club World Cup competition and its predecessor, the Intercontinental Cup.  Not to mention that the three South American World Cup winning countries have won only one less trophy, at nine, than the five European nations who have stood on the podium.

If MLS is looking for an improvement on its existing schedule, there is more than one place from which it can draw inspiration.

In fact, most leagues in Latin America now play under a format which I haven’t heard discussed stateside, at all.  I’m speaking of the Apertura/Clausura (opening and closing) system, of course.  Most Central and South American leagues conduct two seasons every year.  One begins in the fall and the other in spring.  In each, a club plays every other league side only once, not home and home.  In the second season, they do it again, this time hosting the clubs they visited earlier.  Many leagues follow each mini-season with that American sporting staple, a playoff, to decide the champion but, whatever the method, two champions (or a double winner) are crowned each year.

The North koreans are famous for it...

This is a completely foreign concept to the American sports fan, which is why it’s been largely ignored.  Trying to get the average US citizen to adopt another country’s customs is simply un-American.  It’s like convincing Kim Jong-il  to announce free and democratic elections in North Korea.  Fat chance of that happening.

Ironically, those same Yanks often refer to their own long, drawn out league playoffs, in other sports, as ‘the second season’ and bemoan as meaningless their regular seasons.  Wouldn’t two shorter, meaningful campaigns, each followed by knockout rounds, offer much more intrigue than watching your team play out the string or rest its stars, while waiting for the playoffs to arrive?

... But Americans are known for their inflexibility, as well.

Additionally, when you factor in the economic and geographical obstacles that make promotion and relegation a non-starter in American soccer, there would be several benefits to MLS adopting their own version of Apertura/Clausura.

For the sake of patriotic fervor, let’s begin by American-ising the term.  We’ll christen the two yearly championships the Spring and Fall Cups.  That should do nicely, at least until some wealthy sponsors, looking for something on which to put their brand, can be found.

The point is that, with two mini seasons, MLS would be better able to avoid conflicts with the World Cup, simply by expanding the break between the two campaigns to accommodate the international tournament, once every four years.

Next, without promotion and relegation, the shorter seasons would keep more teams (and their fans) involved in the playoff hunts, meaning more games would have meaning and, thus, optimal marketability.  If the league developed, over time, to the point of being on equal footing with the top European and South American leagues (I’ll pretend not to have heard that snort), the split season would also lessen the previously mentioned concerns regarding the timing of transfers and loans.

The World Series & Super Bowl trophies are contested by the American & National League champions & NFC & AFC champions, respectively

Despite what some of you have probably been thinking, it wouldn’t even mean the end of the MLS Cup, given to the yearly champion of the league.  Instead of being played in November, that contest could be held prior to the opening of the Spring Cup season.  The previous year’s two Cup winners, or the double winner and the club with the best overall record, over the entire year, could meet to decide a grand champion.

Under this format, such a match might even one day rival the Super Bowl.  In fact, playing the match in the immediate wake of the NFL’s mega-popular championship might attract and convert a sizable amount of new fans.  If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em, as the saying goes.

Speaking of which, the status of grid-iron football, in America, is often an argument made for not switching to a winter format.  As much as I oppose the conversion, the NFL’s dominance of the market is, to me, no excuse.  MLS is already engaged in a much more difficult battle for fans and ratings, against America’s traditional summer pastime, baseball.

... So, why not have two champions challenge for MLS' greatest prize?

Baseball clubs draw between twenty and thirty thousand fans on average, a little more than MLS.  However, they play virtually every day.  Major college and professional grid-iron teams play on Saturdays and Sundays, respectively, and it’s rare to find a major college and NFL squad in the same city.  It would be fairly easy to schedule your matches, as an MLS side, around certain Saturdays or Sundays, to co-exist with a grid-iron club.  With their ticket prices, it would even be easy to market yourself as a more family friendly and affordable option.  On the other hand, baseball tickets are comparable in price to MLS and  it’s impossible to schedule around every day.  Soccer is already fighting the tougher rival and not doing too badly, either.

So, as crazy as it may sound, I not only think MLS should stick to their summer schedule, I urge them to take it a step further.   Begin the Spring and Fall Cup format.  Play the MLS Cup, as the English Premier League does the Community Shield, at the outset of the calendar year.  Only, the MLS Cup will actually be a trophy worth winning.

P.S.  Don Garber, if you read this, consider that your own fans will be engaged year round, while those of traditional American sports might actually be attracted to all the excitement.  The rest of you, get started on those North Korean election posters!