MLS gives FIFA the ol' head fake; change of seasons unlikely

I won’t call this business of “a study” for Major League Soccer to examine the ins and outs of aligning with the FIFA calendar a bunch of hooey. But it isn’t far from it.

Here’s a great pro and con a possible calendar realignment, where MLS would begin in late summer and wrap up some time in the spring, as it’s done in so many leagues around the world. This is all about an announcement last week from MLS commissioner Don Garber, who said that MLS will look at why such a drastic move would or wouldn’t work. Let me stress, as he did, that this is hardly a fait accompli. They are just looking at possibly looking at it, if you know what I mean.

There is a purpose to the “study,” but it’s not what you think. It’s all about one thing: removing one more impediment to getting the 2022 World Cup.

Long story short, for whatever reason FIFA president Sepp Blatter has this thing stuck in his crawl; he honestly believes that one of American soccer’s big problems is that it doesn’t align its season with the rest of the world. It’s an incredibly shallow and poorly informed viewpoint. I mean, he truly believes that people aren’t switching their allegiances en masse from NFL, NBA and Major League Baseball teams over to the L.A. Galaxies, Columbus Crews, etc., because the league plays in the summer. He’s rather obsessed with this thing. This is a guy who once met President Obama and immediately mentioned – to the leader of the free world … as if he cared! – that MLS simply had to re-arrange its calendar.

But Blatter does hold sway, obviously, in soccer matters. And he has the ability to influence the upcoming Dec. 2 vote – a biggie.  The United States could be chosen to host another World Cup, the 2022 event.

So, MLS is communicating with Blatter. The league is saying to him, “Well, Mr. Blatter, you may be right! Maybe we’ve seen this thing wrong all along. By golly, we’re gonna take a look at this puppy dog and see if maybe if we can get him pointed in the right direction. Thanks, Mr. Blatter, for showing us the obvious errors of our ways. Now you may go back to less important matters, like stamping out racism in your game and policing the endemic, sorry corruption in your highest levels.”

Now, what I expect to happen:

MLS will indeed spend some time studying weather tables and media mentions during certain times of the year. Power Point presentations will be dutifully created and such … but we all know what the results will say. That’s it’s too darn cold in too darn many places for soccer in December, January and February.

I mean, this league (smartly) avoids scheduling games early in the season as it is in places like New England, New York, Toronto and Columbus. And they are going to talk about playing in those cities throughout the mean ol’ winter?  

And they’ll study the feasibility of a winter break. But this is a country where a mid-season “break” is more foreign than the single-table concept that MLS has so adamantly refused to consider. So, that doesn’t seem to be answer

Garber knows all this – which is exactly why he has consistently advocated remaining on the current calendar.

But then the Blatter factor kicked. So Garber and others within the domestic soccer structure thought it prudent to remove one of the last remaining obstacles.

So they’ll conduct the study. Then, after the World Cup is safely in place and preparations are safely underway, they’ll issue a press release saying they have concluded the study and, well, that FIFA calendar thingy just won’t work here.