MLS needs a summer break

I'm a big fan of Major League Soccer but the league really needs to get its head out of its behind. In just about any other country in the world, the top division in domestic club soccer takes a break when that country's national team plays. Most national teams draw a lot of players from their own domestic leagues, so domestic leagues lose a lot of players. Rather than putting for a watered down product, most domestic leagues avoid scheduling games when the national team is playing. Since most international dates are set well in advance, this is not hard to.

MLS doesn't believe in this common sense business principle, preferring to put forth an inferior product whenever the US national team is playing.

For example, I watched Wednesday night's match between Colorado Rapids and New England Revolution. Missing from the game were Colorado's Jeff Cunningham and New England's Taylor Twellman, who were away with the national team (the latter playing about 10 minutes for the red, white and blue in their win over Trinidad & Tobago; the former not playing at all). Twellman and Cunningham are the league's two leading scorers. New England also lost starting midfielder Steve Ralston to the stars and stripes and starting defender Avery John to T&T.

During the recent CONCACAF Gold Cup (North/Central American and Caribbean championship), New England spent long periods of time without Ralston, John, Pat Noonan and Clint Dempsey (two more of the league's top scorers). So the team missed four of its starting eleven for weeks on end; is it any wonder they've struggled since early July?

The Colorado-New England game was played without three of the better attacking players in the league; is it any wonder the match was a choppy, disjointed snooze fest?

If you spend good money to see a Los Angeles' match, you expect to see Landon Donovan. If you shell out your hard earned cash for an FC Dallas ticket, you deserve to see Eddie Johnson, Carlos Ruiz and Ronnie O'Brien. Yet MLS plays even when they know teams will be depleted. And they don't even have the good grace to reduce ticket prices according for the inferior product.

MLS needs to not schedule games during World Cup qualifying matches (WCQs). That's simple enough. Though it conflicted with the national team's game, the Colorado-New England match was the only MLS contest yesterday. Why this one off? Neither club has a game this weekend; neither has a game next Wednesday. Yet both were forced to play depleted squads in a poor quality match (but charging normal ticket prices to be sure) because MLS won't do with their scheduling what nearly every other top division in the world does.

MLS should also try to schedule a three week break every July. Most Julys will see teams depleted either by the CONCACAF Gold Cup or the World Cup finals. In July, many MLS teams schedule friendlies (exhibitions) against high profile European or Latin American clubs. And in July, the weather in most of the US ranges from extremely hot to plastic-melting; a recent nationally-televised day games in Washington DC saw field temperatures rise above 115 degrees F; another in Los Angeles was even hotter. You put English Premiership or Italian Serie A players on a field where it's almost 50 degrees C and they won't play great soccer either (as evidenced by the two AC Milan-Chelsea matches that were played in the northeastern US this summer; they were more dreadfully boring than any MLS game I've seen this year)

Admittedly, this is not the easiest thing to organize. This would require either the season to be made chronologically longer or for the league to have more midweek games. A longer season would tough considering the never-ending winters in places like Boston and Chicago. And the league doesn't midweek games since they traditionally draw smaller crowds than weekend matches. But something needs to be done. When you have tired teams with second choice players in oppressive weather, sometimes in the middle of the day, it doesn't provide the compelling entertainment than MLS needs to attract new fans.

If MLS can't schedule a complete break, then it should make it so teams only have one or two games during those major international competitions. (New England has played 23 games this season. 6 have been with a roster seriously gutted by international matches)

MLS needs to stop treating its fans with contempt by passing off an inferior product as the real thing. American fans are a bit more soccer savvy than the league gives them credit for.