MLS hasn’t played a match since March 8, in a thrilling 3-3 draw between Los Angeles Football Club and the Philadelphia Union, when can we expect it to return and what does the delay mean for the rest of the season?
Coronavirus has affected every league around the world, and some, such as the English Premier League, Serie A, and Champions League were hit harder than others.
The federations in charge of those leagues don’t know yet how it will deal with the upcoming end-of-the-season deadline – will the season extend into the summer and the players’ vacations; will it end early, cutting short the title and relegation races?
Luckily for Major League Soccer, it is just two games into the season.
It was March 12 when MLS announced the postponement to the season. The initial announcement from the league aimed to shut down the league for 30 days, until April 12.
Then on March 19, MLS acted in accordance with CDC guidelines, extending the season suspension to at May 10, Mother’s Day.
Things will change along the way, as the virus spreads and more precautions are taken to limit infections.
Currently, players are in quarantine like the rest of us, trying to stay fit and focused in this time off.
The downtime will certainly hit some teams more than others, but it’s impossible to say how this will affect each team.
Prior to the postponement of the season, LAFC had far and away the best odds to win the MLS Cup in 2020, though its uncertain if they’ll remain when the season starts up again.
There is no certainty as to how each club will rebound from the break, even LAFC, as the margin for error will certainly narrow.
We’re in uncharted terrain. MLS has never had to deal with a break such as this one, where training and games are put on hold. We could see some big swings of form when play eventually restarts.
So far, two weekends of matches have been postponed. If everything goes according to schedule, 115 MLS matches would be suspended, including the two match weeks already passed.
In all, each team would need to reschedule 9 or 10 matches (the weekend of April 15 had only four matches scheduled.)
It would be a challenge to reschedule these games midweek, cramming the calendar with two games a week, most weeks, but will likely have to happen to finish the season.
The biggest implication of the calendar change is on MLS Cup.
According to a report from Yahoo! Sports’ Doug McIntyre, MLS is looking into moving MLS Cup back to December.
MLS Cup was schedule for early November last season – and this one before the suspension hit – as a way to avoid the November international break, which forced MLS playoffs to take a 13 day hiatus as players left for their national teams.
Normally, the highest seeded team in the final hosts the cup match, but memories of Toronto in previous years has led MLS commissioner Don Garber to think about a neutral, warm-weather city to host MLS Cup 2020.
The early December date means MLS has potentially three or four extra weeks to cram in games.
Here are the other weeks in which there are no midweek games currently scheduled:
May 18-22
June 1-6 (Only five games are scheduled 6/6)
June 8-12:
June 21-27
July 25-August 1
August 30-Sept 4 (Only three games on 4/5)
Sept 6-11
Sept 20-26
Sept 27-Oct 4
There are several weeks where MLS scheduled just three or four midweek games, and could be forced into filling those days with more matches.
As it is, there are about nine weeks with no midweek games, and a pair of weekends that are partially full.
Unfortunately, it isn’t optimal to have so many matches crammed together. A 34 game season is long, and it’s hard enough without taking over a month of play away.
One solution could be to cancel certain games altogether. It could be unfair as some teams might get a difficult fixture removed while others lose an easier one, but MLS already crossed that bridge this season.
For the first time ever, MLS teams won’t play every other team. So there are already squads that won’t face each other. Adding just two more to that list –reducing the season to 32 games – could lighten the load and ensure players aren’t overworked.
MLS could even just scrap all the matches that were suspended. It would keep the schedule in tact, wouldn’t cause shifting of matches, but would reduce the season to just 24 matches, and has big implications on playoffs and much more.
Shortening the season by any amount of games doesn’t just impact the structure of the standings, but is also a massive revenue loss. Clubs would have to refund ticket purchases, while missing out on in-stadium purchases such as memorabilia and concessions. Clubs would lose money from advertisers in stadium in future deals. TV deals would become less lucrative as viewer numbers would be greatly diminished.
Any games not played causes too much lost in revenue. Entire budgets are flipped.
So from a player health and continuity standpoint, the league could shorten the season, but from a fiscal view, it could be disastrous.
Luckily for MLS, this didn’t occur in the first 10 years of its existence. At that point, the league could easily have gone under.
In the current format, MLS will probably continue to live on, and grow, hopefully not suffering from this setback.
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