MLS, in stronger position than other soccer leagues, ponders changes for post-crisis play

MLS had only played two weeks of the 2020 season when games stopped due to the pandemic. What will the league’s schedule look like on the other side?

In some ways Major League Soccer is in a better position than most to handle the unprecedented coronavirus pandemic that has halted every other soccer league on the planet. While the Premier League wrangles with whether or not to hand Liverpool the title on the basis of just 29 fixtures completed of a 38-game season, MLS doesn’t have that problem.

After just two rounds of fixtures of the 2020 season, there are no frontrunners, no political fallout from the refusal to hand out the trophy everyone wants to lift aloft. What’s more, MLS operates with an inherent creativity that most other leagues don’t. Some would say, at least with regards to trades and transfers, they are willing to bend the rules when needed.

A lot of bending may be required to complete the 2020 season with no play expected until June at the earliest. Don Garber has already confirmed that the league is exploring alternative methods and formats with a tournament played at neutral venues one possible solution to the problem MLS never thought they’d face.

“From tournament formats and neutral locations, ultimately playing an abridged regular season, but doing everything to get as many games,” commissioner Garber told ESPN. “We might be playing further into the winter. That’s even hard to imagine because we had a zero Celsius MLS Cup in Toronto in mid-December in 2017, but we’re going to have to push this season as far as we can so that we can crown a champion in 2020.”

One suggestion which has been widely made poses the possibility that MLS could use this as an opportunity align itself with the global soccer calendar that plays from summer to summer rather than winter to winter, as is the case in the North American top flight. For some it remains a problem that MLS doesn’t observe international and major tournament breaks like other leagues do.

Of course, the harsh winter of places like Denver and Toronto makes a true winter schedule impossible, but the adoption of a schedule like the one used by the Bundesliga, which takes two full months over Christmas and New Year, might be an option. It would certainly help ease MLS out of this unprecedented situation.

Garber has long been steadfast in his insistence that MLS won’t go down this path and so it’s highly unlikely that a permanent change in schedule is forthcoming, even in these circumstances.

Instead, just like every other league, MLS will have to think a little differently. They have more time than most to do that.