Toronto FC forward Derrick Etienne Jr. (11) in action against Orlando City in an October match at BMO Field. The MLS season stands too have a different look in 2027, when it starts in July and concludes in May, 2028.Dan Hamilton/Reuters
Back in their early days, when they were so terrible that watching them was a clinical cause of depression, Toronto FC could not stop talking about grass.
They didn’t have a grass field to begin with, which made them rinky-dink in soccer terms. Once they had grass, everything would be better. Better players, better performance, better everything. They got their grass – a hybrid field – and couldn’t shut up about it. They were still terrible, but now they were big league.
As of Thursday they might as well pave BMO Field. That’s how much the grass matters.
The grass was a surmountable problem in the first place because Major League Soccer has always had a spring-to-fall schedule.
This takes into account logistical factors (who wants to stand around for three hours when it’s cold?) and practical ones (winter is the other football’s time to shine).
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When Toronto FC showed up in 2007, the league’s stronghold franchises were in four-season territory – New England, Washington, D.C., New York.
Twenty years on, American soccer’s power base has drifted south. Per Forbes, the four most valuable clubs are in L.A., Miami, L.A. again and Atlanta. U.S. Soccer will soon relocate to a facility in Georgia.
On Thursday, MLS made it official – they’re a hot league now. Their schedule will run summer-to-spring. This means the northern teams – the Canadian teams in particular – are pooched.
The league is talking in a soft, soothing voice about mid-winter breaks and roughly the same schedule, but that’s the thin edge of the wedge.
With MLS’s new schedule in 2027, fans watching matches at Montreal’s Saputo Stadium would catch a full range of weather.Christopher Katsarov/The Canadian Press
The Russians deal with this by shutting their league down for three months – early December to the end of February. MLS has a similar plan. How long will that last?
The Russian league is full of Russians who don’t have options outside their own country. MLS is full of players who are either looking to jump a level, or semi-retire in relaxed environs.
You think name-brand European professionals – the kind of players MLS longs for more than anything – want to work four months, cool their heels for two, work four more, take a few weeks off and start warming up again? That’s not a sports pro’s schedule. That’s my schedule.
This set-up is going to last the way MLS’s last big idea – shootouts to end ties – did. Lionel Messi will mention casually in a breakfast buffet line that he doesn’t like it, someone in charge will overhear and MLS will start shredding schedules 10 minutes later.
December to February is winter winter, but November, March and April are winter, too. Not all the time, but enough to keep you guessing. Swaths of the country have just seen that.
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Regardless of how the league manages this, Toronto FC and CF Montreal are going to have to play more games in winter conditions.
Soccer isn’t football. You can’t stumble around holding the ball. You have to guide it, with your feet, along the ground, which should be level. Otherwise, you might as well be kicking a rock – which, incidentally, is what the ball becomes once the temperature gets under zero.
One snow game is fun. Two, less so. Three, and guys start looking around at their options.
The only way to succeed in MLS is to acquire a small band of elite talent at high cost. The teams that do that don’t win every time, but they are the ones people care about and discuss. The real goal in a second-tier league like MLS is attention. That’s one reason for such a radical change – so that they will be playing when soccer is on the rest of the world’s mind.
For a moment, Toronto FC was able to have both things – a winner and a talker. But that passed. How exactly are they going to cook that up recipe again?
‘Let’s just take a look at your CV. So it says here that you’re from Belo Horizonte, Brazil. Amazing. Must be nice there. Do you live on a mountain top by any chance? No? Enjoy skiing? Not downhill. Cross-country. No? Have you ever tried cryotherapy? Yes? How would you feel about doing that all the time, outdoors?’
Has anyone ever really scoured the steppe for up and comers? The Messi of Mongolia must be out there. He just needs finding.
Through a series of workarounds – say, not playing a home game for the better part of five months, mid-season – this can be done.
The real problem for the Canadian teams, and that includes Vancouver, is that they have just been told the new rules.
For a while there, as America went soft on the sport, Canada’s soccer-positive attitude was a big plus. Give us your expansion fees and teach us how to build downtown stadiums. At that point, it was all of us together and a lot of talk about the North American game.
Now Messi & Co. are down in their lab in Miami showing everyone in miniature what this could be, and Canada doesn’t seem so crucial any more. Plus, the President hates us, so …
It’s back to just being American soccer. Thanks for playing.
They used to say that MLS would collapse the way its predecessors like the NASL had. That the early adopters who dug it for its cosmopolitan, un-American vibe would find something newer and cooler and wander off. That it wouldn’t be able to stay cheap and exciting, which is the sweet spot for the casual sports fan.
For a few years now, Toronto FC has been doing its best to bore people away. The club is back to the bad old days as a running, unfixable disaster. It’s kind of reassuring.
The sports business being what it is these days, even an unwatchable, turbo-loser makes money on paper. So I guess they had to figure out a new way of driving people off – by freezing them out.