Some of the highlights of this year’s schedule as passed on by the league:

• All 240 games will be televised
• One third of the games will be broadcast live by a national TV network:
  • 25 games will air live in high definition on ESPN2, and all of those, plus one game onESPN, will be simulcast on ESPN360 and in Spanish ESPN Deportes. This is the fourth year of an eight-year partnership between MLS and ESPN.
  • 31 games will be televised live in high definition on Fox Soccer Channel (FSC) and feature 30-minute pre- and post-game shows for a three-hour programming window. Most games on FSC will be simulcast in Spanish on Fox Sports en Español (FSE) in a two-hour broadcast window. Fox’s MLS schedule includes four Sunday matches from July 18 to Aug. 8.
  • 23 games will be broadcast live on TeleFutura, most on Saturdays starting at 4 p.m. ET.
• 75 percent of games will be played on Saturdays; 85 percent of games will be played on weekends.
• A two-week break in the MLS season aligns with the group phase of the FIFA World Cup. The last match before this break is D.C. United at Seattle Sounders FC at 10 p.m. ET (ESPN2).
• Red Bull Arena will host its first League match March 27 when the New York Red Bulls face the Chicago Fire at 7 p.m. ET (live on ESPN, ESPN Deportes and ESPN360.com).
• The first MLS game to be played on natural grass at BMO Field in Toronto will be Toronto FC’s April 15 match against Philadelphia Union at 7 p.m. ET (live on ESPN2, ESPN Deportes and ESPN360.com).
• On Sunday, June 27, Philadelphia Union will open the ninth stadium built specifically for an MLS club. The grand opening of the venue in Chester, Pa., will be a match against Seattle Sounders FC at 5 p.m. ET (live on ESPN2, ESPN Deportes and ESPN360.com).
• SuperLiga 2010 will take place this summer with the Chicago Fire, Chivas USA, Houston Dynamo, and the New England Revolution representing MLS alongside four clubs from Mexico’s Primera A. Full details of the tournament will be announced in the coming weeks.
• he 2010 MLS All-Star Game will showcase top players from both conferences against a popular international club at Reliant Stadium in Houston, Texas in late July or early August. The date and opponent for the game will be announced at a later date, but it will be broadcast live by ESPN2 and TeleFutura.

I won’t go into each team’s schedule just yet, that will be a rundown later on here as the season comes closer. I am a big believer in what the schedule means for each club. Some of the weeknight games do upset me in markets like Dallas, Colorado, and New England. I point those clubs out because it always seems like they struggle at the gate on week night games more than others (though I’m always willing to be proven wrong if someone can point out someone worse).

What do you make of your club’s schedule? Love it? Hate it? Let’s hear it.

Now, don’t get me wrong I am in the boat that think it could be positive change in the long run if the league were able to actually do such a switch. But his reasoning for it kind of ticks me off as he views the problem with the league is that the best American players aren’t playing in the league and that the clubs aren’t in control of their own stadiums.

That is a yes and no really for me. While I totally get what he is saying I just don’t like the tone that he is slamming our boys who stay home and play here instead of in Europe.

“American football plays in winter, so they can only play from March to October, which means you are not in the right season,” Blatter said on Wednesday. “The best American players are playing here, and this is the basic problem with the MLS.”

“This league was founded after the 1994 World Cup, but is still struggling to get the position they should have according to the number of football players there are in the United States,” Blatter said. “It has the highest number of young players in any sport. But the league has not found yet its position. It can only find its position if the league has its own stadiums.”

As you see he also mentions the stadium situation and I think in a way he hasn’t watched a lot of MLS lately. In a couple of years nearly every MLS club will either be in their own stadium or very close to it, with the exception of the Seattles and New Englands of the league who’s owner control the stadium situation.

To me I think Blatter just loves to slam the US and it’s soccer rather than praise it for its progress since the league’s inception. I know he doesn’t want the US to win the 2018 World Cup bid and I’m sure if he could he would love to not see it come here in 2022. I don’t know, maybe that is just me but it seems like anytime he talks about the US and soccer its always comes in a negative tone.

Okay, while I was gone a lot changed in the landscape of Major League Soccer. And by a lot, as you all probably know by now means a lot. One club punched their ticket into the post season while everyone else made it a little more interesting to see just who will get in the playoffs.

East v. West

One thing that is funny is how we talked all year how great the East is and how poor the West has been. Funny story though, right now four eastern clubs are in the playoff picture and so are four western clubs. That’s exactly what MLS went for when they changed their playoff format in the manner that they did. It created more push for the playoffs and right now its all about who’s got the hot hand and out west you are seeing some hotter hands.

Not to say the East is losing their steam this season but it means the West is finally waking up and realizing that in order to play for a MLS Cup you have to reach the playoffs to do so. A 30-game season is long, and as some say its a marathon and not a sprint. The clubs that have paced themselves the best are doing the best while the others who ran out in front too soon lost momentum and now are looking at a top three draft pick in January.

MLS Calendar Still Sucks

MLS Commissioner Don Garber told Luis Arroyave last week that there is still little that can be done to help out the clubs in terms of scheduling.

“There are 13 weekends affected by international play and we have a 30 week season,” said Garber. “To not play on those dates is impossible.

“In those markets — and Toronto is one of them — where they can play a disproportionate number of games during the week, then we’ll schedule more games during the week up there. But most markets are unable to handle that.”

“Starting at the end of February would be a little difficult to do here [in Chicago],” Garber said. “Even the first or second week in December would be almost impossible to do in most markets.

“We could look at extending it a week or two, but we can’t fit those 13 weeks into our schedule while we’re playing in this part of the world and have a fan base that disproportionately comes to games on weekends versus during the week. In almost all markets, the difference in attendance is over 50 percent for games played on a Wednesday or Thursday night than a Saturday night.”

Read more of Arroyave’s interview with the Don here, its pretty typical stuff really but worth a read when you get the chance if you haven’t already.

Probably the biggest nugget we got from that interview is SuperLiga and CONCACAF Champions League discussion. It sorta sounds like the league is listening to people when it comes to which clubs they send to which tournaments. Again I am all for the league sending its top three (plus USOC champion) to CCL and the next four to SuperLiga. Its a win-win for all in my book.

Speaking of CCL

The MLS clubs are still struggling. Surprise right? Also those USL teams are still rolling. Crazy right? I’d honestly love to see a USL club do well in that tournament and so far we are seeing two USL clubs do extremely well. I guess low expectations do breed good results sometimes.

Coaching Hot Seat Update

Keeping Carver at the top again. But adding KC’s Curt Onalfo to the bottom between DC’s Tom Soehn and New York’s Juan Carlos Osorio. I think it is safe to say all four should feel heat. For some reason should RSL really bottom out I would consider Jason Kreis, even if their management really does have a boy crush on him.

Hot and Not

Hot

Dallas: Probably one of the hottest clubs at the moment thanks to Jeff Cunningham. Looks like that deal is working out after all for the Hoops. Three game unbeaten mark right now has them within reach of a playoff spot. Not just an automatic spot but a wildcard spot as well.

Not

New England: The Revs chances of a MLS Cup look slimmer and slimmer to me after seeing them drop a vital home game to Columbus. The Revs will still be in the top three in the east but don’t be shocked if they just run out of gas by the start of the first round.

Hot

Colorado: Maybe this club really just needed to get rid of Fernando Clavijo sooner. They’ve been on a solid run as of last and their big win against New York (5-4…gotta love those scorelines in New Jersey) has their fans believing once again. I’m starting to think that final game of the year against RSL will determine which of those two head into the playoffs.

Not

Toronto: Look at who Mo Johnston has gotten rid of in the past couple seasons: Edson Buddle, Jeff Cunningham and Alecko Eskardarian. Yup, at least the first two have produced plenty of goals. Oh yeah, he also had to part with Ronnie O’Brien and others who just didn’t want to be there. Tough times. At least they have around a million (yes a million) in allocation money and few early draft picks.

Next year the MLS calendar will not just have a 30 game slate, but US Open Cup games, SuperLiga games, CONCACAF Champions League games, and possibly Copa Sudamericana. Not to mention the clubs will see their players called into action across the world in international soccer competitions on a national team basis in more World Cup qualifiers, as well as tournaments like the 2009 Confederations Cup and 2009 Gold Cup.

Its easy to say that things will be a bit crowded for the 15 MLS clubs and their players.

Now the owners are getting involved to make sure the league handles the scheduling issues first.

“That will be the No. 1 item on the agenda,” the source said. This comes after Tom Anselmi — COO at TFC’s parent Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment Ltd. — personally called MLS deputy commissioner Ivan Gazidis to seek a postponement of tomorrow’s game against Chivas USA at BMO Stadium. Anselmi and the rest of the TFC front office expressed concern this week that the team will be without nine of 11 starting players for the match. But Gazidis turned down the request, citing conflicts with television contracts that had to be honored.

What’s sad is it has taken them all year to realize that they need to get things worked on before it is too late. I don’t think this is a call for single table structure yet in MLS but it could be.

I really doubt much will be done for next year’s schedule. They may lighten the load for those SuperLiga clubs but not the ones going into the CONCACAF Champions League both in the spring and in the fall when the 2009/10 tournament kicks off.

Maybe the league will realize they need to get rid of a few things in their schedule like SuperLiga. Which honestly wouldn’t be a terrible thing.

What do you make of the league looking into the scheduling issue for next year? Will it even matter?

Chivas was cool with it, but the league wasn’t.

An MLS spokesman stated the league did not want to set a precedent by re-scheduling and felt it was unfair to other teams that might be missing players.

The more I think about this the more I start to feel bad for Toronto. Now had this only been one or two players it wouldn’t be an issue or even a thought to think Toronto would be in the wrong by petitioning this re-scheduling. But since they are missing NINE players it makes things very tough for a team in a league that doesn’t have enough depth to begin with anyways.

Still, the issue remains the same, is that the league’s continued insistence on playing a full MLS schedule on an international fixture date. MLS deputy commissioner Ivan Gazidis told media this week that the league is looking hard at trying to work around international fixture dates but that the limited number of available dates makes avoiding them all impossible.

For a year that is as close as it has ever been in terms of the playoff race, wouldn’t it be wise to let teams have a level playing field? I get that the schedules are tough to make but let’s be honest they aren’t made very well as it stands right now. The league wants to be known on an international stage but they continue to work their teams in a frenzy when they don’t have adequate roster limits and the right amount of salary cap space.

Hopefully this kind of thing will get a serious look at this offseason and the league will work hard to increase roster size and salary cap space for each club. I know the money issue is easier said than done but if they want to be ‘major league’, they need to act like it.

He said it was a testament to the league’s quality, and while I agree with him on that it still could have been avoided with proper planning.

When scheduled, the date was one of a limited number during the year that the Galaxy could host an ESPN2 Thursday night game. It is often very difficult to forecast early in the year who will be called up for national team duty. But that is only part of the issue.

The real issue is the ongoing challenge of playing MLS games during the FIFA international fixture dates.

With international club and country competitions occupying many mid-week slots during the season, we simply would not be able to fit our 30-game season into our current window that extends from the last weekend of March through end of November if we did not play MLS games on the FIFA dates.

Our options include reducing the number of tournaments in which our teams participate and/or starting the season in the beginning of March, when weather and low attendance create issues in many markets.

During the next few months leading up to our November Board of Governors Meeting during the MLS Cup Weekend, we will be looking at our ongoing scheduling challenges. While it is not practical to reposition our entire schedule, we will be focused not just on the FIFA dates, but also the number of tournaments played by our teams. Unless we make some changes, we will face even more challenges in 2009, with an uneven number of teams (the addition of Seattle brings us to a total of 15) and with the FIFA Confederations Cup and CONCACAF Gold Cup taking place in the middle of our season.

Good at least they will address it. Or so they say. In all honesty they should do what most have been calling for a while now. Move the schedule up to start in March and forget about some of these meaningless tournaments like the Pan-Pacific Tourament. Not to mention they have to find a clearer balance between the clubs who participate in SuperLiga and the CONCACAF Champions League.

I know they don’t really want to move things up earlier into March but I think they have to at this point. They won’t redo the schedule to be like most of the world, which in all reality is fine because MLS is more of a summer league than a fall-to-spring league. The money for one just doesn’t make sense for MLS to play from August to May like most leagues. Then there is the weather issue. Sure in March it will still be cold in most MLS towns. That can be avoided with proper planning too, plus some people actually like soccer in colder weather.

Begin the year at the start of March and end the season when you do now. This should allow the league a little bit of extra space for those international dates and for those extra club tournaments.

What do you think? Push the schedule up or keep it like it is but make only minor changes? I don’t even mention the other (switch to a Euro-style of schedule) because I just don’t see it ever happening here…like promotion/relegation…which is another topic for another day I suppose.