St. Louis City SC players are praising a decision by Major League Soccer to change its schedule to better align with top leagues around the world.
The MLS announced last week that starting in 2027, teams will start regular season play in July and finish championship playoffs in May 2028. The schedule will include a break of about six weeks beginning in mid-December.
The league’s current schedule runs from late February through November.
“I think it's a big thing for the whole league,” said midfielder Marcel Hartel, who just finished his first full season in the U.S. “It points in the right direction to get [the MLS] competitive with the top five leagues around the world.”
Players said the major benefit is one of timing.
“To sign new players into the league, you don't take a player in the middle of the season out of a club,” said City SC goalkeeper and captain Roman Bürki. “Maybe clubs are more open now to send a player to the U.S.”
Players also said they are also looking forward to getting two extended breaks in the season — one in the summer and another in the winter. That could reduce the stress and fatigue of playing nonstop during the hot summer months in St. Louis, Texas and Southern states.
The downside is that northern teams, including Montreal, Minnesota and New England, could be trading home matches on balmy July evenings for frigid nights in November or December.
That trade-off is worth it to Hartel. “I mean, it's very hot to play here in the summer. It’s hard to play in the heat and humidity,” he said.
The move to the new schedule is a major effort to bring the U.S. more in line with the world soccer community. But another aspect of the international game is not likely to come stateside: relegation and promotion.
Most countries have multiple leagues in which the poorest-performing teams are sent down to a lower division and replaced by teams that finish at the top of those leagues.
Bürki said the MLS ownership structure makes that unlikely to happen in the U.S.
“I understand that [MLS] owners don't want to risk all the money they put in, that the team may be relegated,” he said. “I think the biggest step and the most important step is the [schedule] alignment.”
City SC just finished four weeks of end-of-season training. Players will have a break to go home and visit family before reconvening for preseason workouts in January for a new season that will, for one last time, start in February.
