US Soccer - Major League Soccer (MLS) Season Preview 2005

Sean O'Conor reports on the 2005 MLS Season

The shock return of Landon Donovan, America's finest player, from Bayer Leverkusen to MLS and the LA Galaxy barely a few days before the start of the season was certainly a bombshell but the most significant event of this Major League Soccer season will be the end of it. For on Sunday the 13th of November, professional football in America will have completed a decade.

This milestone may have been reached thanks to a single-entity structure which lends an air of artificiality to the league, meaning teams can only compete against each other thanks to a complicated system of draft allocations and not bid on an open market for players like the rest of the world's clubs do.

Indeed, it may well be argued that Americans always have to do things differently than the rest of the world and football is no exception. However, US soccer fans have adamantly demanded the game that the rest of the world plays and at least MLS have responded by ditching 'Americanisms' such as a down-counting clock, pervasive announcers and the dreadful 35-yard line shootout to decide tied matches, which it inflicted on the public at the league's inception back in 1996.

There are still the play-offs however to decide the league champions although the addition of two more sides this year gives them more credibility, with now four instead of only two teams facing elimination after the 32-game regular season finishes. The drive for credibility is far from won however, with half of MLS' twelve teams still playing in vast NFL bowls which swallow up whatever noise a league average crowd of 16,000 can create.

On the plus side, MLS will in a matter of weeks have a third stadium to call its own, Dallas' Frisco Field, a 21,193 seat venue, following a decade of using the 64,000 capacity Cotton Bowl, one of the World Cup venues in 1994. Chicago and Colorado's own stadia will be the next to be finished, whilst the Metrostars are making genuine progress on building their own arena in New Jersey. On the flip side MLS reigning champions DC United will begin sharing RFK, another World Cup venue, with a Major League Baseball team, the new Washington Nationals.

MLS began two years later than scheduled and was itself part of the bargain that granted the hosting of the 1994 World Cup to the United States. In many ways the first ten years have been about establishing foundations on a rocky shore and in all probability the next five years will entail more consolidation before professional football can breathe a sigh of relief that its existence has been assured.

By then the majority of teams will be playing in purpose-built 20,000-30,000 seat homes from which they will be earning income, instead of paying often exorbitant rents as tenants to NFL landlords.

The US National Team's shadow looms large over MLS and in the last full season before the 2006 World Cup, a number of players will be aiming to win places in coach Bruce Arena's thoughts. As well as returning hero Landon Donovan, the finest American soccer player, who has joined LA Galaxy, there are homecomings for US internationals Greg Vanney and Clint Mathis, the latter at the new team of Real Salt Lake City.

Whilst the lion's share of the national team play in Europe, regulars such as Carlos Bocanegra of Fulham and Claudio Reyna at Manchester City will have to keep one eye over their shoulders for US-based players who will feature more regularly in Arena's sights. DaMarcus Beasley, now at PSV Eindhoven and one of the key players for the USA, only made the team shortly before the finals in 2002, after impressive performances for Chicago Fire. Indeed, MLS provided around half of the players the USA used to great effect in reaching the World Cup quarter-finals in Korea.

The title looks too close to call with last season's impressive finalists DC United and the Kansas City Wizards largely unchanged since November and Columbus Crew and LA Galaxy, with added Donovan, likely to have a say. Four times MLS champions United have the loss of their best player, Kiwi Ryan Nelsen, now playing for Blackburn Rovers in the Premiership, to contend with but have high hopes for Argentinian midfielder Christian Gomez and the second season of the boy wonder Freddie Adu, who debuted impressively last season at the ripe old age of fourteen. Chicago Fire, one of the most consistently strong teams of recent years, had a nightmare season last year, failing to make the play-offs, and still have not recovered from losing Beasley and Bocanegra to Europe.

On paper the Metrostars and the Colorado Rapids look unlikely to mount a challenge and nor do the New England Revolution, coached by former Scotland and England stars Steve Nichol and Paul Mariner, but the Revs surprised everyone two years ago by reaching the final.

The San Jose Earthquakes have undergone large-scale rebuilding and it will be interesting to see how their youthful line-up fares, especially with the threat of 'franchising' (moving the team to another city) still hanging over them, a fate that also circles the Kansas City Wizards.

Then there are the two 'new' sides who are unknown quantities: Real Salt Lake and CD Chivas. The Utah side has opted for experience, recruiting US internationals Clint Mathis and Eddie Pope plus MLS veterans Jason Kreis and Andy Williams and in John Ellinger have one of the US Soccer Federation's most respected coaches on his first professional assignment. You could add to that list the revamped Dallas Burn, renamed as FC Dallas.

On paper Dallas (the fourth MLS team to change its name since 1996) should have the most optimism; they have in Eddie Johnson the US National Team's in-form striker and have just acquired the Guatemalan hit-man Carlos Ruiz, whose 50 goals in 72 appearances for LA Galaxy made him the league's most feared forward. Then there is the new stadium arriving mid-season, which intriguingly will also host the Final.

Most excitement however will surround the second new team entering the league this year, CD Chivas USA. A genuine first for MLS, this team is part owned by the Mexican team of the same name and have hired predominantly Hispanic players. Despite the bizarre decision to hire a Dutch coach who does not speak Spanish, the whole project is aimed squarely at the USA's vast Hispanic population, who have so far seemed rather disinterested in the American version of the Beautiful Game.

They could have had an easier opener than against MLS Champions DC United but time will tell whether they will be true mould-breakers or another Miami Fusion (joined the league but folded four years later). Whilst their inaugural season in Los Angeles will provoke a great deal of interest in 'The Hispanic Experiment', in the long term the involvement of Mexican billionaire owner Jorge Vergara should be the first step on the road to abolishing the single-entity structure of the league and the start of an inevitable drift towards a free market of clubs being run as independent businesses.

Football is a business in a land like America without a grass-roots tradition like Europe's or South America's to ensure its survival so the recent $150million deal over ten years struck with Adidas is a tremendous vote of confidence in the USA's football future. With every new season come more plans to build football stadia, more cities wanting to start MLS teams, more TV coverage and an improving national team. America and football? You'd better believe it.

Sean O'Conor

Related links

MLS Preview 2006
MLS Preview 2004
MLS Final 2004

Buy US Soccer Products

"The Onside In-Site" Copyright © From 2000. All rights reserved. Soccerphile Ltd.