OPINION: MLS Weekend Watered Down

This weekend’s MLS action was tainted by the con­tin­ued insis­tence of the league not to break or at the very least reduce its sched­ule for inter­na­tional matches. Lan­don Dono­van, Brad Guzan, Mo Edu, Frankie Hej­duk and Rico Clark should not have to take a long flight after one inter­na­tional match only to take a sim­i­lar length flight after the MLS match back to Europe. But it wasn’t sim­ply Amer­i­cans who were incon­ve­nienced by MLS’ sched­ul­ing this week­end: if it were sim­ply Amer­i­cans I sup­pose it would be alright. Six Cana­dian play­ers were busy bat­tling mighty Brazil while sev­eral other MLS play­ers were scat­tered through­out the world play­ing for their coun­tries. Amado Gue­vara, Ivan Guer­rero and their Hon­duran team mates were in my neck of the woods in Fort Laud­erdale fac­ing Venezuela. Kei Kamara and Bouna Counduil were in Africa for World Cup qual­i­fiers, and Carl Robin­son was in Wales to face Hol­land in the final tune up for the Dutch before the Euros begin. Sev­eral other MLS play­ers were also absent this past week­end and will be absent for sev­eral matches in the next month.

MLS is water­ing down its prod­uct and cheat­ing its fans, play­ers and man­age­ment by mak­ing no effort to resolve its sched­ul­ing issues dur­ing this period. The on the field prod­uct while accept­able isn’t what it should be dur­ing this period and that makes the whole sit­u­a­tion laugh­able. Why MLS can­not change its sched­ul­ing prac­tices is beyond me. For the first time since the inau­gural sea­son of 1996, MLS has a great num­ber of play­ers who are active on their respec­tive national teams and whose pres­ence as full inter­na­tion­als enhances the rep­u­ta­tion of the league. But all of this jeop­ar­dized if the league does not make it pos­si­ble for foot­ballers to per­form for both their club and coun­try with­out conflict.