Ice cold soccer alert: What if MLS flips to a fall-spring schedule like European leagues use?

MINNESOTA UNITED | ANALYSIS

Thursday’s winter-weather slop-fest chased Minnesota United indoors for training. Friday morning, the team moved practice to Allianz Field, which has both natural grass and under-soil heating.

If the rumors about MLS changing its schedule are true, the Loons might have to get used to this sort of thing.

The Athletic published a story last week, confirming rumors that have been floating around: MLS is considering flip-flopping its league calendar following the 2026 World Cup, and running its season schedule from August through the following May, just as European leagues do.

Most of the complaints about the current schedule are focused on international soccer. In addition to summer tournaments like the World Cup and Copa América, FIFA schedules multiple-week breaks for international teams to play games in March, June, September, October and November.

Whoever wins the first-round playoff series between the Loons and Real Salt Lake will be affected by the last of these. Even if no Game 3 is necessary in their first-round series, the conference semifinals won’t happen until the weekend of Nov. 23, on the other side of the international window.

Minnesota managed to keep its momentum up through the international windows in September and October. But if that hot streak continues and the Loons beat RSL in Game 2 on Saturday, it’ll be three weeks until they play again — an absurd break, right in the middle of the playoffs.

The Loons, who lost Dayne St. Clair, Tani Oluwaseyi, and Carlos Harvey last summer to Copa América, know as much as any team about how FIFA can affect a team’s MLS season. But whatever the other benefits of a schedule change — like having the playoffs in May instead of November, or aligning the league’s transfer windows with those in Europe — it’s hard to see how shifting the schedule could possibly make sense for any team outside of Florida, Texas, or California.

According to The Athletic, the schedule under consideration would include a winter break from mid-December through January, which would possibly be reserved for the Leagues Cup to be played in warm-weather locales. But even removing those weeks from the calendar, the league’s coldest cities — with St. Paul leading the pack — would be at a significant disadvantage.

Just like when U.S. Soccer scheduled a men’s national team game for Feb. 2, 2022, in St. Paul — one that ended with multiple players being treated for hypothermia and frostbite — there seems to be one question MLS hasn’t answered.

Do they understand just how cold it gets here in the winter?

As Minnesotans understand, there are degrees of cold. Yes, it gets cold in Chicago and Boston and Toronto, but the average temperatures in those cities are 10-15 degrees warmer than St. Paul (and Montréal, the other outlier in the league), where wintertime temperatures usually vary from “frigid” to “life-threatening.”

Allianz Field is reliably full all summer, as Minnesota has built one of the most consistent crowds in all of MLS. Transplant games from beautiful June and July weather into early December and February, though, and see how many Minnesotans — used to the cold though they may be — are willing to keep their tickets.

The change in the schedule would also drive the Loons indoors for training for four or five months of the year, putting them on artificial turf – something that players in every sport hate, because of the extra wear and tear it causes on players’ bodies.

Just last year, the NFL Players’ Association — fed up with turf-caused injuries — renewed its calls for all NFL stadiums to add grass fields, and for all the league’s practice facilities to use grass. Soccer feels about the same way.

“Where it’s at all possible, we try and avoid it,” Loons coach Eric Ramsay said of the artificial turf. “We want to be on the grass as often as possible.”

If MLS flipped the calendar, they Loons wouldn’t have much of a choice. Allianz Field might not have a choice to convert, either. The grounds crew already has cold- and sunlight-related issues getting the field ready in early and late season; it’s hard to see how they’d be able to grow grass to match the new schedule.

This is to say nothing of the Loons’ ability to attract players to the club. It’s already hard enough to convince players to come to Minnesota, which is not one of the league’s marquee destinations. It’d be even harder, if all they had to offer was four months of indoor training, plus an added handful of subzero games.

In other words, however Minnesota may feel about international breaks, this alternative makes things worse on almost every other front. MLS needs a better plan than just trying to import the European calendar. The solution, in this case, would be worse than the problem it’s solving.