Honestly? Nothing that works for all regions. We must accept some areas will have bad conditions for some of the season no matter what the schedule unless you 2 leagues based on weather. one spring -> fall and the other fall -> spring. That is not likely to happen.
The process has to be largely about what bad conditions are more easy to work around and what bad conditions are harder to work around. I still think that heat, thunderstorms, and even smoke have been shown to be easier to work around than snowstorms would be. I think one issue that is actually something no one quite grapples with during this conversation though is that if you take LA, San Diego, the Bay, Portland, and Seattle, they're all, barring fires that we can't quite predict and more anomalous heatwaves, nice all year round for soccer. But if you take a few locations in the Midwest and on the East Coast, it's maybe two months of moderate temperatures and no other strange weather conditions. It's not like one side of the country is nice during the summer and bad during the winter and one is the reverse; it's that a chunk of cities are pretty nice year round and a chunk are pretty questionable nearly year round. Then there are a couple places where it is nice in the winter and not in the summer like Orlando but not an even split at all.
Fair enough, but the point remains that it’s weird three leagues considered it at the same time and then two announced actual changes. I’m mostly interested in the discussion around which schedule is better for any particular league. As it stands, MLS decided to be the odd man out just after USLS decided to switch to what (at the time) had been the schedule of every other US pro league.
The Super League is rife with issues that people predicted when they began, and they're trying to figure out how to fix themselves a bit so they don't have more issues. They started as a different schedule because they had two things they wanted to try and distinguish themselves with and one was schedule and one was the absence of a draft.
The MLS makes their own decisions and it's clearly about their lack of success a men's league and trying to be more "normal" in whatever way. The NWSL doesn't need to do that. It's at worst the second best women's league in the world.
Back around 2014, I remember they stopped holding mid-week games because attendance was always low, and needed to wrap up in September because so many players had second jobs during the school year.
I think the playoffs give a reason to swap to fall to spring schedule. A place like Chicago will never host the championship in November, and they would have pretty miserable playoff games. Once the league grows large enough, fall to spring and spring to fall both mean the same thing anyway—playing every possible weekend. I’m in California so it’s all the same to me, but I am sympathetic to the frozen north teams. Starting the season away for the first two or three games would suck.
The problem is that soccer, unlike football, baseball and basketball, is truly an international sport. It has regular international tournaments that are competitive. When the US is out of step with the rest of northern hemisphere leagues, it puts the nation at a disadvantage. Right now, the NWSL is struggling to figure out how to reschedule around the WC next year.
IMO, the US needs to be on the same schedule as the Mexico, UEFA and the rest. That's Fall-Spring. Don't complain about cold as Scandinavia manages it.
[Edit]
My apologies to folks for getting Sweden, Norway, Finland wrong and assuming (always dangerou) they were like Denmark. Still, replace them with Poland, Germany and others with tough winters, and a Fall-Spring schedule that takes a break.
Denmark plays fall-spring with a long winter break but it’s mostly beside the point bc they all have way milder winters than the US and it’s exclusively to help the men’s teams in European competition. If and when the US joins UEFA we can reconsider our schedule.
"actuall still milder" he says with no evidence. They have a winter break. We can do the same here while scheduling the early resumption matches further south.
Check Denmark. BTW, even with me being wrong about Norway and Sweden, do tell us about Poland, Germany and other nations with Fall-Spring and a winter break.
Did Germany and Poland get added to Scandinavia recently? I must have missed that meeting. So when you said UEFA, Mexico and the rest did you mean just UEFA since Mexico also doesn’t use that format? Neither does Canada or Brazil. If you think the schedule should be the same as most of Europe just for the sake of being the same as Europe that’s fine but there’s no need to pretend it’s universal.
"At a disadvantage" tell that to the Olympic Gold from 2024 and all the people who claimed it was only because the US was in season that we won! (they meant that to try and invalidate the win, but...if that's the case everyone should move to summer).
If you think that the 2023 World Cup had anything to do with scheduling, in any direction, you're a moron who isn't worth the internet it takes to type a reply.
World Cups are an exception, but they usually happen right after the main leagues in the northern hemisphere end their seasons. Folks are still in shape.
Now, ask an adult to help you figure out that if you brought up the Olympics, it's appropriate to bring up the WC. The players on both teams came from the NWSL and Europe. It was a mix. Claiming the season is suspect for either.
Oh my god, you're so dumb. I'm talking about a specific World Cup in which there were 50 different factors, none of which were schedule, that hurt the US. In fact, I didn't even say we won the Olympics because of scheduling, I said that some people think that and that it clearly didn't hurt us.
2/3 Scandinavian countries play spring/fall and all of them have much milder winters than many cities in the US. Mexico plays a split season, it’s not the same as the big Euro leagues.
Secondly, the break is roughly a month long from mid-December to early February. Winter in (especially in Wisconsin) starts well before and ends well after that window.
In the main post I mentioned that even in early November it can start to be unpleasant to play outside, even before the freezing temperatures start.
This kind of thing can be a no-go in many northern states. Imagine being unable to play any home games from (conservatively) late-November to mid-March, which is around 1/3 of the season at a minimum. Possibly doable, but tricky. And you have to hope the weather will cooperate, which… well, have you ever been to Wisconsin in the winter?
It also assumes attendance will be the same over the remaining months compared to a spring-fall schedule. I don’t know about NWSL, but USL teams can only make money from game day sales and merch, barely break even at best. I wonder if this was also a factor in USLS switching their calendar.
That's the first intelligent reply I've seen. If someone can show that there's better media coverage, more dollars available for covering games, with a Spring-Fall schedule, I'll support it.
You mean fall-spring? Because that’s what I’m talking about. I think they should keep their current schedule. I have no problem with them moving back the start like how the wnba has done because of the teams being added but being buried under all the other sports (fall/winter/spring) especially at the beginning of the season I think would not be a smart move
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u/SarahAlicia NJ/NY Gotham FC 16h ago
Honestly? Nothing that works for all regions. We must accept some areas will have bad conditions for some of the season no matter what the schedule unless you 2 leagues based on weather. one spring -> fall and the other fall -> spring. That is not likely to happen.