Celebrating a quarter century
For MLS, 2020 marks F a 25th season – which is quite an achievement in the US, where professional soccer’s history is strewn with the corpses of leagues that didn’t make it.
Even the vaunted North American Soccer League – the league of Pele and Franz Beckenbauer – lasted only 17 years, from 1968 to1984. But MLS is doing more than survive, it is expanding.
The 2020 season will see the addition of Inter Miami and Nashville, bringing MLS up to 26 teams, with more clubs on the way to what is considered the minimum of 30 – which is half as big again as most of the world’s top leagues. A large-size league is necessary for national coverage of the USA’s vast area.
It is a measure of MLS success that those next four slots have already been assigned to Austin and Charlotte (to join in 2021) and St Louis and Sacramento (2022). Commissioner Don Garber has let it be known that “32 teams will happen at some point but it is not happening any time soon”.
The growing strength of MLS is reflected in what
