Opinion: The “Winter” MLS Schedule is the Right Move

On Thursday, Major League Soccer announced they would move to a summer through spring schedule, starting in the summer of 2027. Many are dubbing it the “winter” schedule. And folks have strong opinions about it. I understand people on both sides of the debate, but I’m here to tell you it’s the right decision to grow the league.

Let me explain.

But it’s going to be really cold!

There is no question of if games will be in the snow and cold. It’s going to happen.

I sat outside for one of the coldest games in the history of soccer back on February 19th, when Sporting Kansas City hosted Inter Miami in the CONCACAF Champions Cup. The KC Star lists that game at nine degrees. Sporting KC says five. As someone sitting outside in it, it was even worse with the wind.

It wasn’t the most fun I’ve had at a soccer match. Maybe because the soccer wasn’t that good either, possibly due to kicking a frozen brick of a soccer ball with frozen feet. It being the first game played by what went on to be the worst Sporting KC team in history likely played a role in that too.

But as my wife, and more famously British author Alfred Wainwright says, “there is no such thing as bad weather, only unsuitable clothes.”

We may be seeing a lot of this orange ball. | Credit: Thad Bell

With my many layers, hand warmers and toe warmers, I’ve was actually not that uncomfortable. However, I didn’t pull my computer out; due to the danger the weather posed to the electronic components inside it. I only touched my phone a couple times. I just bundled up and watched some soccer.

Everyone certainly remembers the 20-degree 2013 MLS Cup Final that was also brutally cold. Since then, Sporting KC has installed a state-of-the-art field heating system that made the SKC/Miami game at least playable. It was a vast improvement over the last time Sporting KC lifted an MLS Cup trophy when the field was said to be frozen solid.

And Kansas City is far from the coldest city in MLS. If you are a fan of Minnesota United, Toronto FC, CF Montreal, Real Salt Lake or the Colorado Rapids, among other more northern clubs, you are sure to have some really cold games. Or wild snow games. The orange ball will show up more often.

But there will be a break. The season will stop from mid-December, not long after MLS Cup is currently played, and resume in mid to late February, about when the season starts now. The league has said it will look to build a schedule that minimizes games in cold weather cities at the worst times of year. Those longer road trips could be a disadvantage, but MLS gets most of its revenue from ticket sales, so the cold games need to be minimized.

Even with proper field heating, creative scheduling and other measures, there will be games every year that will be highlighted as a bit of a joke with the conditions. But the same can be said for those mid-day kickoffs in the brutal summer months. Many of which will hopefully be avoided with the league taking June and most of July off.

Sounder at Heart’s Jeremiah Oshan has a thread on the reactions from impacted teams. The league mostly has its teams aligned.

Toronto FC issues a statement saying they supported the calendar change.

— Jeremiah Oshan (@jeremiah.sounderatheart.com) 2025-11-13T22:34:28.907Z

Why the change then?

MLS did an okay job of making their case in their press release. They talked about the transfer market, player signings, aligning with the FIFA schedule and the playoffs moving to a more favorable time in the sports calendar. Let’s go deeper as to why those are the answers.

Your MLS team will get better!

Everyone wants to watch attractive soccer. At times, MLS games can be beautiful. At others, they can be tough to watch. If you ever flip on a game in the Premier League, then watch an MLS game in the same day, the differences are stark. Obviously, the EPL is the best league in the world. Simply flipping the schedule isn’t going to level the playing field overnight.

What it will do though is allow MLS to compete for better players, without massive transfer fees. Most of the leagues in Europe and South America, where some of the best talent in the world plays, run a summer through spring schedule. That means, they sign players to contracts that almost always end when their season ends. If those players are out of contract, any MLS team could swoop in and sign them without paying an enormous transfer fee.

The way MLS plays out now, their offseason is in the winter, when it’s the middle of the season in Europe and South America. The players they may want to bolster their squads are still under contract and the teams don’t want to give them away for free when they may be fighting for a title, promotion or relegation. To pry players loose, MLS teams have to pay and maybe overpay.

If a player is available for a free transfer in the winter, there is probably a reason. They are injured. Or maybe recovering from an injury. Or unsigned for another reason. MLS squads are not being built with the pick of the litter.

While there is still a salary budget, and some European teams will pay more in their uncapped leagues, MLS has another advantage. People want to come to America! Politics aside, the United States (and Canada for that matter) are generally desirable places to live. Most people around the world grew up seeing the USA in movies and on TV. Hollywood baby! And sure, that means the advantages Los Angeles, New York and Miami have will be exacerbated, but there is still a salary budget they supposedly have to play by.

Another factor is when you sign an MLS contract, it ends in the winter when most teams around the world have already set their roster. It can be hard to find a job when your contract ends unless you want to stay in MLS. A player may be sitting out until the following summer when most teams do business. It’ll be less of a risk to come to MLS. You can always go back.

There is also a rumor the summer window in MLS will run past the European windows so they can get players on a discount if they are still available.

Aligning the schedule will bring better players to MLS. Not all of them. Not immediately. But it’s going to make an impact.

Your team won’t be blown up in the summer!

The January transfer window is not when the world does its biggest business.

Most teams around the world are building their rosters in the summer. That means, with MLS billing itself as a selling league (the whole world is selling to the best teams, frankly) the summer is the time teams have to sell their players to get the best value. In a league where most of the teams don’t turn a profit, selling players in the summer will be a boon for business.

There is more than one team that’s been almost forced to sell and ruined an otherwise promising season. That should become a thing of the past. Better yet, you can immediately reload your roster because everyone is buying and selling and signing free agents at the same time.

Not to mention, signing players in January means they play for nearly a year and a half after half a foreign season is followed by nearly a year of MLS play. This will be better for player safety too.

Aligning the transfer window

Beyond being able to buy and sell players at the right time, the transfer windows lining up will be massive. As it stands now, the “summer window” in MLS closes before almost all the leagues around the world. That means other clubs are less likely to part with key players as they wait for the best deal possible. That forces MLS clubs to overpay to get players “early.”

The same will be true about reloading in January. When they line up their transfer windows, teams can more easily sell when MLS is trying to buy, because they can reload. And vice versa.

It will make Major League Soccer a much bigger player in the global transfer market. Which in turn will be another reason good players will keep coming. If they see a path through MLS to a better league, many will take it. Eventually, maybe MLS becomes that better league players are being sold to. This has the potential to move MLS up the rankings of “top leagues” around the world.

Not to mention, MLS clubs pay their wage bills, something much of the world does not do on a consistent basis. People want to know they are getting paid and in a league of billionaire owners, that’s a non-issue in Major League Soccer.

Peak Playoff Time

Right now, the MLS Cup playoffs are competing with American Football. The NFL and college football are in full swing. Critical NFL games, when they are pushing for the playoffs are happening during the MLS Cup playoffs. Not to mention, the 2024 MLS Cup Final was head-to-head with the SEC Championship and on the same day as the Big Ten Championship, Big XII Championship, ACC Championship and Mountain West title game. Brutal!

Moving the playoffs into May will mean, if nothing else, no American Football. Sure, the best soccer leagues in the world will be wrapping up their seasons, but with varying time zones, MLS could have the evenings mostly to themselves outside of some late season basketball and hockey.

That Dang FIFA Calendar

As I sit here writing this, we’re in the middle of a FIFA international break. It’s also the middle of the MLS playoffs.

Many teams will go three weeks between games during the playoffs! That’s an insane break that can ruin any team’s momentum. I may still be bitter about Sporting KC’s 2023 playoff having a three-week break after they swept St. Louis City. When play resumed, they looked rusty and were bounced by a bad Houston Dynamo team. (And a blown handball call. Like I said, I’m bitter.)

By aligning the MLS calendar with FIFA and most of the world, international breaks will fall at a time that makes sense. No longer should MLS be forced play through breaks. And most importantly, their premier event of the season, the playoffs will not be damaged with a break.

Level Playing Grounds

While the existence of their salary budget is a hinderance — one that certainly also needs to be addressed by being loosened — by aligning their schedule with their closest competitive league, Liga MX, their teams will play each other at their best. CONCACAF Champions Cup comes when MLS teams are in preseason. Leagues Cup, if it still exists after this, comes at a bad time for Liga MX teams.

If these schedules are roughly the same, those excuses go out the window, and the best teams will win. If MLS eventually wants to conquer the world, they’ll need to conquer North America first.

91 Percent Alignment

Despite all the talk about the cold, most of the schedule will still happen when games are played now. Will some of that other nine percent look silly on TV? Almost certainly. But with MLS intending “to limit the number of home matches in northern markets during December and February,” all of that other nine percent won’t be a disaster.

The benefits simply outweigh the negatives. The change was inevitable. With all things MLS though, they still have managed to mess it up a bit. The perfect time to make this switch would have been after the 2026 World Cup, jointly hosted in the United States, Canada and Mexico. The spotlight will be on North America, but we’ll have to wait another year for the change.

If nothing else, Alexi Lalas is seemingly against the move, so you know it’s the right move. That guy isn’t right about anything.

More Reporting on the Changes

• Paul Tenorio with a ton of details at The Athletic, including MLS will also move to a conference-less, five division structure (that sounds familiar…)
• Backheel’s Joe Lowery asking the important questions
• More on the five-division format and a potential new playoff format