The most exciting time of year for soccer fans around the world is upon us: the MLS all-star game. That’s right. As the giants of Europe awaken and stomp lower-league teams into the Earth while completing transfers in a confusing array of currencies, the most expensive players in America, plus three or four seemingly random other people, will play a game against one of the aforementioned European giants. Just for funsies. Fans will argue that the underappreciated player from their team deserves to be there over Designated Player X. Some pundit, somewhere, will try to make a very shaky correlation between the result of the game and MLS’s standing in the world. And MLS will claim that something called a “homegrown game” happened.
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If that all sounds terrible to you, well, it usually is. The MLS all-star game is a dreadfully uninteresting affair where teams’ best players get sent out to play an extra mid-week game for no reason other than to try to show off against a big European club that’s still in preseason. The play is bad. The result means less than nothing. And usually there’s a T-Pain concert to endure somewhere in that maelstrom of American soccer-ing.
The concept of an all-star game and all its trappings is ingrained in the American sports psyche. All the other big sports here have them. They accomplish the task of making things that are not a big deal seem like a big deal, because it’s fun to watch the best players have fun. The home run derby is literally a batting practice. It occurs over 2,000 times in any given Major League Baseball season. The slam dunk contest is a pageant put on by men with springs for femurs, a more advanced and polished version of shoot-arounds that happen before every game. But it’s being done by the best in the world, and most importantly, it’s fun.
Maybe that’s the MLS all-star game’s biggest sin: it isn’t fun. Too often it’s used as a measuring stick game between MLS and the rest of the world. Don’t worry if both teams sub out the entire XI for a new one after the first half. If the MLS team wins, that means we’ve “made it,” “it” being the magical sunshine rainbow land of world acceptance, as if the FAs of England, Spain, Germany, and Italy look upon those glorious, Target-branded kits and say to themselves, “they’ve done it. They’ve finally done it.”
Making every all-star game another skirmish in the USSF eternal war for global acceptance isn’t fun in any way, but the game isn’t going away. It’s just one of those American things that the league doesn’t seem remotely interested in kicking to the curb. So instead, here are some quick fixes to make it all worth our time.
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Give the all-star game its own week
This is a simple one. Having the all-star game midweek makes scheduling the season easier, but everything else about the game harder for everyone. Mid-week travel is hard for players. It’s even harder for teams that are playing at the end of that week against teams whose players didn’t have to go to the game, or didn’t have to travel as far. In fact, it creates a handicap for teams with multiple players participating in the all-star game. To make matters worse, MLS instituted the rule that any player selected to the all-star game that withdraws from the game must then sit out the next regular season match.
If you want your players to play in the all-star game so badly that you’re willing to suspend them for a match, and players still do it regularly, maybe you should just give every team a little mid-season bye week and hold the game then. You get to do the game on a weekend, which is nicer for the players and the fans, and you avoid creating new fitness inequalities within the league.
Stop playing European teams
Once upon a time, the MLS all-star game was fun. That was when it was like other all-star games, and featured the best players from one conference facing the best players from the other conference. The game was silly and the players were mostly interested in bragging rights. But somewhere along the line, someone figured MLS could probably be more noticeable if the all-star game featured less of its own players and more players from European clubs, and then bill it as all of MLS facing off against the historical titans of the sport.
This needs to stop. Maybe at one point, the idea of showing off against the world’s best teams was appealing and interesting, but I think the league should be grown enough at this point to accept the fact that it’s not the best league in the world. Playing MLS vs. The World makes the whole affair overwrought. Bringing back the East vs. West celebrates more players that actually play in MLS, and, hopefully, returns the all-star game to a place where we can admit that it’s silly, and that’s okay.
Bring back skill challenges
This old clip of the MLS all-star skill challenges has made the rounds and gotten people riled up for the good ol’ days of tomfoolery.
MLS used to be so much cooler pic.twitter.com/J5YYGlsVXT
— Zack Goldman (@ThatDamnYank) July 26, 2018
Skill challenges in any sport are ridiculous, extremely non-correlative to the actual sport, and very, very fun. Do I want to watch players run slalom courses and see who can hit an Olimpico, just for kicks, giggles, and a trophy that looks like it came from Michael’s? Yes, yes I do.
The highlight of these old skill challenges is quite obviously “Goalie Wars,” an event where two goals are placed extremely close to each other, and two goalkeepers then chuck a ball at each other as hard as they can, trying to score. But why stop at Goalie Wars? I propose we introduce “Defender Wars,” where corner kicks are served in for two center backs to contest. No fouls, no referees, last person standing wins.
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MLS expansion six-a-side battle
Alright, you still want to make some part of the all-star game competitive? Fine. Create a four-team mini-tournament of MLS expansion candidates. Whoever wins gets to join the league. It takes the guesswork and campaigning out of the expansion process and replaces it with cold, objective results. Existing clubs that are hoping to join the league may field players from their team. Groups that are hoping to join from a market that already has a lower-league team but are not affiliated with that team in any way may poach players from that team without telling that team’s management, and also choose two journeyman MLS players. And groups that are planning to start from scratch may field a European star above the age of 30 or two South American players under the age of 23. And to add a bit more drama, David Beckham will be forced to sit pitchside and watch with citizens of Miami who are against his stadium proposal.
The Ray Hudson memorial shout-off
In honor of MLS coaching legend and vocabulary arsonist Ray Hudson, all local MLS play-by-play commentators are invited to put their histrionics to the test. Players will perform spectacular feats for the commentator to call and subsequently be judged upon. The calls will be adjudicated based on energy, originality, accent-having, and catch-phrase marketability. The winner of the shout-off will be awarded the golden mic and a deal to call relegation battle Bundesliga games on FS2. The last-place finisher will be named Fox’s top commentator for the next World Cup.
Implement the Diego Chara penalty box
During the all-star game, all fouls are accompanied by a mandatory trip to the penalty box, like hockey. The player must go to the box and sit, soon to realize that he is not alone in the box. Diego Chara is also there, and he is free to kick the player as much as he wants. There is no ref in the box. Notably, play does not continue while a player is in the penalty box. Everyone simply watches the punishment unfold. The crowd stills, seeing Chara emerge from the shadows. The cameras zoom in on the player’s look of boredom shift to uncertainty, then trepidation, and finally morph into unadulterated terror. A light breeze lifts the corner flags and Mercedes-Benz Stadium goes silent. Nothing can be heard except for dull thuds emanating from the penalty box, and the sound of 2 Chainz freestyling to himself on the sideline.
The reallocation allocation award
Players are given jerseys with digital screens on them. Their worth in General Allocation Money plus Targeted Allocation Money multiplied by their Audi Index score is displayed during the game, changing in real time. At the end, these numbers are compared to those displayed at the start of the game. The player with the highest difference gets to choose anywhere in the league he would like to go. He will be given the complete works of George Orwell and a person-sized key from commissioner Don Garber, congratulating him on being the best possible economic commodity that the league has to offer.
The team that receives the winner of the reallocation allocation award will subsequently have to cut the player. Interestingly, the player will not return to the team they played for before winning the award, but will immediately be transported to the Colorado Rapids as a sort of blood tribute, which is in accordance with the deal Garber made with Colorado deep in the bowels of the mysterious Denver Airport in 2000, keeping them in the league for all eternity as long as they use their witchcraft to continue to cause the league to grow with black magicks. Tim Howard dangles his beard above a cauldron, letting the stray hairs fall into the mixture, while looking at Sal Zizzo and giggling. “You’re the last ingredient,” he says, “the only thing left to add before we take and eat.”
(Photo: Patrick Gorski/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)