Major League Soccer
(MLS) is a professional soccer league based in the United States
and sanctioned by United States Soccer
Federation . The league comprises 16 teams, 15 in the U.S.
and one in Canada
, which is
scheduled to become 18 teams by the beginning of the 2011
season. MLS represents the top tier of the
American and
Canadian soccer pyramids.
Major League Soccer was founded in 1993 as part of the United
States' bid to host the
1994 FIFA
World Cup. The
first
season took place in 1996 beginning with 10 teams. Seasons run
from late March or early April to November, with teams playing 30
regular season games each. Eight teams compete in the postseason
MLS Cup Playoffs culminating in the
championship game,
MLS Cup.
Competition format
The
2009 Major League
Soccer season runs from March 19 through November 22. The 15
teams in the league are divided into the
Eastern and
Western Conferences — seven in the
Eastern Conference, eight in the Western Conference. Each team
plays 30 games, evenly divided between home and away matches. Each
team competes against every other team twice, home and away, for a
total of 28 games. The remaining two games are intra-conference
matches, often highlighting geographic and conference rivalries.
The team with the most total points at the end of the regular
season is awarded the
Supporters'
Shield. Eight teams then proceed to the
MLS Cup Playoffs ending in the single match
MLS Cup final.
MLS has three automatic berths in the
CONCACAF Champions League with
extra berths possible via the
U.S. Open Cup and the
Canadian Championship. For
CONCACAF Champions
League 2009–10, qualifying teams include
MLS Cup 2008 and Supporters' Shield winner the
Columbus Crew, Supporters' Shield
runner-up the
Houston Dynamo, MLS Cup
runner-up the
New York Red Bulls,
2008 U.S. Open Cup winner
D.C. United, and
2009 Canadian
Championship winner
Toronto FC.
Columbus and Houston are automatically seeded into the Group Stage.
New York, Toronto, and D.C. are required to play in the Preliminary
Round.
MLS also
has four berths in SuperLiga, a competition jointly
organized by MLS and Mexico
's national
football governing body, the FMF.
The top four overall teams from the 2008 season, excluding those
participating in the Champions League, qualify for
SuperLiga 2009. This includes
the
Chicago Fire, the
New England Revolution, the
Kansas City Wizards, and
Chivas USA.
History
Early years
In 1996, Major League Soccer's original ten teams, the
Columbus Crew,
D.C.
United, the
New England Revolution, the
NY/NJ MetroStars, the
Tampa Bay Mutiny, the
Colorado Rapids, the
Dallas Burn, the
Kansas City Wiz, the
Los Angeles Galaxy and the
San Jose Clash, began play. The early
years of the league gave rise to the
Bruce
Arena-led dynasty of D.C. United, which won MLS Cups in three
of the league's first four seasons. It took the expansion
Chicago Fire in 1998 to end United's
stranglehold on MLS Cup. Also joining the league in 1998 was the
Miami Fusion.
After its first season, MLS suffered from a decline in attendance.
The league's quality was cast into doubt when the
U.S. men's national
team,
made
up largely of MLS players, was eliminated in the first round of
the
1998 World Cup and finished
in last place.
The league began to market itself on the talents of American
players, both experienced veterans and fresh talents. Breakout
stars like
DaMarcus Beasley and
Landon Donovan began making names for
themselves in MLS before breaking into and starring for the U.S.
national team, while established players such as
Brian McBride,
Eddie
Pope, and
Clint Mathis continued to
prove their value to both their MLS clubs and the U.S. national
team.
The league's ongoing financial problems led to the departure of
Commissioner
Doug Logan after the end of
the 1998 season.
Don Garber, a former
NFL International chief,
was hired in his place and his leadership became instrumental to
shoring up the league's future. Construction of
soccer-specific stadiums for the
league's teams, largely funded by financiers such as
Lamar Hunt and
Phil
Anschutz, became a point of emphasis to bring fiscal health and
ensure the league's survival.
Hunt's Columbus Crew Stadium
, built in 1999, is often cited as a league
model.
On the field, the early wave of international players who had
joined MLS at its inception drifted into retirement or moved on to
clubs elsewhere in the world. The run-up to the
2002 World Cup saw a gradual shift in the
league's philosophy toward the development of American talent, a
move that would eventually lead to success for U.S. soccer.
Despite this movement, declining attendances forced MLS to stop the
bleeding by contracting the two Florida franchises, the
Tampa Bay Mutiny and the
Miami Fusion, just a few years after their
establishment. This left the league with 10 teams, the same number
as when the league began.
Resurgence
The 2002 World Cup, in which the
United States
unexpectedly made the quarterfinals through wins against
Portugal and
Mexico, triggered a resurgence
in American soccer and MLS.
The MLS Cup 2002,
held four months after the 2002 World Cup final, set an attendance
record as a sellout crowd at Gillette Stadium
saw the Los Angeles Galaxy win their first
title.
MLS drew international attention in 2004 with the debut of
14-year-old
Freddy Adu for D.C. United,
who entered the league with much fanfare and was heralded as one of
the top prospects in American soccer history.
MLS underwent a significant transition in the years leading up to
the
2006 World Cup. After
marketing itself on the talents of American players, the league saw
some of its homegrown stars depart for more prominent leagues in
Europe.
Tim Howard,
goalkeeper for the
MetroStars, was
sold to
Manchester United in
one of the most lucrative contract deals in league history.
DaMarcus Beasley of the Chicago Fire left for
PSV Eindhoven, while Landon Donovan, on loan
from
Bayer Leverkusen, was
recalled to Germany. Donovan's stint in Germany was brief; before
the start of the
2005
MLS season he was sold back to MLS to play for the Los Angeles
Galaxy.
Many more American players, though they factored little in the U.S.
national team picture, did make an impact in MLS. In 2005,
Jason Kreis of expansion club
Real Salt Lake became the first player to
score at least 100 career MLS goals. In 2005, the now-defunct
MLS Reserve Division was
created, with each reserve squad playing 12 games, providing
valuable playing time to develop non-starters on team
rosters.
It was also in this era that MLS expanded for the first time since
the contraction of 2001.
Real Salt Lake
and Chivas USA began play
in 2005, with Chivas USA becoming the second club in Los Angeles,
sharing The Home Depot
Center
with the Galaxy. Chivas USA also became the
first team in MLS to be directly connected to a foreign club, their
sister club of
Guadalajara. By 2006 the
San Jose Earthquakes moved to Texas,
becoming the
Houston Dynamo, after
funding for stadium could not be found in San Jose. The Dynamo
became an expansion team, leaving their history behind for a new
San Jose ownership group that would materialize years later in
2008.
2007–present
Since 2007, Major League Soccer's leadership has taken steps to
further internationalize the league in an effort to raise the level
of play. Among the first moves in this regard was the
Designated Player Rule, which helped
MLS bring international stars into the league, despite the
relatively meager MLS salary cap, and the creation of the
SuperLiga, which places top MLS
clubs against top Mexican clubs in an effort to provide more
meaningful competition for both leagues. MLS changed the rules
regarding foreign players in the league to allow a total of 8. This
period also saw expansion reach beyond the United States' borders
into Canada, beginning with
Toronto
FC.
The
2007 season
witnessed the MLS debut of
David
Beckham, whose signing had been seen as a coup for American
soccer. Beckham's contract with the Los Angeles Galaxy was made
possible by the Designated Player Rule. Players such as
Cuauhtémoc Blanco of
Club América signed for the Chicago Fire,
and
Juan Pablo Ángel, who
moved from
Aston Villa to the
New York Red Bulls, are some of
the first Designated Players who have made major contributions to
their clubs.
The departures of
Clint Dempsey and
Jozy Altidore, coupled with the return
of former U.S. national team stars
Claudio
Reyna and
Brian McBride to New
York and Chicago, respectively, highlight the exchange of top
prospects to Europe for experienced veterans to MLS. Several other
well-known foreign players have followed Beckham and Blanco to MLS,
including
Guillermo Barros
Schelotto to Columbus and
Freddie
Ljungberg to Seattle.
By 2008
San Jose had returned to the league, and in 2009 Seattle Sounders FC became the newest
expansion franchise, opening to a crowd of 32,523 at Qwest Field
. Presently MLS plans expansion into
Philadelphia, Vancouver, and
Portland.
Organization
Recently "expansion" and "rebranding" have become buzzwords for the
league and its fans. The league has renewed its emphasis on
improving the quality of play by its teams via initiatives such as
the Designated Player Rule and the creation of a league-wide youth
development system.
Ownership
MLS operates under a single-entity structure in which teams are
centrally controlled by the league. In order to keep costs under
control, revenues are shared throughout the league, player
contracts are negotiated by the league, and ultimately players are
contracted not with individual teams but with the league itself.
The league fought a bitter legal battle with its players over its
economic system, but this was eventually resolved with the players
gaining some improved benefits in return for accepting the single
entity structure. A court had also ruled that even absent their
collective bargaining
agreement, players could opt to play in other leagues if they
were unsatisfied.
The league's cost-controlling measures have attracted new ownership
that have injected more money into the league, improving it and
focusing the league's resources on fewer clubs. Examples include
the
Anschutz Entertainment
Group's sale of the MetroStars to
Red
Bull, for an "excess of $100 million," according to the
New
York Times. Commissioner Garber said to the
Los Angeles
Times that, "the sale was part of a plan to have AEG decrease
its holdings in MLS. We're pushing Hunt Sports to do the same
thing."
Commissioner Garber has stated that having multiple clubs owned by
a single owner was a necessity in the first 10 years of MLS, but
now that the league appears to be on the brink of overall
profitability and has significant expansion plans, he wants each
club to have a distinct owner. In order to help bring this about,
the league is now giving more incentive to be an individual club
owner, with all owners now having the rights to a certain number of
players they develop through their club's academy system each year,
sharing the profits of Soccer United Marketing, and being able to
sell individual club jersey sponsorships.
At one time AEG owned six clubs in MLS, and have since sold the
Colorado Rapids, the MetroStars, D.C. United and the Chicago Fire
to new owners. AEG's remaining teams are the Los Angeles Galaxy and
the Houston Dynamo. The other major owner-investor in MLS has been
Hunt Sports, which
owns the Columbus Crew and FC Dallas, having sold the Kansas City
Wizards to a
local ownership group in 2006.
The league now has 16 owners for their 18 clubs (including the 2010
Philadelphia Union and the 2011
Vancouver and Portland teams).
Game First
The 2006-2007 MLS offseason has been considered by some to be the
most productive in the history of the league, and there were a
number of changes made to the league, which have brought about an
increase in the league's ability to compete financially as well as
on the field. The league announced a youth development initiative,
which will require youth development programs for all of the
league's teams. The hope is that by being able to sign up to two of
its own youth players to the senior team each year that the
league's teams will have an incentive to improve the quality of the
league's talent in an organic way that will also benefit the league
through transfer fees for outgoing players. Perhaps the first
example of a success in "home-grown" talent development was New
York's
Jozy Altidore, who rose to
prominence as one of the league's most skilled young strikers
before fetching the league's record transfer fee in his move to
Villarreal in 2008.
The league also announced "Game First", a series of initiatives
aimed at improving the league in several ways. One of the most
immediate changes is that
U.S. Soccer hired the first
full-time professional referees in league history. Another part of
"Game First" was the creation of an official league anthem similar
to other competitions from around the world. There are two versions
of the MLS Anthem, an
orchestral version that is performed before
every regular season game and an
orchestral chorus version with a chorus that is
played before the
MLS
All-Star Game and
MLS Cup.
Stadiums
Columbus Crew Stadium, home of the
Columbus Crew and MLS' first soccer-specific stadium
1999, the league has
overseen the construction and completion of seven venues
specifically designed for soccer.
Lamar Hunt broke new ground in this
endeavor by financing the construction of MLS's first soccer-specific stadium, Columbus Crew
Stadium. The Los Angeles Galaxy followed four years
later with the opening of The Home Depot Center in 2003. Chivas USA has
shared this venue with the Galaxy since their expansion season in
2004.
It also played host
to two consecutive MLS Cups, until FC Dallas
opened Pizza Hut
Park
in 2005 and hosted the next two
championships. The Chicago Fire began playing their home
games in Toyota
Park
in 2006. 2007 saw the opening of
Dick's
Sporting Goods Park
for the Colorado Rapids and BMO Field
for Toronto FC. Near the end of the
2008 season,
Rio Tinto
Stadium
became the home of Real Salt Lake.
Other stadiums are currently under construction.
Red Bull
Arena
, the new home of the New York Red Bulls, began
construction in December 2007 with the goal of opening sometime in
2009, but
construction delays have pushed back the opening until 2010. The Kansas City
Wizards expect to move into their
new
stadium sometime in 2011.
Philadelphia
Union plans to call the new Union Field at Chester
home when they enter the league in 2010.
In 2011,
the Portland Timbers will
make their MLS debut in a newly-renovated PGE Park
.
Qwest Field, home of Seattle Sounders
FC
remaining clubs play in stadiums not originally built for MLS. The
New England Revolution and D.C.
United play home games at NFL venues Gillette
Stadium and RFK Stadium
. New England and D.C. are actively seeking
to build their own soccer stadiums. Seattle Sounders FC play in a
dual-purpose stadium, designed to be used for both football and
soccer. For Sounders matches, Qwest Field staff tarps off the upper
bowl to provide a more intimate atmosphere.
The Houston Dynamo
and the San Jose Earthquakes are in the planning stages for their
own soccer venues replacing Robertson Stadium
and Buck Shaw Stadium
. In 2011 the Vancouver expansion team will begin play
in a refurbished BC
Place
, and will remain there until at least 2016, by
which time the team hopes to complete construction on a planned
waterfront soccer stadium.
Media coverage
At the outset, MLS signed deals for coverage on
ESPN,
ESPN2 and
ABC, while
Univision,
Galavision, and
Telemundo broadcasted matches in
Spanish. The original Univision deal lapsed
after a few years, leaving only the ABC/ESPN family of networks as
the league's national broadcasters.
Fox Sports World (later rebranded as
Fox Soccer Channel in 2005) and
Fox Sports en Español
began airing matches in 2003. The 2007 MLS season was the first
season, however, for which television rights were sold to networks
at a profit. Previously, MLS paid networks to broadcast its games.
It is estimated MLS will receive about $30 million from TV revenue
alone within the next eight years.
With the addition of Toronto FC, coverage of MLS expanded into
Canada in 2007. The
CBC,
GolTV Canada and
Rogers Sportsnet all broadcast Toronto
matches nationwide, along with the MLS Cup playoffs.
The league's
MLS Direct Kick
package, which broadcasts out-of-market matches, has been expanded
to ensure that every league match is broadcast. Univision and its
family of networks resumed MLS broadcasts in 2007 as well, with
most matches airing on TeleFutura and
Galavision on Sunday afternoons and
evenings.
The 2007 season was the first in the league's history in which
every regular season match was telecast live, and many games were
shown on national television.
ESPN's coverage now features a live
match each week, usually in primetime, and Fox Soccer Channel's
MLS Saturday added a pregame and postgame show wrapped
around their featured matches.
Major League Soccer also offers streaming live video of some
matches via its website.
Sports Business Journal reported on December 23, 2008 that
MLS and Soccer United Marketing had signed an international
television broadcast contract with sports media company MP &
Silva through 2013. The figure is reportedly an "eight-figure deal"
that covers the "rights to all MLS games, tournaments and events,
including MLS regular season,
MLS Cup
Playoffs,
MLS Cup, and the international
competitions
SuperLiga,
InterLiga, and
Pan-Pacific Championship."
InterLiga is the only non-MLS competition included in the deal. MP
& Silva CEO Carlo Pozzali acknowledged that high profile,
international players who were lured to MLS by the
designated player rule have
raised the international awareness and potential for popularity of
MLS in international markets.
MP & Silva's package generally does not include ESPN-televised
matches.
ESPN International
purchased the rights to broadcast MLS in
Great
Britain and Ireland in 2009, and other ESPN networks around the
world also broadcast games.
Profitability
Shirt sponsorships
Major League Soccer lost more than $350 million between its
founding and the year 2004, according to a report by
BusinessWeek released that year. However,
there are positive signs for profitability in the near future. As
soccer-specific stadiums are built, ownership expands and
television coverage increases, MLS has managed to see their
revenues increase while costs are kept to a minimum.
The 2003 season saw
the Los Angeles Galaxy make a profit in their first season at
The Home Depot
Center, while FC Dallas turned a profit in similar fashion
after moving into Pizza Hut
Park in 2005.
Television coverage has consistently expanded throughout the
league's history, as MLS brokered a deal with ESPN in 2006 for
rights fees and a greater presence across its networks. The 2007
season saw the return of MLS to Univision and its Spanish-language
networks. They joined Fox Soccer Channel and HDNet as the U.S.
national outlets, and the league has mandated that every league
game receive television coverage either nationally or locally in
one or both teams' cities for broadcast on its
Direct Kick
package.
In 2007, MLS teams started selling ad space on the front of jerseys
to go along with the league-wide sponsorship partners who had
already been advertising on the back of club jerseys, following the
practice of international sport, specifically soccer. The league
has established a floor of $500,000 per shirt sponsorship, with the
league receiving a flat fee of $200,000 per deal. Online gambling
and hard liquor sponsorships are prohibited. As of January 2009,
eleven of the league's fifteen teams have signed sponsorship deals
to have company logos placed on the front of their team
jerseys.
MLS Commissioner Don Garber said on May 11, 2006 that he expects
the league's clubs to be profitable by 2010 overall. He reported
that FC Dallas and the Los Angeles Galaxy are already profitable,
with several other clubs nearing profitability. A year later, he
revealed that the Chicago Fire, the Colorado Rapids, and Toronto FC
were on track for profitability by 2008. However in 2008 there were
only three profitable MLS franchises; Los Angeles Galaxy, Toronto
FC and FC Dallas
[11029].
Rule changes
MLS experimented with deviations from
IFAB rules and standards in its early
years, some of which had been used in the
NASL and continue to be used in
college soccer and many
high
school associations.
Among them was the use of a countdown clock, rather than a standard
progressive clock, with time paused for dead ball situations at a
referee's discretion. Halves ended when the clock reached 0:00,
rather than at the whistle of the referee as was customary
elsewhere.
Also implemented was the use of shootouts to resolve tie games.
These best-of-five contests placed a player 35 yards from goal with
five seconds to put the ball past the opposing goalkeeper; if
needed the shootout progressed into extra frames. A winning team
received one standings point (as opposed to three for the
regulation win).
While
IFAB
rules allow teams to substitute three players during games, MLS
allowed a fourth, goalkeeper-only substitute. MLS discarded the
rule after 2003 and adopted the IFAB standard, prompted in part by
a match in which then MetroStars coach and current U.S. national
team manager
Bob Bradley used a loophole
to insert an outfield player as a fourth substitute.
MLS eventually conceded that the rules changes, particularly the
shootout, had alienated some traditional soccer fans while failing
to draw new American sports fans as hoped. The shootout and
countdown clock were eliminated after the 1999 season.
MLS continued to experiment with the settling of tie games in
regular season play. In 2000, a 10-minute
golden goal period replaced the shootout for
tied games. It was abandoned after 2003. The golden-goal overtime
remained through 2004 for playoff matches, where it had been used
since the league's inception.
In 2005 the league adopted a playoff extra time structure that
followed new IFAB standards for such situations: two full 15-minute
periods, followed by penalty kicks if necessary. The
away goals rule is not used in any playoff
round.
Teams
There are 16 MLS teams divided between the
Eastern and
Western Conferences. Each club is
allowed 24 players on their full roster.
Before its maiden season and
inaugural draft, MLS
allocated four marquee players
across the initial ten teams. These
inaugural allocations
consisted of key U.S. national team and international players such
as
Eric Wynalda and
Hugo Sánchez. By the
1998 season, the league
added its first two
expansion teams:
the
Miami Fusion and the
Chicago Fire. The
2000 season saw the league
divide into three conferences with teams in either the Eastern,
Western, or
Central
Divisions.
However, following the
2001 season, Miami and the
Tampa Bay Mutiny were disbanded and
MLS returned to ten teams with two conferences. Since the
2004 season, the league has
expanded with six new clubs:
Real Salt
Lake and
Chivas USA in
2005, the
Houston Dynamo in
2006, and
Toronto FC in
2007. After relocating as an
expansion team to Houston in 2006, the
San Jose Earthquakes returned from
hiatus in
2008.
Seattle Sounders FC joined MLS
for the
2009
season.
As of 2009, MLS has had eighteen different clubs over the years,
but only eight have won the
MLS Cup. Of the
league's fourteen seasons, only five have seen the
Supporters' Shield winner become
league champion.
For the 2010 season, teams are aligned as follows:
| Team |
City |
Stadium |
Founded |
Joined |
Head Coach |
| Eastern
Conference |
| Chicago
Fire |
Bridgeview , IL |
Toyota Park |
1997 |
1998 |
Vacant |
| Columbus
Crew |
Columbus , OH |
Columbus Crew Stadium |
1994 |
1996 |
Robert Warzycha |
| D.C.
United |
Washington, D.C. |
RFK
Stadium 1 2 |
1995 |
1996 |
Vacant |
| Kansas City
Wizards |
Kansas City , KS |
CommunityAmerica Ballpark 1 2 |
1995 |
1996 |
Peter Vermes |
| New England
Revolution |
Foxborough , MA |
Gillette Stadium 1 |
1995 |
1996 |
Steve Nicol |
| New York Red
Bulls |
Harrison , NJ |
Red Bull Arena |
1995 |
1996 |
Richie Williams |
| Philadelphia
Union |
Chester , PA |
Union Field |
2008 |
2010 |
Piotr Nowak |
| Toronto FC |
Toronto , ON |
BMO
Field |
2006 |
2007 |
Preki |
| Western
Conference |
| C.D.
Chivas USA |
Carson , CA |
The Home Depot Center |
2004 |
2005 |
Vacant |
| Colorado
Rapids |
Commerce City , CO |
Dick's Sporting Goods Park |
1995 |
1996 |
Gary
Smith |
| FC Dallas |
Frisco , TX |
Pizza Hut Park |
1996 |
1996 |
Schellas Hyndman |
| Houston
Dynamo |
Houston , TX |
Robertson Stadium 1 2 |
2005 |
2006 |
Dominic Kinnear |
| Los Angeles
Galaxy |
Carson, CA |
The Home Depot Center |
1995 |
1996 |
Bruce Arena |
| Real Salt
Lake |
Sandy , UT |
Rio Tinto Stadium |
2004 |
2005 |
Jason Kreis |
| San Jose
Earthquakes |
Santa Clara , CA |
Buck Shaw Stadium 2 3 |
1995 |
1996 |
Frank Yallop |
| Seattle Sounders
FC |
Seattle , WA |
Qwest Field 1 |
2007 |
2009 |
Sigi Schmid |
| Future Teams |
| Portland
Timbers |
Portland , OR |
PGE
Park |
2009 |
2011 |
TBA |
| Vancouver
Whitecaps |
Vancouver , BC |
BC Place Stadium 1 2 |
2009 |
2011 |
TBA |
- Notes
Expansion
MLS will expand to 16 teams in 2010 and 18 teams in 2011. The
league has long-term plans to expand to 20 teams, possibly as soon
as 2012. The
Philadelphia Union
club is in place for 2010 with
Vancouver and
Portland joining the following
season.
The Union will play in a 18,500-seat stadium
to be built just west of the Commodore Barry Bridge
in Chester, Pennsylvania.
On March 18, 2009 a press conference announced that a new MLS team
in Vancouver, Canada will replace
the existing USL-1 club in that city,
and that it would keep some form of the "
Whitecaps" name.
Vancouver will join the league in 2011. For at least its first
season the Vancouver MLS club will play in BC Place stadium, which
by then will have been renovated to include a soccer-specific
configuration. However, the Vancouver ownership group is still
hopeful that a new, completely soccer specific stadium will be
approved for construction on the waterfront in downtown Vancouver.
The franchise announced they would keep the Whitecaps name on
November 25, 2009.
On March 20, 2009 a press conference announced that a new MLS team
in Portland will replace
the
existing USL-1 club in that city, and would keep the
Portland Timbers name.
Portland will play in
PGE
Park, which will be renovated to be a soccer-specific
stadium by the time the team joins the league in 2011.
Team names
- For more information on MLS team names, see the individual
team entries.
Originally, in the style of other U.S. sports, teams were given
nicknames at their creation such as the Columbus Crew, the San Jose
Clash, or the Tampa Bay Mutiny. Two exceptions to this were D.C.
United and Miami Fusion
F.C., adopting naming conventions usually seen
in European clubs. However, new teams such as Real Salt Lake and
Toronto FC continued this trend along with the Dallas Burn renaming
themselves FC Dallas. Some of the club names have their origins in
defunct American professional soccer leagues like the
NASL, such as the 70s-era
San Jose Earthquakes,
Seattle Sounders, and
Portland Timbers.
C.D. Chivas USA is the only MLS team
whose name does not specify a city, state, or region. The club is
named for the Mexican team
C.D.
Guadalajara, who are often known by
their nickname "
Chivas," which translates to "Goats".
The
Mexican club, based in Guadalajara, Mexico
, and Chivas USA share the same ownership.
Though Real Salt Lake was not originally affiliated with
Real Madrid, in 2006 the two clubs signed an
agreement to play friendly matches every two years, and to
co-sponsor a soccer academy and training facility in Utah. The
beverage company
Red Bull owns the New
York Red Bulls as well as
teams in other leagues and
sports.
Rivalry Cup Competition/MLS Derbies
Players
Bold indicates active MLS players.
All Time Regular Season Leaders
Minutes Played
Regular Season only
| Rank |
Player |
MINS |
| 1 |
Steve
Ralston |
33,143 |
| 2 |
Kevin
Hartman |
29,835 |
| 3 |
Jay Heaps |
27,363 |
| 4 |
Chris Henderson |
26,242 |
| 5 |
Chris
Klein |
25,946 |
| 6 |
Jesse Marsch |
25,645 |
| 7 |
Jason Kreis |
25,242 |
| 8 |
Cobi Jones |
25,157 |
| 9 |
Jaime Moreno |
24,889 |
| 10 |
Mike Petke |
24,738 |
Last Updated October 25, 2009
All Time Playoff Leaders
Minutes Played
Playoffs only
| Rank |
Player |
MINS |
| 1 |
Kevin
Hartman |
4,042 |
| 2 |
Cobi Jones |
3,938 |
| 3 |
Jeff Agoos |
3,557 |
| 4 |
Chris Armas |
3,383 |
| 5 |
Diego
Gutiérrez |
3,270 |
| 6 |
Jesse Marsch |
3,228 |
| 7 |
C.J.
Brown |
3,221 |
| 8 |
Zach
Thornton |
3,193 |
| 9 |
Steve
Ralston |
3,164 |
| 10 |
Mauricio Cienfuegos |
2,992 |
As of MLS Cup 2009
MLS commissioners
MLS awards
There are 10 awards given out by the Major League Soccer each
year.
- Major League Soccer
MVP Award
- MLS Best XI
- MLS Coach of the Year
Award
- MLS Comeback
Player of the Year Award
- MLS Scudetto
- MLS Defender of the
Year Award
- MLS Goalkeeper of
the Year Award
- MLS Golden Boot
- MLS Newcomer of the
Year Award
- MLS Rookie of the Year
Award
See also
References
External links
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