Don Garber is My Hero

Jack Bell at the New York Times recently had an excellent Q & A session with Don Garber, Commissioner of Major League Soccer. During the interview Garber basically told the euro-poser community that a couple of things you hear the "traditional" fans complain about will never happen.

On the subject of switching to a European schedule (which would necessitate games in the winter - good luck with that in Toronto) he said:

Basically that decision, if we were to schedule that way, we’d have to fold the league because we couldn’t afford to do it.

He also dismissed the idea of scrapping the playoffs, and more or less dismissed the idea of MLS moving to a single table instead of conferences. With that settled folks can stop creating three of the more annoying threads on Big Soccer. They're just not going to happen.

However, this is my favorite quote from the article:

If the more traditional soccer fan wants us to be like the English Premier League, I’ve got news for them — this is not England and we’re not the E.P.L.; and they remind us of that all the time. We have to manage our business in a way that is about growing the league in the U.S. That’s where we live, that’s where our teams play and that is the core of M.L.S.

Don Garber, you're my hero.