NO to MLS Single Table, but looking like YES to Cosmos

MLS Talk blogs about the potential of the New York Cosmos in MLS, as well as the idea of a single table.

Dur­ing half-time of the MLS Play­off match between FC Dal­las and Real Salt Lake, Major League Soc­cer com­mis­sioner Don Gar­ber appeared on Fox Soc­cer Chan­nel for a few min­utes to dis­cuss devel­op­ments in the league.

Two top­ics of note was whether MLS is con­sid­er­ing com­bin­ing the con­fer­ences into one league and what his thoughts were about New York Cos­mos becom­ing the 20th team in Major League Soccer.

First, Gar­ber said that MLS has no inten­tion on com­bin­ing the con­fer­ences into a sin­gle table. His rea­son­ing was that he wants to keep rival­ries between local teams.

Sec­ond, Gar­ber said that he was impressed by what the Cos­mos has been doing and that they’ve been doing a good job thus far in their pur­suit of becom­ing a Major League Soc­cer team.

Based on Garber’s enthu­si­asm, it looks like the Cos­mos deal is prac­ti­cally a given. But as for Garber’s com­ments about not want­ing a sin­gle table, I believe his think­ing is flawed. There are tons of sin­gle table leagues around the world that still man­age to main­tain local rival­ries. Teams such as AC Milan and Inter Milan, Man­ches­ter City and Man­ches­ter United, HSV Ham­burg and St. Pauli, Ever­ton and Liv­er­pool, and so on.

It’s time for Major League Soc­cer to make changes to the league for­mat and to cre­ate a cal­en­dar that is more bal­anced as well as main­tain­ing the local rivalries.

As a former New York Cosmos ball boy and as someone who grew up in the shadows of Giants Stadium, I would love to see the Cosmos return as a major entity here in Major League Soccer.

I would also love to see a single table in MLS, but that's probably for a future blog post...