It's finally official. <strike>Austin Aztex</strike> Orlando City are the 21st MLS club and will enter Major League Soccer in 2015.
The announcement means that 2015 will now be a tale of two City's - New York and Orlando - but what the dickens will that mean to the make up of the Conferences?
The addition of two new clubs will mean a continuation of an odd number of teams at 21. As much as we'd always love to see a single table, the growing number of teams, and with those scheduled to come, means this is sadly never going to be a realistic proposition any more.
So what will be?
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Do MLS just go for a temporary and easy quick fix till they decide on their other expansion sides or do they lay the foundations for the future now?
The official word from MLS right now is <i>"Details regarding conference alignment and schedule format for future MLS seasons will be unveiled at a later date."</i>
Understandable, no need to rush into any rash decisions, and you don't want to read too much into the phrase "schedule format" but it makes me wary of what might be to come.
When it comes to Conference alignment, one obvious solution is to place both Orlando and New York in the East and move Houston back over to the West.
That would keep the status quo of the East having the extra team but from a Whitecaps point of view, it just makes the West all that harder.
Such a move would ramp up the Texan derby and set the groundwork for possibly adding San Antonio down the road, maybe even under the tutelage of Martin Rennie, who could land the vacant head coaching job down there.
With the plan to take MLS to 24 teams by 2020, we'd like to see a more radical Conference alignment take place from 2015.
Our suggestion would be to split the League into three, seven team Conferences: Western, North and South/Central.
The West would consist of Chivas, Los Angeles, Portland, Real Salt Lake, San Jose, Seattle and Vancouver.
The rest is a little more difficult and wouldn't give an immediate satisfaction to all.
In an attempt to keep some of the best rivalries going, the North could be DC, Montreal, New England, NYRB, NYC, Philadelphia and Toronto.
This would allow for the new New York derby, the Canadian derby, and the Philly-DC-New York hate fests.
<i>[NB: We originally had Chicago and Columbus in the North, with the suggestion that they could be switched, but after some Twitter discussions, it was pointed out by our friends in the east that Philly and DC have a much stronger rivalry with New York than what Columbus have with Toronto, so we've gone and made that actual switch now]</i>
This would leave the South/Central as Chicago, Colorado, Columbus, Dallas, Houston, Kansas City and Orlando.
This would help grow the Texan derby as we said and allow for moves to allow in say San Antonio, Miami and Carolina down the line and three conferences of eight teams. It would break up the Rocky Mountain rivalry if the teams only met once in the season.
Which then of course brings us to the schedule format.
A balanced schedule of 40 games seems like a non starter unless in the unlikely event that MLS puts less emphasis on the playoffs.
If you stick with the East-West split then the current three games against Conference rivals and the alternating seasonal one-off cross conference games just can't work. That would mean 40 games in the East and 38 in the West. So there has to be some change.
Even reducing the Intra Conference games to two would mean 30 in the East and 29 in the West, so it messes up Supporters Shield standings.
Having some teams not playing others would also not be acceptable.
Moving to our suggested three Conference plan, you could play each side in your Conference three times and keep playing the other teams in a once a season alternating home and away basis to make a 32 game season.
Playoffs would feature the top four teams in each Conference, with some byes and my preference of just a general 1 to 12 seeding.
Certainly would work for me and also make it easier to allow for international dates.
Of course another way around this is to actually add a 22nd team for 2015 and have two 11 team Conferences.
It may seem unlikely, but don't discount it just yet.
Major League Soccer is a lot like Disneyworld after all - anything is possible and some decisions and rules seem to have been drawn up in a fantasy land.
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