Feed the Fire: A Chicago Fire Podcast · Glass House Soccer, Bleav

Major League Calendar Shift: MLS Approves Calendar Change

·48 min·3 clips

MLS says 92% of “league soccer viewers” supported the calendar change after a two-year process.

Nick starts by greeting soccer fans and explaining why he split the previous conversation into two episodes. He says he did not want to leave people hanging, but he also did not want to drag everyone through a long, sloggy episode on a Friday or weekend commute. The main topic lands quickly: Major League Soccer's Board of Governors has voted on a calendar change, and the announcement comes on Thursday, November 13, 2025. He calls it a major moment and notes that some people will treat it like a turning point for soccer in America, even while he keeps a skeptical eye on the hype around it. He says the league has been meeting over the last few days. He then sets up the official announcement and the reactions he plans to sort through. The show moves into the reasons the league gives for the change. Nick does not just repeat them. He keeps asking what those reasons mean once they hit the actual schedule and the actual teams. He brings up CONCACAF Champions Cup, the U.S. Open Cup, League Cup, and the international window. He points out that the change is supposed to help, but it only matters if it improves the games that get played. He also raises the workload problem. Players who used to miss MLS matches for national team duty might now be asked to do both. That, he notes, can run against the very congestion concerns the league says it wants to solve. Weather comes up next. Nick treats it like a real tradeoff rather than a talking point. Some clubs will spend part of the year in brutal cold. Others will live through extreme heat. He names cities like Minnesota, Chicago, Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal, New York, Columbus, Texas, Florida, and California to make the point concrete. He jokes that he would personally rather play in 100 degrees than in snow, because his own high school club experience left him done with freezing training sessions. He keeps the tone casual, but the comparison lands. He then turns to the business side. Nick suggests the league may be thinking about sponsorship money and the possibility of playoff windows that do not compete as directly with other U.S. sports. He says the league has presented the move as an eyeball argument. He is not fully buying that presentation, and he keeps pushing on the gaps. The episode is also framed as a back-to-back release, following a prior show about Chicago Fire signings and other MLS news. Near the end, Nick asks listeners to rate, review, like, subscribe, and share the show. He closes the usual way: with another call to keep the soccer conversation growing and a final Let's go Fire.

As heard by us

A grounded MLS calendar debate with real skepticism and practical detail.

Feed the Fire spends this episode on MLS's proposed calendar shift, and Nick does the useful thing: he keeps pulling the discussion back to the practical questions instead of letting it stay at headline level.

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Why you'd press play

You want the MLS calendar shift argued like it actually affects your weekend.

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