By Jason Davis – WASHINGTON, DC (Aug 2, 2013) US Soccer Players – Nominally, the event is about a game. Twenty-three of the best players Major League Soccer has to offer. Or twenty-three of the best players from the first half of the season, or twenty-three of the most popular players, depending on your point of view. Anyway, these 23 gather to take on a European club of note in a friendly meant to showcase the top level of the sport in North America.

Maybe the outcome matters, or maybe it doesn’t. The debate rages as to whether it’s important if the MLS All-Stars win the game, or if it’s a potential black mark on the league when they don’t. Without a clear answer, MLS carries on with the extravaganza undeterred. This year’s version was a showcase for one of the sport’s redemption stories, a town that fell hard for soccer after years of the team being irrelevant and nearly leaving on several occasions. Headline musical acts and a host of ancillary events framed a sort of coming out party for Kansas City and it’s new look team on a national stage.

Kansas City put on a show that was a celebration of soccer and itself, taking MLS along for the ride.

The All-Star Game is, at a distance, the last bastion of true community left for MLS fans around the country. The evolution of the league continues to push fans deeper and deeper into partisan corners, a natural phenomenon fostered by a growing supporters culture and time. It’s not that MLS fans were ever truly “All for one and one for all” (it’s competition, after all), but there was an underlying bond that tied soccer fans to soccer fans. That was especially true for MLS fans, who quite often found themselves unique even within the subset of Americans who cared about the sport of soccer. If soccer was going to “make it” (whatever that means), it would take a collective effort to make it happen.

At the very least, MLS fans were not only fans of their individual teams, but fans of MLS as a whole. That phenomenon was at its most recent height during Real Salt Lake’s run to the CONCACAF Champions League final in 2011. “MLS4RSL” became a refrain among fans across the country because an RSL win meant validation for the league on an international level. It meant a spot in the Club World Cup alongside the giants of South America and Europe. It meant Major League Soccer taking another small step towards everyone’s dream of becoming one of the top leagues in the region, the Americas, and eventually the world. What was good for Real Salt Lake would ultimately be good for everyone.

Promoted by MLS itself, the idea of everyone pulling together for one team did not seem strange.

Since “MLS4RSL”, that spirit of unity has eroded further, through no particular action. Time hardens fandom, as supporters grow to value the fortunes of their individual team above any greater good. In a significant way, it’s another sign of Major League Soccer ever advancing maturity. MLS is healthy and vibrant and adding teams at a ridiculous clip. There’s not much of a need to be concerned about the future. Some uncertainty over whether MLS could not only thrive, but last, fueled a basic tribal instinct. For most fans, it no longer seems necessary, or appropriate, for a rival team to win trophies. No matter how much it might help MLS as a whole.

The All-Star Game is relatively partisanship-free (at least the game itself – the process that determines which players will represent MLS is fraught with bitterness and bias). For one game, the league is single-entity again, beyond the way it operates as a business, and puts out a squad that carries the banner of America’s top-flight against a visiting foreign club.

Again, the importance of a good performance is questionable. What’s not is that the All-Star Game is the one date on the calendar that is least imbued with the intra-MLS competitive element that is now driving the league’s rapid growth. If fans are at all inclined to take a moment to pause and reflect on the leaps made by MLS, the All-Star Game represents a chance to do so.

Against the backdrop of “Us v. Them”, MLS can celebrate itself. Yes, it’s also about promoting the league to the unconverted and adding value to sponsorship contracts, but as the thousands that gathered in Kansas City to take in the concerts, fashion shows, the video game tournaments, and the match itself will undoubtedly tell you, this week was less about Sporting than it was about American soccer. The rebirth of Kansas City’s team could not have happened in a vacuum. Sporting is where it is because MLS is where it is, and MLS will grow because of Sporting’s incredible success.

Next year the game moves to Portland, another city with a passionate love of soccer. Portland, even more than Kansas City, represents the new overtly partisan MLS. Unburdened with memories of the days of bad venues, bad uniforms, and questions over the league’s very survival, Timbers fans can rightly focus on their club without an overriding concern about the common good.

Yet, when MLS calls in its best and brightest to again take the field in the name of America’s top competition at Jeld-Wen Field next year, the Timbers faithful will serve as another example of the sport’s ascendency here. They’ll celebrate themselves, in the same way Kansas City soccer fans did this week, while also serving as hosts for a community’s one remaining opportunity to gather in the spirit of that community.

There might be a day when MLS decides the value of the All-Star Game no longer justifies its spot on a congested calendar. If that day comes, MLS will have lost something, even as it moves ever forward into a new, more mature, phase of life.

Jason Davis is the founder of MatchFitUSA.com and the co-host of The Best Soccer Show. Contact him:matchfitusa@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter:http://twitter.com/davisjsn.

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