What is MLS?

Well, you didn't call it 'the MLS', which is a good start. Major League Soccer is a 20-year-old professional soccer league featuring teams from the United States and Canada. Creating the league was a requirement for the U.S. hosting the 1994 World Cup and despite some bumps (two teams were contracted in 2001) the league will grow to 24 teams by 2020, has stadiums all over the country and no longer has teams with names like ‘the Wiz' or ‘the Clash'. It does, however, have a 'Real Salt Lake' and a 'Sporting Kansas City', so it's not perfect.

Are the players actually any good?

If you're used to watching the likes of Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo play, MLS players will probably disappoint. But that's not really a very fair comparison, and although there are no world-class talents in the league, the level of play is actually fairly high, and it's only getting better. A few years ago a lack of quality was a major issue, but the league's come along in leaps and bounds recently, and boasts some very watchable matches as well as some household names.

You'll have probably heard of, for example, Clint Dempsey and Michael Bradley, both of whom have held their own in top European Leagues. New to the league this year are guys like Jozy Altidore, Sebastian Giovinco, Kaka and David Villa. English heroes Frank Lampard and Steven Gerrard will be joining in the summer. In fact, most of last year's United States World Cup squad is now playing in MLS.

Who's the best team?

That's a great question, as the field seems to be pretty wide open. The defending champions are the LA Galaxy, and while they still have Robbie Keane and will get Gerrard by mid-summer, they lost Landon Donovan. The Seattle Sounders won the Supporters' Shield -- that's the champion of the regular season -- and return their team mostly intact. But Toronto FC went on another wild spending spree, bringing in Altidore and Giovinco and bolstering their defense. There are probably five teams that have a reasonable claim at top team heading into the season.

The New England Revolution, FC Dallas and Columbus Crew all have youngish teams that added to their impressive rosters and will be a handful. There's also no more Chivas USA to kick around, meaning there's no one team we can easily dismiss (although we have serious doubts about the San Jose Earthquakes). Even the expansion teams look like they'll be competitive.

What's all this stuff I've heard about messing with offsides and not allowing draws?

We prefer to pretend that the 1990s never happened. Don't worry, MLS plays by FIFA rules now.

Why else should I pay attention?

Because it's fun, mostly. MLS fans have imported most of the best bits of worldwide soccer culture -- the tifo (soccerese for ‘big awesome drawing'), the mass chanting, the flags -- and managed to avoid things like stabbing each other in the legs for wearing the wrong colors.

There's also a sense of parity that just doesn't exist in most soccer leagues. Enough teams make it to the playoffs to keep things interesting, and even the worst teams one season can improve enough in one winter -- we're looking at you, Toronto FC -- to be contenders in the next. In 20 seasons, nine different teams have won MLS Cup and 10 different teams have won the Supporters' Shield.

If you're into scarves, being an MLS fan will help add to your collection while keeping your neck toasty and warm. MLS is also great if you're into guys with chainsaws. Although that won't help keep you warm unless you're really into guys with chainsaws.

There's seriously a guy with a chainsaw?

Yes. Sadly, he does not often feature on the field of play.

Is it really a professional league if the stadium is quiet and empty?

No, it's not, but MLS doesn't have that problem. The league averages more than 19,000 fans per match, which is good for eighth best in the world, and that was with Chivas USA averaging a crowd made up of friends and family. Without them, two new teams expected to at least hit the league average and a new stadium in San Jose, MLS will almost certainly press past 20,000 this year.

If you want atmosphere, check out Seattle, where 44,000 screaming and singing fans is the norm. Their rivals, Portland, match that passion, and if you look almost anywhere in the league, you can find a few hundred lubricated fans banded together as a supporters' group screaming obscenities at the other team's best player.

And how does the multiple trophy thing work?

The league itself awards two major trophies at the end of each year. The first goes to the team that finishes the regular-season with the most points for which they receive the Supporters' Shield. Aside from a trophy -- and some level of pride -- that team also receives home-field advantage in the playoffs.

The MLS Cup is awarded to the team that wins the playoffs. They've tweaked the format a little this year, now allowing six teams from each conference (so 12 total, up from 10 a year ago). The top two clubs get byes to the conference semifinals, seeds No.s 4 and 5 and seeds Nos. 3 and 6 have to face off for the right to get there. The winners from each conference meet in the MLS Cup; the winner is the league champion.

There are also three further major competitions in which an MLS team might be involved, the U.S. Open Cup, the Voyageurs Cup (aka the Canadian Championship) and the CONCACAF Champions League. The former is a knockout tournament open to every team in the United States Soccer Federation (think England's FA Cup), the Voyageurs Cup is the rough Canadian equivalent and the Champions League is a competition between the top sides in leagues around North America, Central America and the Caribbean. No MLS side has won it in its current format, but they're getting closer and (theoretically) will one day defeat their Mexican overlords.

Will there ever be promotion and relegation in MLS?

Do you believe in alternate universes?

Where did the new teams come from, then?

Just like all the other North American leagues, they bought their way in. This year, MLS added Orlando City SC and New York City FC. Orlando had actually been playing in the lower leagues, while NYC FC is owned by Manchester City and was created entirely from scratch. In 2017, Atlanta and Los Angeles are both expected to join. Two more teams will be added by 2020, with Minnesota, Sacramento and Miami being the leading contenders.

Do these teams already have fans?

So many, bro. Both new MLS teams are boasting season-ticket bases of about 14,000. And that's with both playing in temporary stadiums. Orlando will play in the refurbished Citrus Bowl, where they are expecting an opening day crowd of over 60,000, before moving into their own digs next year. New York City is playing in Yankee Stadium.

When do they get their own stadium?

Look a bear!

Does anyone understand the roster rules? What is 'allocation order'?

OK, so the roster rules are a little bit involved. They're also a little bit... fluid. The short version of this answer is that the structure of the league means the players are actually employed by MLS rather than their teams. There is, therefore, no free agency and the rules for bringing in overseas players are murky at best and made up on the spot at worst. The short version is 'no'.

As for allocation order, it's probably best not to ask.

What is a Designated Player?

Since the league is salary capped, it's difficult to bribe convince someone like David Beckham to work on his tan raise the league's profile by coming to Los Angeles. And so, when the LA Galaxy acquired David Beckham, a new rule was born: Teams can use a 'Designated Player' spot, which counts for a fixed amount on the salary cap, then pay the DP whatever they want. Currently, teams are allowed up to three DPs. Every team has at least one of those players and 16 teams use at least two of their three spots.

What's with all the weird team names?

When a new league tries to draw off about five different naming conventions at once, what tends to result is a big mess. There are clubs with traditional sounding English names (D.C. United), others that go in for something more European (Real Salt Lake), ones with standard US-franchise names (Chicago Fire), one that is simply named after its owner (New York Red Bulls) and another named after its parent club (Chivas USA, which is thankfully no longer a thing). The latest trend is for teams to add "SC" to their names, so now we have Columbus Crew SC and Orlando City SC. That's "soccer club", in case you were wondering.

The most reasonable explanation for this is that MLS is still relatively young and went through a significant portion of its history trying to figure out what it wants to be. The best way to handle the issue is to say your sillily-named team does it right and to then relentlessly mock everyone else's sillily-named team.

What about all these teams with '2' in their name?

That's another relatively new wrinkle to MLS. Starting in 2014, teams were allowed to launch stand-alone reserve teams that would play in the third-division USL. LA Galaxy II were the only MLS-owned team in the league last year, but they'll be joined by seven other MLS-owned teams this year. Among them are the equally-cleverly-named Sounders 2, Timbers 2, Toronto FC II, Whitecaps 2 and Red Bulls II.

It's ‘football'. Stop calling it soccer.

I bet you're a lot of fun at parties.