The MLS All-Stars will take on Spanish club Atletico Madrid on Wednesday in Orlando (8 p.m. ET, FS1), but that’s not the only thing league commissioner Don Garber has to celebrate the over coming days.

This Sunday marks Garber’s 20th anniversary at the helm of the domestic league, which was a sputtering 12-team operation when he replaced original commish Doug Logan on Aug. 4, 1999. Less than three years into the job, Garber had folded two clubs and found himself pitching a plan to prevent the league’s handful of deep-pocketed backers from pulling the plug on the rest.

“When we sat through those meetings with owners and talked about folding the league, there was a side to me that never believed that would happen,” Garber told Yahoo Sports on Monday during a phone conversation. “There was almost like a manifest destiny to the idea of building a first-division pro soccer league in America. And I still believe our best days are ahead of us.”

No wonder. MLS has ballooned to 27 clubs during Garber’s tenure, including the three expansion teams (in Austin, Miami and Nashville) set to kick off by 2021. Three more are scheduled to arrive soon after that. Garber has changed significantly over the last two decades, too. He beat prostate cancer. He stopped riding Harley Davidsons. But his belief in Major League Soccer’s potential never wavered.

On the eve of the midsummer classic and his own milestone, here are Garber’s thoughts on the past, present and future of MLS.

View photos As the 20th anniversary of Don Garber taking over as MLS commissioner approaches, he spoke to Yahoo Sports' Doug McIntyre on a variety of issues. (Associated Press) More

(Edited for length and clarity)

Yahoo Sports: There were some dark days early on. When did you finally feel that MLS was finally on solid footing?

Don Garber: When I walked into the Home Depot Center, now Dignity Health Sports Park, in L.A. in 2003. It was a true cathedral for the sport of soccer in America. I knew then that it was a model that, should we be able to find the owners and public entities that were willing to invest in new stadiums, that would put us on an entirely different path. We needed to have stadiums of our own.

And then David Beckham joined the league in 2007, and then shortly thereafter we opened up in Toronto in a downtown stadium with really passionate fans. We realized we needed to work on building a supporters culture, because while we had passionate fans in the early days of the league, Toronto took that to an entirely new level. And then Seattle took it to an even higher level.

Where do you see MLS in another 20 years?

I have no doubt that we will be one of the top leagues in the world on the competitive side and also in business metrics. If you look at the amount of energy that the rest of the football world is placing on our market, there’s no doubt that we just need to continue to build strong fan bases, continue to invest in player development and our facilities. And we need to continue to grow the league throughout North America.

Focusing on the here and now, Zlatan Ibrahimovic has scored some spectacular goals but he’s also been controversial. He’s had disciplinary issues on the field, and he’s been critical of the level of play off of it. What’s your take on him?

I follow Zlatan’s comments like anyone else. Most of them make me smile. Some of them make me really laugh. And some of them I kind of scratch my head and say I kinda wish he didn’t say that.

But he’s never doing it with any intent to harm the league. I think he’s a unique personality. He is, perhaps along with David Beckham, the most popular global player we’ve ever had. But what I love the most about Zlatan is that he delivers. He got everybody keyed up right before LAFC-Galaxy and he scored three goals and it was a game that resonated around the world.

When he suggests that the league is prioritizing business interests ahead of quality of play, is that one of the things you wish he didn’t say?

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