Amid all of the annual clamor of All-Star week, one of the regular rituals is Don Garber’s state of the union speech, wherein the MLS commissioner will present a snapshot of where MLS finds itself.

It can be an odd event, with few exact equivalents in world football. In part that’s because given the closed structure of the league, the MLS commissioner’s role is proportionally an outsize one compared to his nearest equivalents in much higher profile leagues – it’s hard to imagine a Richard Scudamore speech facing the same degree of scrutiny, for example, unless he was dropping a bombshell announcement.

And in the most recent iterations the scrutiny has gotten, and will remain, a little more intense. The temperature of the popular conversation in US soccer circles was changed by the USA’s failure to qualify for the World Cup – and the fallout implicated MLS too. The last vapors of boosterism that had accompanied the league through its inauguration after World Cup 1994 were finally blown away by events in Trinidad last November, and when Garber faced the press during MLS Cup events a few weeks later, the normally supine US soccer media appeared as close to mutinous as they’d ever been.

After Garber delivered his prepared remarks on growing audiences, Atlanta success stories, et al, he found himself facing a surprisingly tough round of questions, particularly around the league’s stance on the possible move of Columbus to Austin. It was a thankless issue to defend, though Garber did so defiantly, but in the room it also felt like a barely sublimated anger being vented at the status quo of US Soccer and MLS. Questions on David Beckham’s limping Miami bid and the league’s role in US failure kept the pressure on in an uncomfortable session.

It was a very particular cultural moment of course – the still raw World Cup failure had been followed by a US Soccer leadership contest whose more insurgent candidates had attempted to turn it into a populist referendum. The joint US, Mexico, Canada World Cup bid had also gone from apparent shoo-in to coin toss as the USA’s political reputation worldwide took a nosedive. So in merely describing the league in the terms his position requires him to, Garber found himself walking into a buzzsaw of more or less relevant resentments.

Given events since, the reaction to whatever version of an address Garber gives this week will be telling, as to whether the revolutionary fervor of December has subsided or evolved.

For one thing, a fantastic World Cup has been and gone without the USA, though crucially for US fans, any sense of angst at missing out got to be offset the day before the tournament started, when the 2026 bid was confirmed as successful. US Soccer and MLS now have a new eight year window to transform the domestic game and show that the lessons of the last abortive cycle have been learned. And anyway, regrets about a World Cup past tend not to be as strong as regrets about a World Cup anticipated.

Beckham’s Miami project is now finally confirmed as an expansion team, even if there still seems to be a figurative “Mission Accomplished” banner hanging in the background of every updated announcement.

LAFC have launched in some style – raining goals, and an instant LA rivalry classic in that Ibrahimovic game – and welcoming a key stadium to the MLS media landscape. Coming out of the last World Cup there was one MLS team each in the two major media markets in the US. Now there are two – with NYCFC arriving in 2015, and now LAFC giving the Galaxy a run for their money (at least in the first half of the games they play). NYCFC’s stadium troubles in the crowded New York market have been well documented, so for LAFC to rapidly build the impressive Banc of California stadium within view of LA’s downtown, is a significant strategic step forward in a key territory. Expect Garber to dwell on that.

And of course there’s Atlanta, continuing to break attendance records in their second year, and about to host a spectacularly well-attended All-Star game. Toronto too, set new standards, as the MLS champions took the Concacaf Champions League final to penalties before falling just short after beating two Mexican opponents en route to the final.

Finally, it doesn’t hurt that the pivot to youth development that currently represents best practice in MLS sides, got a spectacular boost this week with the $20m transfer of Alphonso Davies to Bayern Munich. With the likes of Weston McKennie and Tyler Adams also on the bubble as one-time MLS academy kids set to thrive in Europe, Garber can make legitimate points about the sustainable growth of MLS.

Yet he won’t have it all his own way. The status of Columbus remains a huge source of embarrassment, and a potential political minefield; the TAM and GAM financial mechanisms have tended to skew the middle order of MLS sides towards international talent rather than developing American players; the most recent crop of US players were empirically proven to be not good enough when compared to their Mexican, Costa Rican, Panamanian and Honduran peers.

And beyond Garber’s natural instinct to measure MLS against itself, there’s the fact that the legitimate exceptionalism of American sports, holds limited sway in global football. MLS growth remains steady rather than spectacular, well past the point when it was credible to point to the salutary tale of the original NASL’s boom-and-bust, or the dominance of the big four sports, as justification for the prudence/control that characterizes MLS. Structurally, MLS continues to operate as a closed shop – ensuring a healthy competitive market in expansion bids, but relatively slow growth in overall TV share.

You need only look to the All-Star game’s position in the calendar to get a sense of the problem. Amid the raft of glamor ICC games that make up the American summer calendar, the All-Star game is a credible rather than standout live game for US soccer fans to choose from. And when those fans’ weekly TV options include Premier League, La Liga, Bundesliga and Serie A offerings (to name but a few leagues with US viewing options often well in advance of those available even in their own countries), you can see why it’s hard for MLS to gain traction among even engaged US soccer fans.

At which point Garber could plead with those fans to support the club nearest to their front door, were it not for the small fact that the team in Columbus is proposing to move closer to the front doors of Austin – rather undermining his credibility on that point. And perhaps that’s the true state of the league – past the point where a community appeal to help grow it makes any sense, but far from the point where it has truly grown to legitimately claim the territory.