By Jason Davis – WASHINGTON, DC (May 14, 2014) US Soccer Players – Timing is everything. Like, say, thrashing one of the best teams in MLS 5-0. The New England Revolution beat the Seattle Sounders in the club’s most comprehensive performance to date. The win came days before many of the best players in MLS leave for international duty. That gives the score much more weight than if it had come just a week or two later.

New England caused a wrinkle. MLS is all the more interesting for it. There was no built-in excuse for the Sounders, at least not when it came to the availability of Clint Dempsey, Brad Evans, and DeAndre Yedlin. Any excuses resting on the compact MLS schedule, which forced Seattle to play three times in eight days and fly across the continent, are flimsy.

The Revolution’s surprising domination of Seattle now opens the question of just what MLS will look like with a host of players absent due to World Cup commitments.

Rosters are out, and players are already reporting to camps. Some have already played their last MLS game for six weeks, while a few will appear one more time for their clubs (Matt Besler, Graham Zusi, Maurice Edu) thanks to a midweek date between Sporting and Philadelphia. One team, the Columbus Crew, is working to keep their Costa Rican internationals (Giancarlo Gonzalez, Waylon Francis) through this weekend’s game.

MLS will break for two weeks during the World Cup group stages. That’s a compromise between the two extremes of not breaking at all (because ticket revenue is still king) and stopping play for the full month of the tournament. Despite the break in play, plenty of MLS teams will suffer from not having key players in their lineups for multiple games. If any of the nations represented by MLS players advance to the knockout rounds, that exacerbates the problem.

Toronto FC, for example, is probably prepared to be without Julio Cesar for the entirety of the World Cup. Fortunately for TFC, Ryan Nelsen can turn to capable backup Joe Bendik while Cesar is chasing glory in his homeland.

MLS backups are going to be big during the World Cup. A total of 25 players from across MLS will be gone, forcing understudies into positions of prominence. Depending the expectations, form, and caliber of competition for teams missing starters, there’s potential for the World Cup period to have a “make or break” effect on whole campaigns. Flipping that dynamic, teams that won’t be missing any of their frontline players could benefit mightily from facing weakened opponents.

Every result delivered by a game featuring a World Cup-affected team – even it’s just a single player missing – will come with a caveat. All the work done to form a roster meant to challenge for a playoff spot, then a conference title, then an MLS Cup potentially undone.

Of course, teams knew that call-ups were coming and had time to plan accordingly. Sadly, the restraints of the salary cap makes it difficult. The ultimate choice wasn’t about finding players to fill the void of internationals. It was whether or not to bring in those internationals at all.

That’s the cruel reality of MLS. It’s a league that plays through the summer for good reasons but butts heads with the nations of the world when they want to hold tournaments during the middle of the North American season. It’s not as simple as saying teams that don’t have any players from World Cup-qualified nations are smarter or better off. Then again, the advantage they’ll have over specific opponents and via the continuity of a whole season together makes one wonder if big tournament years are too different to count the same as any other season.

Not to get too philosophical here, because the value of any sporting competition is solely in the eye of the beholder, but it’s interesting to ponder Major League Soccer’s status at this point in history during a World Cup summer. So much of American soccer’s rebirth circles around the fortunes of the USMNT. There’s no bigger check on the rising importance of the sport in the United States than the interest in that team, in this tournament.

Stepping aside for the group stage of the World Cup doesn’t cover up the problem that is international absences. An increase in MLS talent in the national team is a double-edged sword. It’s both a source of pride of MLS and a symbol of its rise as well as a drain on the league’s integrity.

With hefty bit of spin, it’s possible to see MLS during the World Cup period as a referendum on individual clubs and their ability to find talent. If Seattle, RSL, or Sporting struggle after such strong starts built on the play of their USMNT players, well, that’s their fault for failing to account for the short-handed period in their season plan. That view is not only unnecessarily harsh, it portrays a landscape in which clubs are better off ignoring top talent from countries taking part in important tournaments through the summer.

It’s sad that the games played before and after players trade their MLS uniforms for national team colors count just as much in the standings as those played during in their absence.

The Revolution took the Sounders apart and it meant something. Seattle was clearly one of the best teams in MLS and entered the game on the back of a five-game winning streak.

If that same game happened this weekend, with the Sounders taking the field minus Dempsey, Evans, and Yedlin, it wouldn’t be the same. It would be an explainable win over “Sounders Lite”. That’s how skewed MLS becomes in a World Cup or even a Gold Cup summer.

What should MLS expect from itself between now and the return of its World Cup-bound players? Deflated competition, games masquerading as equally important but bringing less quality, and a general sense that any match involving a weakened team says very little.

In this league, it’s all about timing.

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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