“North American Soccer League announces move to international calendar,” says the headline on the press release on the league’s decision to make the best of its legal limbo. The NASL will start in the fall and continue through the spring.

One problem: No matter how many people retweeted and even reported this move as a switch to the “international calendar,” there’s simply no such thing.

At least not as it relates to leagues. There is a FIFA calendar that sets dates for national team play, both friendlies and qualifiers. There is not an international calendar that says a domestic league must follow the traditional academic year.

That’s good, because otherwise, all of these countries would be out of compliance:

Country Population League system China 1,388,550,000 March-November USA 326,423,000 March-December Indonesia 261,890,900 April-November Brazil 208,503,000 May-December (state leagues earlier in year) Nigeria 193,392,500 January-September Japan 126,700,000 February-December Philippines 105,143,000 February-December (new league) Vietnam 93,700,000 January-November Thailand 66,061,000 February-November Myanmar 53,370,609 January-September South Korea 51,446,201 March-November Kenya 49,699,862 February-October Sudan 40,782,742 January-November Canada 36,982,500 March-December Malaysia 32,359,500 February-November Uzbekistan 32,345,000 March-November Peru 31,488,625 Split season, playoffs in December Venezuela 31,431,164 Split season, playoffs in December Ghana 28,956,587 February-October Mozambique 28,861,863 March-November Angola 28,359,634 February-November Madagascar 25,571,000 August-November Chinese Taipei 23,566,853 May-November Cameroon 23,248,044 February-October Mali 18,542,000 February-November Kazakhstan 18,137,300 March-November Malawi 17,373,185 May-December Ecuador 16,906,600 January-December Zambia 16,405,229 April-December Zimbabwe 14,542,235 April-November Sweden 10,103,843 March-November Belarus 9,495,800 April-November Tajikistan 8,829,300 March-November Kyrgyzstan 6,140,200 April-October Turkmenistan 5,758,000 March-December Singapore 5,612,300 February-November Finland 5,509,984 April-October Norway 5,290,288 March-November Congo 5,260,750 January-September Ireland 4,792,500 February-October Georgia 3,718,200 March-November Uruguay 3,493,205 Split season, playoffs in December Mongolia 3,189,175 April-September Lithuania 2,810,865 March-November Estonia 1,352,320 March-November Iceland 346,750 April-September

Sources: Soccerway (and occasional extra Googling) for league systems; Wikipedia for population. You’re welcome to click through every source at Wikipedia or find your own to check my work on the population.

I’ve omitted the smallest nations and those that have incomplete data (say, a 10-game season) at Soccerway. I’ve also omitted some South American countries whose Apertura and Clausura seasons may or may not hint at a fall-to-spring calendar — Colombia and Paraguay, for example, have an Apertura ending in June and a Clausura ending in December.

So that’s close to 3.5 billion people living under the tyranny of a non-“international” calendar. And that doesn’t include Russia, which has switched to a fall-to-spring calendar with the asterisk of a winter break lasting nearly three months.

Am I being pedantic here? Perhaps, but there’s a legitimate point here …

We should probably stop taking every single cue from a handful of counties in Europe.

I’m not going to veer into the identity politics of the raging “Costa Rica in Red Bull Arena” or “Jonathan Gonzalez proves USSF diversity problem” arguments. Nor would I suggest that the long-term survival of a U.S. league depends on syncing its calendar with Turkmenistan. (I could not find any evidence of an MLS player ever calling Turkmenistan home.)

But we do need to think more broadly when we think of “the rest of the world.” Scandinavia is certainly the rest of the world. So is Brazil, whose league system may have some elements worth copying.

That doesn’t mean the switch to what we could call the “Major Euro” calendar is a bad idea. We have aspirations of doing most of our outgoing transfer business with the big leagues, so if we can align our offseasons with them, that’s a positive. And ending a season in May has advantages over ending it in December — better weather, fewer football conflicts, etc. (You’re still going up against the NBA and NHL playoffs, along with the part of the baseball season before they start building for next year.)

But then let’s be honest about those reasons. Let’s not say we’re “complying with FIFA,” as some suggested on Twitter over the weekend, by having a summer offseason.

And let’s figure out what works for us rather than blindly copying league systems from countries that are smaller and meteorologically diverse.