The Portland Timbers played their first preseason game Saturday night in Arizona, hours before the MLS Collective Bargaining Agreement expired.

With the anticipated March start of the 2015 MLS season quickly approaching, the league and its players remain far apart on key issues and are nowhere close to coming to terms for a new CBA.

The players have agreed to continue competing for the duration of the preseason under the rules of the previous CBA, but have made it clear that they would be willing to go on strike if the league refuses to address their key issues before the start of the regular season.

Topping the players' demands is free agency.

"If we don't have anything on paper about free agency from the league, I wouldn't anticipate us being able to start on time," Timbers center back Nat Borchers told The Salt Lake Tribune.

Borchers and other players have pointed out that MLS is the only professional sports league in the U.S. and top-level soccer league in the world that prevents players from testing the market and choosing which team they want to play for once their contract expires.

"Free agency is a right that's enjoyed by players in every other league in the entire world," said Borchers, who was Real Salt Lake's union representative before being traded to Portland and remains involved in the CBA negotiations. "When you finish your contract in the league in the rest of the world, either your team can make you an offer to stay or you can look at options to leave."

For MLS to embrace free agency, the league might have to abandon the single-entity system on which it was built.

With the single-entity system, MLS players sign contracts with the league, rather than with their individual teams. Under that system, free agency would mean that the league was essentially bidding against itself for its own players.

According to Borchers, the league has been unwilling to even discuss any type of free agency in the CBA negotiations, essentially halting talks between the players and the league.

In 2010, when the players and the league last negotiated a CBA, the players abandoned the goal of free agency in order to prevent a work stoppage by coming to an agreement days before the season.

This time around, the players say they are resolute in their demands. MLS has seen massive growth over the last few years. Average per-game attendance was over 19,000 for the first time in 2014. The league recently signed an historic eight-year, $720 million television deal with ESPN, Fox Sports and Univision. And the league has grown to 20 teams this season and will continue to expand in the next few years.

The players believe the league's momentum gives them some leverage in this year's CBA negotiations.

"I think that we've given the league a pretty honest proposal and I think that we need some reciprocation from the league in order to get the ball rolling on some very important issues," Borchers said. "Guaranteed contracts, option years and free agency are three very important issues that come to mind."

With all the momentum that the league has built up over the last year, MLS is still just beginning to gain some relevance in the United States and it is unclear whether it could weather a player strike.

"It's not something that we want to do, but it's definitely something that we're prepared and willing to do in the case that MLS isn't reasonable in its negotiations," Borchers said. "We just want to make the message clear that we're unified and that we're prepared to strike and we're prepared to weather the storm as long as it takes to get a deal done that's fair for players."

-- Jamie Goldberg | jgoldberg@oregonian.com

503-853-3761 | @jamiebgoldberg