Winning on the road is hard in MLS for a variety of reasons. There are different surfaces, different timezones, different climates, different elevations, different atmospheres. And there's roster churn, and non-chartered flights, and so on and so forth.

But the biggest reason that home teams fare so much better in MLS than they do in other leagues around the world is parity. The trip from Barcelona to Malaga isn't going to close the talent gap between those two teams, nor appreciably effect the expected outcome. Teams at the top in most leagues routinely go out on the road and pound the stragglers, and that's that.

As we know, this is not the case in MLS:

2 days to @MLS season.@NewYorkRedBulls were the only MLS team w/ a positive road goal difference in 2015 (+2). pic.twitter.com/0TKNDnaPcV — Paul Carr (@PCarrESPN) March 4, 2016

And it's worth noting that with the likes of Lloyd Sam and Kemar Lawrence, the Red Bulls are a great crossing team. So Abang is gonna get a lot more looks this season when teams park the bus -- at home, or on the road.

Author's Note

This is the 16th in a daily series counting down to to the MLS regular season first kick on March 6. I'm using Paul Carr's tweets (with his blessing) to examine some of the bigger storylines to follow in the upcoming season.