MLS Shootouts and More: Five Crazy Ways American Soccer Has Changed in 30 Years | OneFootball

When the San Jose Earthquakes play the visiting D.C. United on Sunday, MLS will celebrate its 30th season with the exact matchup that launched the league in 1996.

The league has substantially changed over the last thirty years, however. Not only will Bruce Arena be standing on the San Jose touchline instead of D.C. United—the club he coached in 1996—but the league also finds itself as an established entity within global sports.

Eric Wynalda scored the lone goal on April 6, 1996, for the San Jose Clash to beat D.C. United that day, kicking off an early and wild era for professional first-division soccer in the United States.

While pro soccer existed before in the United States, MLS has been the first to truly make inroads to the marketplace and establish itself, unlike the past eras of the North American Soccer League and others.

But it wasn’t always so clean—let’s examine some of the wacky aspects of the early MLS seasons.

1. The  First Game Almost Had a Logo in Midfield

While MLS did not adopt the full FIFA Laws of the Game until 2003, the idea of having logos on the field wasn’t one that fancied them. After all, soccer isn’t the same as football, basketball, or hockey—you just don’t have big logos at midfield.

But that first game almost did, and field organizers had to work overnight to erase it after the referee refused to officiate the game with it painted on.

“The night before the first game, and I saw they had this huge logo in the middle of the field...I said I think that's a problem and [the organizer] said ‘what do you mean?’" former D.C. United President Kevin Payne told MLS. “I said, ‘You're not allowed to have markings on a field.' He goes, ‘oh, that's our first game, they'll let it go.’"

“The referee came to inspect the field, and he goes, 'I'm not reffing the game with that on there,' so they ended up having to spend the whole night trying to figure out a way to get it out of the field.”

2. The Kits  and Team Names Were Wild

MLS kits were certainly not shy of color in the league's first season / Courtesy of Major League Soccer

While most MLS teams now go by the classic soccer monikers “United,” “FC,” “SC,” or even “Inter,” that wasn’t always the case—and some of the old names were pretty diabolically 90s, as were the kits that accompanied them.

The original MLS season featured the Kansas City Wiz, Dallas Burn, San Jose Clash, NY/NJ Metrostars, and Tampa Bay Mutiny, among other brands that continue today with the Colorado Rapids, D.C. United, Columbus Crew, New England Revolution and LA Galaxy.

The Miami Fusion were another early-day MLS team that no longer exist, while the Montreal Impact were among the later teams to rebrand from their old identity––although they only joined MLS in 2012.

Meanwhile, the kits were undeniably more entertaining and flamboyant than they are today.

3. The Shootout and Golden Goal

The famed 35-yard MLS shootout is the peak of old American soccer footage. When the league began, organizers were confident that the idea of a tie would fancy no American sports fan, so they introduced a hockey-style shootout.

If teams were level after 90 minutes—which had no stoppage time and ended in a buzzer—the ball would be placed 35 yards from the goal, and a player would have five seconds to score on the opposing goalkeeper.

Teams that won the five-round shootout would earn one point in the league table, compared to three points for a regulation win.

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While the shootout ended in 1999, it wasn’t the only tie-breaking maneuver in early eras of MLS as the first MLS Cup final ended on a Golden Goal from Eddie Pope in 1996 as D.C. United beat LA Galaxy 3–2.

As much fun as these look, it’s probably good the league doesn’t have them anymore.

4. The Fields Have Grown

Montreal's Stade Saputo has the largest field in MLS, while New York City FC and San Diego FC have the smallest / Eric Bolte-Imagn Images

When MLS launched, the legal minimum length of the playing surface was 50 yards wide by 100 yards long. In the present day, though, it’s at least 70 yards wide by 110 yards long.

The biggest current field in MLS is CF Montréal’s Stade Saputo, measuring 120 yards by 77 yards, while the smallest is shared by New York City FC’s Yankee Stadium and San Diego FC’s Snapdragon Stadium, measuring 70 yards by 110 yards.

5. The Almosts: Bigger Goals and More

As American sports owners attempted to find a foothold in soccer (a sport others had failed to succeed in through previous eras), they tried to Americanize the game in many ways; fortunately few of them succeeded.

Among the proposed changes were increasing the size of the goals, allowing the play to continue behind the goal, allowing kick-ins instead of throw-ins and changing the time system to four quarters instead of two halves.

MLS attempted to propose some of its desired rule changes at a FIFA meeting in Brazil in 1996, but failed to get them even to much of a discussion.

“The reaction was such that the board felt it was inappropriate to even consider the matter in more detail,” said FIFA board member Graham Kelly of England to the LA Times.

MLS has enjoyed a meteoric rise for a sports league in the last 30 years, and with the hopeful “soccer-boom” following the 2026 FIFA World Cup, there’s hope the next three decades can be even better––and hopefully keep the same rules as the rest of the world.