Major League Soccer announced Wednesday the complete regular season schedule for 2009.
This is the 14th season of MLS and will see each of the 15 clubs play 30 regular season games for a total of 225 games. The league reduced the volume of games near August 12, September 5 and October 10 – all World Cup Qualifying dates. An effort was made to schedule byes during international competitions for the teams competing in CONCACAF Champions League (Columbus Crew, D.C. United, New York Red Bulls and Houston Dynamo) and SuperLiga (Chicago Fire, New England Revolution, Kansas City Wizards and Chivas USA).
In its third MLS season, Toronto FC will play each team home and away, except for Eastern Conference rivals Columbus Crew, and New York Red Bulls who they will face three times.
The season opens for Toronto FC with two games away from BMO Field beginning Saturday, March 21 in Kansas City with an 8:30 p.m. ET start. The following weekend the team is in Columbus, Ohio where the first match of the Trillium Cup will be contested on Saturday, March 28 at Crew Stadium in a 4 p.m. ET kickoff. The remaining games in the Cup will held on Saturday, May 2 at BMO Field, with the final game in the series being played Saturday, July 25 in Columbus in a 7:30 p.m. ET start time.
Toronto will host expansion side Seattle Sounders FC in its first home game of the season on Saturday, April 4 in a 3:30 p.m. kick off, and will make their way to the west coast for the re-match for Saturday, August 29.
Saturday, June 6 the Los Angeles Galaxy is in town where fans will be hoping to get a chance to see their star midfielder David Beckham on BMO Field for the first time in a league match-up. Beckham has either been injured or away on International duty in their two previous visits, but did play in the MLS All-Star game held in Toronto last summer.
Toronto FC will make their 2009 debut on ESPN2 when they host the Houston Dynamo on Saturday, July 18 in a 1 p.m. ET start. This will be the second and final meeting between the two sides during the regular season as Dwayne De Rosario hosts his former team for the first time.
Toronto FC will wrap up the 2009 MLS regular season on Saturday, October 24 in New York facing the Red Bulls.
The MLS All-Star game will be played Wednesday July 29 at Rio Tinto Stadium, in Sandy, Utah. Eight teams will qualify for MLS Cup Playoffs which begin October 29 and culminate in MLS Cup 2009 on the weekend of November 21-22 at a site to be announced at a later date.