MLS is celebrating its 10th anniversary season

A decade later, Major League Soccer is alive and kicking, and in better shape than it's ever been.

When MLS's 10th anniversary season kicks off this Saturday, the league will be celebrating the past, present and future of the highest level of professional soccer in the United States.

The past includes icons like Alexi Lalas and Carlos Valderamma. The present includes Freddy Adu mania and a legion of up-and-coming talented youngsters. And the future? Who knows, but MLS commissioner Dan Garber — a former marketing director of the NFL — has a grand vision.

MLS is a league founded on the success of the 1994 World Cup staged on American soil. It's a league that's enjoyed its fair share of successes and failures during those 10 years. It's also a league, however, that has directly influenced the U.S. National Team's rise to prominence, and a quarterfinal finish in the 2002 World Cup.

Since that opening day back in 1996, the quality of play has increased every year, and 2005 should be no different.

By adding expansion teams CD Chivas USA (Los Angeles) and Real Salt Lake, the league took two more baby steps toward its optimum size of 18 teams. Garber says he expects to expand again in 2007.

"We've got to be very smart, to grow our league slowly," he said. "We want to expand at the right time, at the right places and with the right owners. We'll go about this slowly and strategically, and learn from some of the errors other leagues have made in the past by expanding too fast and in the wrong markets."

Soccer is still fifth or sixth in terms of popularity in this country behind football, basketball, baseball, hockey and golf, but the gap is narrowing — and stadiums are a big reason why.

Los Angeles and Columbus are already enjoying the fruits of playing in a soccer-specific stadium, with Dallas scheduled to begin play in its new stadium later this summer. Denver, Chicago and New York are in the midst of building stadiums as well, or soccer cathedrals as Garber calls them.

Stadiums are what ultimately will help the league financially.

In the first seven years of MLS, not a single team turned a profit, not even once. That trend ended in 2003, when the Los Angeles Galaxy became the first franchise to turn a profit, which coincidentally occurred during the same season it began playing in the Home Depot Center, Los Angeles' soccer-specific stadium.

When people ask Garber why stadiums are necessary, he asks people if they think basketball would be successful in the Houston Astrodome. It's a building, and isn't that all you need? Unfortunately, it takes more than a building, it takes a building of optimum size. For soccer, that's about 20,000 to 25,000 seats.