Will replacement referees spell disaster for MLS season?

The Professional Soccer Referees Association (PSRA) union rejected a collective bargaining agreement from the Professional Referee Organization (PRO) on Saturday. Now, the MLS finds itself scrambling for replacements before the season kicks off on Wednesday.

This isn't the first time the league has started off with replacement referees: MLS started the 2014 season with a referee lockout, and played with replacements for the first two weeks of the season. But this time around may be more chaotic, and more costly, than a decade ago.

According to The Athletic, PRO had 66 replacement referees lined up on Saturday, 26 of which can step in as center referees. Per The Athletic, these center ref replacements have experience in other countries — Brazil, Turkey, Spain, Mexico, etc. — while others work with U.S. Soccer and some officiate Division I college soccer. Matches at any of the three Canadian clubs — Vancouver Whitecaps, Toronto FC and CF Montréal — will be refereed by officials from Canada Soccer (PRO general manager Mark Geiger — a former MLS and World Cup referee who retired in 2018 — is among those available to step in a video assistant referee.).

But that prior experience may not be enough to succeed in the MLS. Many analysts and referees are concerned about the replacement referees' ability to jump into regular season play — learning the league's rules, adapting to the higher professional level and even matching MLS referees' fitness standards — with just a few weeks' notice. Referee and rules analyst Christina Unkel told CBS on Saturday that the situation was "the perfect storm of many things that could go wrong."

When there's chaos in the present, we look to the past; but the truth is that the 2014 lockout may not offer much in terms of predicting how this season will go.

Part of the problem is that a lot has changed in 10 years. For one, MLS is much bigger than it used to be: In 2014, the league had 19 teams; now it has 29.

MLS plays a 34-match season, as was true in 2014, but that schedule is more spread out to make room for mid-season tournaments. These tournaments, which are separate from the regular season, include the Leagues Cup, the CONCACAF Champions League and the U.S. Open Cup — which has an ongoing saga of its own, of MLS's own making.

The 2014 lockout started on March 7, the day before the 2014 season started, and ended on March 20. In those two weeks, there were 16 MLS games played.

But now the season starts earlier, and there are more teams. In just the first week of the season, there will be 15 games; by March 20 of this season, there will have been 57 matches across four "matchdays."

According to statements released by both sides on Saturday, the PRO and PSRA are both actively trying to come to an agreement. But if PRO fails to satisfy PSRA with the next round of negotiations, there's still room for things to get worse: The PSRA authorized a potential strike in January, as reported by The Athletic.

The best-case scenario for MLS at this point is a speedy agreement, hopefully without too much disruption as the season kicks off. The worst-case scenario is a strike, a long-term holdout and whatever the soccer version of a Fail Mary is.

The MLS season officially kicks off Wednesday with Inter Miami hosting Real Salt Lake. And as Lionel Messi takes the field, MLS (and its fans) will have to hope for the best.