The tremendous growth in Major League Soccer seen in recent years was not always the case.
Read the 2014 interview of Commissioner Don Garber by Graham Parker, discussing the darkest period of MLS history in 2001-02, a painful contraction and consolidation of many of the remaining teams into the hands of a few charter owners of the league. This was the time in which MLS lost both of its Florida franchises, the Tampa Bay Mutiny and the Fort Lauderdale based Miami Fusion.
How Commissioner Don Garner took MLS from Contraction to Expansion