2012 Major League Soccer season

The 2012 Major League Soccer season was the 17th season of Major League Soccer. It was also the 100th season of FIFA-sanctioned soccer in the United States, and the 34th with a national first-division league.

The Montreal Impact became the 19th MLS club, replacing a team of the same name that previously played in the NASL.

The regular season began on March 10 and concluded on October 28. The MLS Cup Playoffs began on October 31 and ended on December 1, when the LA Galaxy claimed their fourth league title by defeating the Houston Dynamo, 3–1, in MLS Cup. It was the first rematch in the Cup final since Houston defeated the New England Revolution in the 2006 and 2007 editions.

Season format
The season began on March 10 and concluded with MLS Cup on December 1. The 19 teams were split into two conferences, with 10 teams in the Eastern Conference and 9 teams in the Western Conference. Each team played 34 games that were evenly divided between home and away. Western Conference teams played each conference rival three times, and played each Eastern Conference team once. Eastern Conference teams played seven of their conference rivals three times, the remaining two conference rivals twice, and each Western Conference team once.

The top three teams in each conference earned a bye to the conference semifinals, while the next two teams with the most points in each conference earned wild card berths. The wild card round included two single-elimination matches where the winners advanced to the conference semifinals. In all rounds, draws were broken with two 15-minute periods of extra time, followed by penalty kicks if necessary. The away goals rule was not used in any round.

The team with the most points in the regular season was awarded the MLS Supporters' Shield and qualified for the CONCACAF Champions League. Additionally, the winner of MLS Cup, and the runner-up, also qualified for the CONCACAF Champions League. An additional berth in the Champions League was also awarded to the winner of the U.S. Open Cup. If a team qualified for multiple berths into the Champions League, then additional berths were awarded to the highest overall finishing MLS team(s) not already qualified. Also, Toronto FC, Vancouver Whitecaps FC, and Montreal Impact, as Canadian-based teams, could not qualify for the CONCACAF Champions League through MLS, and had to instead qualify through the Canadian Championship.

Personnel and sponsorships
Note: Flags indicate national team as has been defined under FIFA eligibility rules. Players and Managers may hold more than one non-FIFA nationality.

Player transfers
Major League Soccer employs no fewer than 12 methods to acquire players. These include: signing players on transfers/free transfers as is done in most of the world; via trades; drafting players through mechanisms such as the MLS SuperDraft, MLS Supplemental Draft, or MLS Re-Entry Draft; rarely used methods which cover extreme hardship and injury replacement; signing players as Designated Players or Homegrown Players; placing a discovery claim on players; waivers; and methods peculiar to MLS such as through allocation or a weighted lottery.

Allocation ranking
The allocation ranking is the mechanism used to determine which MLS club has first priority to acquire a U.S. National Team player who signs with MLS after playing abroad, or a former MLS player who returns to the League after having gone to a club abroad for a transfer fee. The allocation rankings may also be used in the event two or more clubs file a request for the same player on the same day. The allocations will be ranked in reverse order of finish for the 2011 season, taking playoff performance into account.

Once the club uses its allocation ranking to acquire a player, it drops to the bottom of the list. A ranking can be traded, provided that part of the compensation received in return is another club's ranking. At all times, each club is assigned one ranking. The rankings reset at the end of each MLS League season.

† Montreal immediately traded Johnson to Seattle in exchange for Mike Fucito and Lamar Neagle.

Vancouver originally had the No. 2 ranking, but traded it to Philadelphia on June 26.

∞Toronto originally had the No. 4 ranking, but traded it to Seattle on September 14.

The remaining order after FC Dallas is: Vancouver Whitecaps FC (from Philadelphia), Toronto FC (from Seattle), Sporting Kansas City, Real Salt Lake, Houston Dynamo and Los Angeles Galaxy. In the unlikely event that all clubs use an allocation, the order begins anew with Montreal Impact, Colorado Rapids, Philadelphia Union, New York Red Bulls New England Revolution and Seattle Sounders FC.

Weighted lottery
Some players are assigned to MLS teams via a weighted lottery process. A team can only acquire one player per year through a weighted lottery. The players made available through lotteries include: (i) Generation adidas players signed after the MLS SuperDraft; and (ii) Draft eligible players to whom an MLS contract was offered but who failed to sign with the League prior to the SuperDraft.

The team with the worst record over its last 30 regular season games (dating back to previous season if necessary and taking playoff performance into account) will have the greatest probability of winning the lottery. Teams are not required to participate in a lottery. Players are assigned via the lottery system in order to prevent a player from potentially influencing his destination club with a strategic holdout.

The results of 2012 weighted lotteries thus far:

Scoring

 * First goal of the season: Sébastien Le Toux for Vancouver Whitecaps FC against Montreal Impact, 3 minutes 1 second (March 10, 2012)
 * Hat-tricks of the season:
 * David Estrada for Seattle Sounders FC against Toronto FC (March 17, 2012)
 * Thierry Henry for New York Red Bulls against Montreal Impact (March 31, 2012)
 * Chris Pontius for D.C. United against New York Red Bulls (April 22, 2012)
 * Álvaro Saborío for Real Salt Lake against Portland Timbers (July 7, 2012)
 * Chris Wondolowski for San Jose Earthquakes against Real Salt Lake (July 14, 2012)
 * Fredy Montero for Seattle Sounders FC against Chivas USA (August 25, 2012)
 * Álvaro Saborío for Real Salt Lake against Chivas USA (September 29, 2012)
 * Chris Wondolowski for San Jose Earthquakes against Colorado Rapids (October 6, 2012)
 * Fastest hat-trick of the season:
 * Álvaro Saborío for Real Salt Lake against Portland Timbers, 16 minutes and 8 seconds (July 7, 2012)

Discipline

 * First yellow card of the season: Milovan Mirošević for Columbus Crew against Colorado Rapids, 40 minutes (March 10, 2012)
 * First red card of the season: Stephen McCarthy for New England Revolution against Sporting Kansas City, 14 minutes (March 17, 2012)

CONCACAF Champions League
Prior to the start of the MLS regular season, Toronto FC defeated Los Angeles Galaxy while Mexican side Santos Laguna defeated Seattle Sounders FC in two of the 2011–12 CONCACAF Champions League quarterfinal series. Toronto FC then lost 3–7 on aggregate in the semifinal with Santos Laguna.

In the 2012–13 CCL, Los Angeles Galaxy, Seattle Sounders, Houston Dynamo and Real Salt Lake earned group stage spots (the preliminary round has been eliminated). The Canadian representative, determined by the 2012 Canadian Championship, was Toronto FC.

At the end of the groups stages, the Los Angeles Galaxy, Seattle Sounders, and Houston Dynamo qualified for the quarterfinals, which will be played in March 2013.

MLS All-Star Game
The 2012 MLS All-Star Game was played on July 25 at PPL Park in Chester, Pennsylvania, home stadium of the Philadelphia Union. As has been the format every year since 2005, the MLS All-Stars played an international club; the 2012 opponent was England's Chelsea FC, 2012 champions of both the FA Cup and UEFA Champions League and visiting side in the 2006 MLS All-Star Game (when they lost to the All-Stars, 1–0, at Toyota Park in Bridgeview, Illinois). The MLS All-Stars won the game 3–2.

Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup
For the 2012 Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup tournament, U.S. Soccer has increased the size of the main tournament from 40 to 64 clubs, assembling the competition so that all U.S.-based Major League Soccer clubs gain entry. On August 8, 2012, Sporting Kansas City defeated the Seattle Sounders on penalties to win the franchise's second open cup title.

Canadian Championship
The three Canadian-based MLS clubs, Toronto FC, Montreal Impact and Vancouver Whitecaps FC, along with NASL club FC Edmonton, competed for the Voyageurs Cup, Canada's national championship trophy. The tournament is organized in a knockout format with two-legged ties in both the semifinals and final, with the away goals rule in place. Toronto defeated Vancouver in the finals, their fourth consecutive national championship, and qualified for the 2012–13 CONCACAF Champions League.

MLS Cup
The MLS Cup playoffs took place after the conclusion of the regular season. For 2012, the playoff structure underwent several changes:
 * The playoffs will no longer feature wild cards and the possibility of "crossovers" (i.e. teams from opposite conferences playing in the early rounds). Instead, the top five clubs in each conference's standings will qualify for the playoffs and will play in the following manner:
 * The 4th place team will host the 5th place team in a single "play-in" match, with the winner advancing to the conference semifinals.
 * The Conference Semifinals will again be a two-game aggregate goal setup as before (with extra time and penalty kicks employed if the aggregate is level after 180 minutes). The 1st place team will play the winner of the 4th/5th game, while the 2nd and 3rd place teams play each other.  The lower-seeded team will host the first leg of each semifinal.
 * The semifinal winners will play each other in the Conference Finals, which will be altered to a two-game aggregate series patterned after the semifinal round (before this year, this round was a single-game format).
 * The Conference Final winners will advance to the MLS Cup Championship Game, which for the first time will be played at the home stadium of the finalist with the better regular season point total; before this season, the game was played at a predetermined site.

Eastern Conference

 * Chicago Fire: Frank Klopas
 * Columbus Crew: Robert Warzycha
 * D.C. United: Ben Olsen
 * Houston Dynamo: Dominic Kinnear
 * Montreal Impact: Jesse Marsch
 * New England Revolution: Jay Heaps
 * New York Red Bulls: Hans Backe
 * Philadelphia Union: Peter Nowak and John Hackworth
 * Sporting Kansas City: Peter Vermes
 * Toronto FC: Paul Mariner

Western Conference

 * Chivas USA: Robin Fraser
 * Colorado Rapids: Óscar Pareja
 * FC Dallas: Schellas Hyndman
 * Los Angeles Galaxy: Bruce Arena
 * Portland Timbers: John Spencer and Gavin Wilkinson
 * Real Salt Lake: Jason Kreis
 * San Jose Earthquakes: Frank Yallop
 * Seattle Sounders FC: Sigi Schmid
 * Vancouver Whitecaps FC: Martin Rennie