Deputy commissioner Ivan Gazidis has been with Major League Soccer since 1994. (Ed Andrieski/Associated Press)

Major League Soccer will officially kick off its 13th season on Saturday, defying critics who predicted the league wouldn't live to see its 10th birthday.

Launched in 1996, MLS has grown from a modest eight-team league that garnered little attention from the sports media, to a 14-team operation in 2008 that features one of the most famous athletes on the planet (David Beckham).

The league will expand to 16 clubs by 2010, and is garnering more attention and enjoying more coverage from major media outlets than any other time in its history.

According to the league, the average attendance hovers between 16,000 and 18,000.

So, who better to talk to about the current state of MLS than Ivan Gazidis, the league's deputy commissioner?

Gazidis, 43, an Oxford University law graduate, has the second-longest tenure of any employee at MLS, having joined the league in April 1994, two years before its inaugural season.

Gazidis recently spoke to CBCSports.ca in a one-on-one interview:

What goals has the league set for itself this season?
We're in the middle of a process, and the process is a long-term proposition, so when we look at what goals we have, we really are less focused on what happens from year to year than we are on a five-year plan and the types of things we want to get done within five years.

If you look at what we've been doing the past five years, as an example, the goals were to build soccer-specific stadiums, to expand our investment group of owners and move towards having one investor per team, and to expand the league. There's no fixed timeline on any of those; the important thing for us, for example, on expansion or expanding the investor group, is that we get the right quality of new expansion markets or new investors, and not that we hit a certain number.

As we look forward to the next five years, the goals are to continue our development in those areas. We've obviously been very successful with new investors and new stadiums and with expansion, so we want to continue on that process, but at the same time really turn our focus to the on-field product. There was an awful lot of emphasis placed on that last year and there will be again this year - on how our teams are performing on the field, what the level of play in the league is - because even as we expand, the primary goal right now is to raise the level of play; not to see it stay where it is but for it to progress forward.

How happy are you in terms of where MLS ranks in the North American sports market?
Well, I'm very happy with it. I think soccer has found its place. MLS has established its permanence; it has its fan base. I don't compare us to the other North American-based sports leagues. I don't think it's realistic to think of ourselves in the same way people think of the NFL, and that's not even a comparison point for us.

We think of ourselves more as off to the side, a little bit like NASCAR before it exploded, and with our own audience. The opportunity for MLS is that there are a great number of soccer fans in the United States and in Canada, and we know that because when we look at the viewing figures… for example, with the World Cup in 2006, more people watched the World Cup final in the U.S. than watched the World Series, so we have a significant market for soccer. The challenge for MLS is to make soccer fans fans of Major League Soccer.

How important is David Beckham's role in helping MLS achieve that goal?
He's one of the pieces of the puzzle. Signing David Beckham was clearly a visible and high-profile statement that the league is prepared to make bold moves and some moves that perhaps nobody expected we would be able to make, or would be prepared to make.

But I don't think he's any more important than developing soccer stadiums, getting new investors involved in our sport, expanding, and I also think in parallel with signing David Beckham, we also took a major step forward in terms of our other players in the league in 2007. All three of our league MVP candidates were new players to MLS in 2007. For half of our teams, either their team MVP or their leading goal-scorer was a new signing in 2007.

So, David Beckham is a very important piece of this puzzle. He's expanded the recognition of the league, he's expanded the L.A. Galaxy brand - that's a team that is now known all around the world - and he's also increased awareness of the game amongst the general public in the United States. There's probably no individual player that could have had the affect that David Beckham has had, but it's not the David Beckham league and there are other things that I would consider as important as David's arrival in MLS.

MLS has added six new teams since 2005, and league commissioner Don Garber said he hopes to expand the league to 18 teams by 2011. Is there enough talent to sustain 18 competitive teams in the league, knowing that American players will likely make up the bulk of the rosters?
There's absolutely enough talent, because unlike any other sports league in North America, we have an unlimited supply of talent. The talent is spread all around the world and we're a very small player in that worldwide market, so in terms of quality of play and level of talent, there's no limitation on expansion. The issue is how much money you need to spend to ensure your product continues to move forward. We've analyzed that very carefully, because we're looking at a period of rapid growth and clearly our board of directors has made a decision - that imperative with that growth is that the quality of the product continues to improve, and they've made a statement that they are prepared to invest enough money to make sure we have enough talent coming into the league, that even with expansion we will continue to take steps forward.

There was a lot of criticism when the 2008 MLS regular season schedule was released earlier this year, because there are a lot conflicts with "international dates" as recognized by FIFA, which means a lot of league's high-profile players, David Beckham included, could be away on national team duty and be unavailable to play for their MLS clubs. Are there any plans afoot to get the MLS schedule in line with the FIFA calendar, so as to avoid this problem?
It's an ongoing issue for us. We're not the only league in the world that plays a spring-to-fall schedule. There are a number of leagues that play a similar schedule to us. It may be that at some point we feel that the weather in Toronto or Chicago will not deter fans from coming to games in February, but right now our season window is what we believe it has to be. For where we are in our development, we don't believe we are ready to move to a schedule that has a summer break and plays through the winter months. There are some good weather reasons related to that, and that leads on to the fact that there are some inevitable conflicts with the FIFA calendar.

What we've tried to do is to schedule as much as possible away from those dates, so that at least we are lighter when the FIFA dates roll around. What we find, empirically, is that fans continue to come to those games, so it's a delicate balance that we have to work out. Obviously, in an ideal world, we wouldn't have any conflicts… but there's just no room in the window that we have, there are no dates to put those games that conflict with FIFA dates at another time, and it'll become even more challenging when we move on to later in the year to the CONCACAF Champions League, which has multiple mid-week dates that have to be held open.

Can you explain the reasons behind the recent league rule changes regarding the number of international players allowed on a given roster?
It's part of the commitment to making sure the product quality does not go down, and in fact continues to improve while we go through expansion. We did not want to have teams, as we went through expansion, limited in their ability to improve by the international player limit rule.

There is genuine concern about the rule change amongst Canadian MLS fans, because Toronto FC has been awarded two additional international player spots, which means two fewer spots for Canadian players on the team. One of the reasons that Canadian fans were so excited when Toronto was granted an MLS expansion franchise is because they believed it would benefit Canadian soccer and Canada's national team, because it would lead to the development of better Canadian players. And, in fact, the league trumpeted that very point when it officially announced Toronto as the league's newest team. Doesn't the rule change hurt Canadian soccer?
No, I don't think it does. I think the higher the quality of the league, the better development opportunities there will be for Canadian and American soccer players, and the better level of soccer they'll be playing.

When we look at Toronto's roster, it's a 28-man roster. Yes, 13 of those players could come from outside of Canada, but the remainder and the majority of roster will continue to be Canadian players, and those Canadian players need to be at a level that they can compete in Major League Soccer. I think over time you will see that, in the same way before MLS the development of the U.S. player was severely impacted, the existence of MLS has transformed the U.S. national team into one of the dominant teams in the CONCACAF region, alongside Mexico.

I think there's no question that the existence of MLS in Canada will accelerate dramatically the development of Canadian players, and as Canadian players are able to compete at the level of the league, the number of roster spots for them will expand. Two of the international player slots for Toronto are being implemented for the next two seasons and then we review. It's not set in stone forever, and I think as we see Canadian players develop, as we see a deeper talent pool there, you'll see us scale back in terms of the international players that are allowed on Canadian MLS teams.