Mirror, mirror on the wall — what are the biggest issues MLS faces of all? An upcoming CBA negotiation and uncertainty over the kickoff of the 2015 season. An increase in NASL spending that’s putting pressure on MLS to offer improved entry-level contracts. The fact that there are still wide gulfs between how MLS does deals and how the rest of the world does deals. We asked agents across North America for their input — and we got some very, very interesting answers. Here’s a rare peek behind the scenes...

It went like this: You could put the entire team in a sack, then have someone punch it. No matter which player took the punch, “you’d be right.”

Canadian national team-regular Will Johnson is the MLS Player of the Week, after his second-half brace allowed his new club, the Portland Timbers, to roar back from two goals down in the Colorado altitude and earn a 2-2 draw with the Rapids.

Completely dominated in the opening half, Montreal gave up the first goal only five minutes after play got underway.

Mike Magee, who scored three times Sunday in that win over Chicago, won in a landslide in the first ballot of the season for the members of the North American Soccer Reporters.

With the MLS season moved up to its earliest start ever, forgive us if we don’t feel 100 per cent totally prepared for First Kick. Judging by the way many MLS teams finished preseason, with tentative matches and still looking at trialists with a week to go before the games count in the standings, a lot of coaches aren’t quite ready for the early start, either.

The games from the Walt Disney World Classic are archived on YouTube, so that offers the chance to not have to spend a prime Saturday afternoon watching any Toronto FC and Montreal’s preseason matches.

“I was fined last week for claiming that the referee was one-sided. I’m not sure how scathing that was but obviously I’m not going to be able to make comments but I think it’s pretty obvious what happened out there,” said Impact head coach Jesse Marsch, obviously less than thrilled with the efforts of referee Sorin Stoica.

With Paul Mariner taking the reins from Aron Winter, beginning the next chapter of Toronto FC's history, the end result was still a familiar one for the Reds. Poor play at the start of the match and bad luck on the offensive end played a big part of a 2-0 road loss to Sporting Kansas City.

A match against SKC? Sure loss, right? Wrong. The Impact won its first ever road game, 2-0 over the hosts and, frankly, put together the most impressive 90 minutes in the club’s short MLS history.