To play or not to play, that is the question – and a pretty big question it is for Major League Soccer.

It’s the World Cup that poses the problem, more specifically the awkward fact that the world’s no. 1 sporting event is played for a whole month – starting on June 9 – slap-bang in the middle of the MLS season.

So, should MLS suspend its games for that month? Or should it be business as usual, which means going head to head with virtually daily telecasts of what is, or should be, the very best that the world of soccer has to offer?

The decision has been made – the same decision that was made in 1998 and 2002 – to continue playing. But it is a decision made with a heavy heart, one that seems to satisfy no one.

“In a perfect world we’d take a break,” MLS deputy commissioner Ivan Gazidis admitted. But the world is anything but perfect for MLS, because the World Cup is deliberately arranged at a time when pro leagues in the northern hemisphere are on their summer vacations.

But not in America. Pro soccer became a summer sport here back in 1967, when the newly formed pro leagues had to face the fact that they needed to borrow football stadiums to play in. It was also deemed impossible to play in the winter in key northern franchise cities like New York and Chicago. It’s been summertime ever since and it works quite well – until the World Cup arrives and MLS faces its four-yearly conundrum.

The reluctant feeling among MLS brass is that they have no option. One of their biggest tasks has always been to gain recognition and publicity for their league, and it is felt that to simply disappear for a month – and to be replaced by another variety of soccer with much more hype going for it – would be a severe setback, one that might lead the casual observer to believe that the league had folded.

There are scheduling problems as well. Postponed games – revenue dates as they are called – would have to be moved, and while MLS clubs are making progress with building their own stadiums (three in use in Columbus, Los Angeles, and Dallas; Chicago opening soon) most clubs are still playing in borrowed stadiums. DC United, for instance, shares a stadium with baseball’s Washington Nationals, and would have no choice but to take whichever dates were not wanted by the Nationals.

While all 64 of the World Cup games will be telecast live (adding insult to injury, they are being shown on ABC/ESPN, which also televises MLS games), the time difference means that even the late kick-off games in Germany should be over by 6 p.m., meaning that direct conflict can usually be avoided.

Not only will MLS be playing through the World Cup, but its clubs will be deprived of 11 of their best players, who will be with Bruce Arena’s U.S. national team in Germany.The absentees include the man who’s the closest MLS has to a superstar, Landon Donovan (Los Angeles), plus goalscorers Brian Ching (Houston), Eddie Johnson and Josh Wolff (both from Kansas City), and rising stars like New England’s Clint Dempsey and Kansas City’s Jimmy Conrad.

DC United has lost only one player, Ben Olson, to the national team, but this is the one absence that has a positive side, as it almost certainly means that Freddy Adu – not wanted by Arena – will gain a regular starting position with DC. This is something that should come as a relief to MLS, for it has to be said that Adu, who until now has been used only intermittently by coach Peter Nowak, has not lived up to the hype that engulfed his entry into the league in 2004.Simply put, he has had a few good games and scored a few good goals, but he has failed to do anything spectacular – and boy-wonders are supposed to specialize in spectacular doings.

Another possible benefit the World Cup might bring for MLS is a general increase in interest in the sport. There is the hope that World Cup fever – particularly if it is bolstered by a successful run by the Americans – will translate into bigger crowds at MLS games.

A seductive idea, one that Kevin Payne, the president of DC United, puts forward. “I don’t think [the World Cup] will have a negative impact on us. If anything it will make people more excited about soccer.”

Unfortunately, this is not an idea that stands up to reality. Four years ago, the Americans reached the quarter-finals at the World Cup, but the team’s heroics had no lasting effect on MLS attendances. In 2001, the average MLS attendance was 14,961; in the World Cup year of 2002 it did go up slightly to 15,821,but it was back down to 14,898 in 2003.

Hidden in those figures may well be the drawback that critics of MLS insist on: the quality of its soccer is not good enough. Fans who had been turned on by World Cup soccer would want more, but on switching to the MLS version of the sport would be disappointed and quickly turn away.

For the moment, MLS plays on, regardless. But evidently things may be different by the time the next World Cup arrives in 2010.”I’m not so sure that four years from now we’ll be playing through the World Cup like we are now,” MLS Commissioner Don Garber said. “There are things that we’ve had to do that we will not have to do in the future, and this is one of them. It’s way too early for us to make any firm decisions on that.”

Garber admitts that he is getting pressure from FIFA to change the MLS season so that the league falls into line with all the other northern hemisphere (primarily European) leagues and plays through the winter. Asked if he thought that anyone would want to brave the cold to watch it (even if the sport could be played in freezing winter weather), Garber replied that football fans did just that, and that soccer fans did it in Europe. “It’s a matter of educating our fans,” he said.

But the idea of cold-weather soccer lacks appeal, not least because, stylistically, it would push the American game closer to the physical northern European game and away from the sunsoaked Brazilian version – a move that has little to recommend it.

To counter that, Garber points to the success MLS is having in encouraging the building of soccer-specific stadiums, adding: “Stadiums can be built with roofs.”

pgardner@nysun.com