re: Where would you rank the MLS amongst other leagues around the World?

I think on average the MLS would be much higher ranked than most people think. The problem is that most leagues in Europe have a few good teams that are unbelievably good, so they make the rest of the league look really good by default. I think the Spanish league is a perfect example. If you remove the top few teams (Real Madrid, Barcelona, and maybe Valencia and Villareal), all the sudden the league doesn't look nearly as strong. In MLS we have salary caps, so generally the best teams are much closer in quality to the worst teams.

If you threw out the top 4 teams from each big league in Europe and ranked them against MLS, I think it would be much more respectable. Maybe it would look something like this:

1. English Premier League
2. Spanish La Liga
3. Italian Serie A
4. German Bundesliga
5. MLS
6. French Ligue 1
7. Dutch Eredivisie
8. Portugese Premeira Liga
9. Greek League
10. Scottish Premier League

I'm not an expert on the smaller European leagues so maybe I'm a bit off, but I think you get my point. I also think that an MLS team could survive (and by survive I mean not be relegated) in Ligue 1, Eredivisie, SPL, and all the other lower tier European leagues.