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designated players
on the wire
—–Original Message—–
From: Wes
Sent: Friday, September 08, 2006 10:41 AM
To: This Is American Soccer [mailto:thisisamericansoccer@gmail.com]
Subject: Re: MLS
You have some valid points about Don Garber and “the league” as you call It, holding players here. Here are my points:
The league owning the rights to every team and their players allows the league to keep competition even throughout and keeps every player’s value and career under raps. MLS provides an avenue for American players and other players that have not had the exposure to prove their trade. If they impress, the salary will increase. MLS is not in the business of growing players and selling them for a profit. Each team has the rights to make decisions and pass them along through the league office. If each team was allowed to spend whatever they wanted, then what is stopping the teams owned by bigger owners from getting all the best players, causing a monopoly in a sense and turning our league into the Scottish league, where each year two teams fight it out, Ranger and Celtic. Also, if players were allowed to go where they wanted, as opposed to allocations, most players are going to go where they can be seen more or to one of the bigger cities - DC, LA, NY. If you were told you could choose where you play, are you going to choose Salt Lake City over NY or LA if you are looking for exposure and attention?
The league has looked at the past leagues of the US that have failed and figured out why. They grew too big and put too much money into the teams too early. Remember when Pele ran the show for the Cosmos? What a great time in American soccer.. where is the league now? Do not get me wrong, I am very happy to say Pele, Beckenbauer and others played in the US, but how many teams then were competitive. Some teams had more money than others. MLS has strategically grown slowly to keep the product quality on the field increasing while slowing investing more money into every aspect of the league, ads, salaries, when more owners and sponsors jumped on board. AEG or Anshutz Entertainment Group helped MLS tremendously by financially holding several teams together until proper ownership was interested. Anshutz was not trying to get rich off of buying and selling stocks. Now look at the number of teams with soccer specific stadiums. When all teams have that, the money will be rolling. Many teams pay a tremendous amount of money to rent stadiums, and then they get a small percentage of parking, concessions etc… How can you make money? They even have to check and make sure sponsors will not conflict. How can you make money? When the stadiums are there, the money will be too and team salaries will increase.
The league max salary has grown almost over 3x its original, $250,000 to $900,000. There are many incentives teams are allowed to reward players such as goals, wins, assist, etc… Players are not living the high life, although they are doing pretty well. Ok, players leaving, I agree they should be allowed to go overseas if the price is right. Do not hold players back as that will only keep players from joining MLS. Do not make players stay, give them an option and 5 years from now when the sponsor support
continues grow, watch the salary rise and the level of play across the board increase. MLS is a growing league and wants to keep it that way. They do not try to bring in aging players, although a few have made it, because MLS is careful of its image and the last thing it wants to be is a “retirement league”. I think the league is doing the right thing. Look at the number of Americans in the EPL alone now. Would that have been possible without MLS? No. I applaud the efforts of MLS, although of course I disagree with some of their decisions. As opposed to past league, MLS is looking to the future and not putting all its eggs in the basket of the present. It has worked so far. It it ain’t broke, don’t mess with it.
Also, one last point, remember, 5 years from now, the people in the US who truly grew up playing and loving the sport will have money to put back into it through, tickets, etc… My kids will not have to play, although they will see some games as I will take them for the experience. The majority of people running the corporations in the US are baseball and football people. They are the decision makers. They did not play soccer or have it around when they were growing up. Tha will change as the leaders do. Soccer is strong and growing and I cannot wait to see where it is when I am old and gray.
-Wes
Isn’t the internet wonderful? I can call and call MLS and never get a call back – or I get one call after two weeks of calling and several deadlines passing. (I’ve yet to find a place where dropping the word blog has any positive effect). But the e-mails pour in. Luckily, people reach out to me, and sometimes, the words they have to share are more interesting than anything a PR machine will allow.
With that said, I’m using this here digital correspondence as an initial test for a new project. While the Diary Project is a mean to one kind of end – a time capsule for American Soccer – sharing the unedited thoughts of passionate and hopefully educated e-mails (with permission of course) serves to exhibit not only the course for which opinions are made - theory transformed to fact - but quite simply, turning the monarchy of publishing into a representative democracy. (baby steps) Let’s hope the TIAS version works better than the one our nation seems to be bumbling around with. And if not, I hope we too will get a few hundred years to work out the kinks.
So send in your e-mails, rants, essays, Op-eds, and photos to thisisamericansoccer@gmail.com
John
on Sep 10th, 2006 - 10:49pm
you make good points, but i’m not completely sold on this yet. mainly because the exact same things that you said are in place to protect the MLS are the same things that are to this day holding it back. sure, the things you spoke of, namely being more or less owned by one entity until owners can sprout up, and the ownership of players are there to maintaint the league without allowing a small group of teams to blow up and constantly be fighting for the titles, but in reality, it has come to a point where they need to take a gamble if soccer is going to even attempt to become a big time sport in america. there are four ways to bring about a better MLS…
1. get on the same schedule as the soccer leagues in the rest of the world. i understand the difficulties of doing this because of many of the teams using NFL stadiums to play and that the NFL is playing while this would be going on, but there has to be a way around this, whether it involves using the facilities on a different day than the NFL games, which should be wholly possible because they are doing it now. if you put the MLS on the rest of the worlds schedule, life will be much easier for the mls.
2. get rid of the salary cap…to an extent. the aim is not to create a mess with no salary cap, such can be seen in MLB, but they need to do something about this because it is holding teams back. and while on the subject of rosters, the MLS needs to let players go. i understand whyt hey want to keep them, but at the same time, they should be worried about developing players. while not the best example, landon donovan did come back after playing (barely) in europe, as did mathis. to not allow these players to go inhibits their ability to develop into stronger talent, which also inhibits the US mens national team…something that the MLS should watch, namely because the further usa goes in the cup, the more attention on american soccer. the MLS may want to go ahead and fix the dempsey problem before it gets any bigger, and at the same time learn the lesson before it becomes issue with a certain mr. adu. also, dont be afraid of older players coming to america. as long as younger american players are still coming in, the mls will not be a retirement league, in fact, the retired players will help develop those who dont go overseas to play and give the big name value to get people in the stand, as well as fill out for the players that go overseas.
3. one word…relegation. have the MLS team up with the USL. i know, it sounds crazy, but if you have the USL work as a serie B and the MLS as serie A, mix in a little relegation, it gives the players a little something extra to play for and at the same time, it gives the USL teams and players a chance to shine…im pretty sure that some of those players are just as good as some of the MLS guys, and maybe even better. imagine the excitement of getting to see a shitty MLS team get relegated to the USL, or see them fight their way out of it. It could even help out with attracting owners, a lot of very rich people in the country enjoy to do little pet projects, and nothing could work better than buying a soccer team on the cusp of failure and build them up…competition that gives more than what we’re used to, america loves it.
these are all things that the MLS can’t possibly do immediately, but if they start implementing some of these ideas now, or in the future, the MLS can become a better league than it is now, and help to secure soccer as one of the major sports in america. over time, the MLS can be great, but if they dont work on these issues to better the league it will go down faster than it would if they threw all of their eggs into one basket.
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