Tag: mls

soccer

Dispatches from the U.S. soccer culture wars

Posted on by Beau Dure

From Tarkus to Fury, the artistically inclined people among us have sketched out portraits of conflict that just keeps going and going, eventually devouring the war-weary veteran and the new enlistee alike.

(At least, I think that’s what Tarkus is about. I get lost somewhere in the middle of Keith Emerson’s fourth keyboard solo.)

And so it goes with what Charles Boehm has succinctly labeled the Soccer Culture War.

Some people are willing, even enthusiastic participants. Some aren’t, but they feel some twisted sense of duty.

Like a lot on conflicts, the root is more rhetorical than real. Deep down, most of the warriors all want the same thing — good soccer in the United States. But fragile identities and defensiveness make us easy to call out.

(Yes, The Simpsons riffed on that scene last season, one of the more esoteric pop-culture references in show history.)

Let’s look at the issues and the opinions:

Promotion/relegation is something U.S. professional soccer …

  1. … really needs to do as soon as possible, and we shouldn’t take MLS seriously in the meantime.
  2. … should work toward in 10 years or so, and it would make us all feel a lot better about MLS if we knew it was in the future.
  3. … may be in position to consider in 10 years or so, but it really doesn’t affect how we feel about MLS at the moment.
  4. … can never consider. Ever.

Most people fall in the “2” or “3” category. But I think most of the online battles take place between the “1” and “3” groups, with the occasional rant from a “4” and some interjections from the “2” group.

The single-entity structure in MLS …

  1. … is proof that this is just a bunch of NFL owners trying to squeeze money out of a sport they don’t care about it, and it inhibits clubs from competing about anything.
  2. … is something the league may have needed in the first decade or so but needs to hurry up and dismantle.
  3. … is something from which the league has gradually moved away and should continue to do so by eliminating its vestigial restrictions on player movement.
  4. … (OK, honestly, I have no idea what the “4” group would be here.)

Again, the loudest group is “1.” You can have productive discussions between “2” and “3.”

Soccer fans in this country are as likely or more likely to watch European or Mexican soccer than MLS because …

  1. … MLS has single-entity and no pro/rel, which obviously makes all its players stink like an overflowing hog waste lagoon.
  2. … MLS isn’t quite doing enough to improve the quality of play. It can’t catch the EPL in the foreseeable future, but it needs to make a few strides.
  3. … these overseas leagues have generations of history and giant fan bases that allow them to spend freely on players and/or bring them up through well-established academy programs, and soccer is better entrenched in those countries as the top sport by far. (Which is not the case in, say, India, China, Australia, etc.)
  4. … they’re snobs who feel the need to differentiate themselves to feel superior to others. They used to be able to do that by being soccer fans in a country of baseball and gridiron fans, but now that the soccer fan base has grown, they have to be part of a more elite subset.

Again, I’m probably a “3,” but I see the “4” group’s point. And “2.”

People who watch MLS …

  1. … are ignorant tools who are content with mediocrity and don’t want anything better.
  2. … support the domestic league despite its faults, and it’d be great if they could also demand more change.
  3. … feel that the only way the league will improve will be if it’s stable and bringing in more money to invest in players and academies.
  4. … are patriotic Americans.

See the pattern? The “2” and “3” groups differ only in the details.

The NASL …

  1. … is the home of true American soccer because the commissioner says he wouldn’t mind seeing pro/rel at some point, and it’s only a matter of time before they start outbidding MLS on players (even though no one has shown much interest in doing that beyond the occasional fringe player).
  2. … is an interesting league that may provide just a bit of competition to keep MLS on its toes.
  3. … is a second division, no different from the old A-League (which actually did experiment with pro/rel but didn’t get very far), that is valuable because it put professional soccer in more cities and allows some owners to test the waters before moving to MLS.
  4. … has delusional fans.

“4” is certainly an extreme generalization. “1” is pretty ridiculous and doesn’t mesh with the way NASL teams are actually acting.

The U.S. soccer media …

  1. … is totally in the pocket of MLS and the USSF. Or scared to lose their credentials. Or just idiots. Nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah.
  2. … needs to take a harder look at what’s holding back MLS and U.S. Soccer.
  3. … are diverse and rapidly growing, from independent bloggers to mainstream media reporters who now have soccer as their primary beat (or only beat) rather than a secondary or tertiary thing … or even something they used to hide from editors.
  4. … are just great.

I don’t think “4” actually exists. “2” has valid points. “3” is absolutely correct. Just consider Sports Illustrated — a few years ago, Grant Wahl covered soccer and college basketball. Now he’s one of a handful of soccer specialists.

And finally, the most recent flare-up …

Jurgen Klinsmann’s fretting over U.S. players returning to MLS …

  1. … is right on! Go, Jurgen! And how dare Don Garber oppress him by disagreeing!
  2. … is a legitimate concern, perhaps inelegantly expressed but still valid.
  3. … misses the mark because the players in question found better situations in MLS than they had in Europe, and players should always seek out the best situation rather than simply assuming the top European leagues are better.
  4. … proves that he’s clueless. Fire Klinsmann!

To sum up … if you find yourself most often associated with one of these groups, you are …

  1. … a tinfoil-hat conspiracy theorist who is probably on my “block” list on Twitter.
  2. … reasonable. Perhaps easily offended from the occasional interaction with a “4,” but you can be talked back into a productive discussion on the issues.
  3. … too reasonable. Get over yourself and argue with the rest of us.
  4. … too cynical, having been through too many of these arguments.

The people who’ve been around the longest tend to be “4.” We’ve discussed a lot of these issues since the old days of the North American Soccer mailing list and the launch of MLS. And the “1” list dominated conversation for too long.

I think the “2” group is growing. They skew younger, asking legitimate questions about why MLS and U.S. Soccer are the way they are. Show them the answers, and they’ll understand but continue to seek ways to push everything toward Eurotopia.

The “3” group needs a nap.

One day, we may have pro/rel in this country, and we may see little difference between the way MLS operates and the way the Bundesliga operates. (My guess is that the Bundesliga will lead the way in pushing “Financial Fair Play” so that its teams don’t explode in spectacular fashion.) But if that happens, it won’t be because of someone unreasonably screamed for it on Twitter.

Milhouse: We gotta spread this stuff around. Let’s put it on the internet!

Bart: No! We have to reach people whose opinions actually matter!

That said, I think some good could come of talking through all these issues. MLS has a history of talking with and listening to its supporters. So if you’re for that, go ahead.

If you’re screaming at me, of all people, now four years removed from USA TODAY and with no major pro men’s soccer platform, I’m just going to block you. Life’s too short for all these wars.

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soccer

MLS, USA and Canada 2022: One vision

Posted on by Beau Dure

One vision of how professional soccer could look in eight years:

The 2022 MLS season kicked off with all 24 teams for the third straight season. The teams are divided into two conferences. Each team plays its conference rivals twice and then each team from the other conference once, for a total of 34 games.

The league is also in its third year under a new collective bargaining agreement. The 2020 edition replaced the salary “budget” (which most people called a “cap”) with a “luxury tax,” akin to what has been seen in Major League Baseball for years and was adopted by Germany’s Bundesliga in 2016. “Designated Players” still exist and are partially exempt from the salary accounting. If the team’s adjusted salary expenditures exceed $10 million, they pay into a revenue-sharing pool.

With MLS already ditching limits on free agency in the 2015 CBA, the league now operates under the same rules as the Bundesliga and several other European leagues. Mexico’s league, conversely, fell on hard times in 2017 when the broadcasting consortium carrying 12 of the 18 teams’ games broke apart.

The newer teams include SCSC Wanderers, the Southern California team that replaced Chivas USA in 2016. The New York Cosmos joined in 2017, having returned to the team’s traditional home of New Jersey by purchasing the former Red Bull Arena, now called PeleArena.

Without a doubt, the league’s biggest turnaround story was in Miami. The stadium was built near sea level and was quickly and permanently flooded by the rising Atlantic Ocean. An infusion of cash led to a clever reclamation of the land, and a desalinization plant hums quietly next to the stadium. Fans access the stadium via a colorful pontoon bridge that revitalized the rundown oceanfront. Real Salt Lake fans still tease Miami fans about borrowing the tune of their traditional song, but they respect the perseverance of fans who march to games singing, “If you believe, then you walk across the bridge …”

Miami and the NWSL benefited from the same generous sponsor — a former Stanford women’s soccer player who developed a combination vaccine for Ebola and all strains of the flu. She has set up global health nonprofits with much of her money but also bought a 50% share of Miami Mariners FC and set up a unique sponsorship endowment for the NWSL, which has 16 teams and high-rated weekly games on ESPN2. Portland Timbers/Thorns owner Merritt Paulson was so moved by her generosity that he paid to have all NWSL stadiums’ turf replaced with grass.

Back to the competitive aspects of MLS — MLS Cup is now contested solely by the winners of the East and West conferences. The other rounds of the playoffs were eliminated in 2018 as other Cup competitions took pre-eminence.

The early rounds of the U.S. Open Cup are now contested largely in the six-week break of the MLS and NASL seasons for the World Cup, Copa America or Gold Cup. Amateur and low-level professional teams play knockout games for the first three weeks, with many games broadcast as shoulder programming for the major international competitions. The NASL teams join in Week 4, then MLS teams in Week 5.

The top eight amateur teams in the Open Cup play a one-week tournament in mid-August for the revamped U.S. Amateur Cup. This is the only national amateur competition, as the PDL and NPSL — before they merged with the USASA in 2019 — realized they were cheating a lot of players out of playing time by cutting short the regular season to have national playoffs. College players are able to stay with their teams longer because the revamped fall/spring NCAA schedule starts in early September rather than late August.

Elite year-round amateur teams have joined low-level professional teams in USL regional leagues with promotion and relegation. The amateur teams are still eligible for the Amateur Cup, while the pro teams have a late-October national championship — the Peter Wilt Cup, named after the new FIFA president.

Canada, which oversaw the formation of three successful regional pro/am leagues in the late 2010s, has a similar system. U.S. women’s amateur competition is also similar.

The other important U.S. cup competition is the Disney Cup in February, drawing together the MLS Cup champion, the MLS Cup runner-up, the next-best MLS team, the NASL Soccer Bowl champion, the Peter Wilt Cup winner and the Open Cup winner. They play in three-team round-robin groups, with the winners advancing to the final and runners-up advancing to a third-place game. The top team that isn’t already qualified for the CONCACAF Champions League earns a berth in that competition.

Youth development took a major leap forward in 2018, when U.S. Soccer president Robb Heineman successfully lobbied FIFA to clarify its rules on transfer payments so that any U.S. youth club is due a transfer fee for the signing of any player. Wilt’s leadership helped pave the way for that much-needed change along with the re-awarding of the 2022 World Cup to Australia.

The Development Academy now includes women’s competition, and World Club Champion Lyon made headlines early in 2022 by paying an international-record $7 million transfer fee for Sky Blue Academy prospect Rylie Rampone. That fee helped to stabilize the finances at partner club NYCFC, which had been reeling when Manchester City’s ownership pulled back after the world’s oil ran out in 2020.

Within MLS, there is some movement toward promotion/relegation, with the biggest stumbling block being adequate compensation for those who have paid either the initial start-up costs of the league or paid expansion fees. The league is talking with its broadcast partners to pay enough to make such a system feasible and broadcast some lower-division games. But pro/rel talk also has split the NASL, which had to institute a formal salary cap after a group of oil magnates started a team in St. Louis and immediately spent twice as much on players as the rest of the league combined. That team folded when … well, again, the world ran out of oil.

So that’s one vision of soccer in the USA and Canada in 2022. If you disagree with any part of it, of course, you’re a corrupt individual with no imagination. (Inside joke.)

In any case, the comments should be fun. Have at it.

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MLS academies, the next Messi and single-entity fixation

Posted on by Beau Dure

Only in America can a discussion on developing soccer players be riddled with phrases like “corporate initiative-driven opinion,” “single-entity, closed league,” “misleading marketing machine” and “underwear modeling initiatives.”

There’s also a haughty dismissal of MLS’s pride in its academies. “Leagues (emphasis mine) do not produce players, clubs and coaches produce players.” Then writer Jon Townsend goes on to extol the virtue of Germany’s federation-driven model. So leagues don’t produce players, but federations do? I don’t understand — is MLS commissioner Don Garber running the Sounders’ U16 training sessions?

Tying single entity, not to mention the lack of pro/rel in MLS, to youth development doesn’t make a lot of sense. In practice, single entity as it currently exists in MLS is little more than a legal term. The last vestiges of the 1996 days of Sunil Gulati assigning players to teams are a salary restraint with a lot of loopholes and a cumbersome method of compensating teams with bargaining chips to ensure parity.

Let’s see how the business structure makes MLS different. Given the fact that salaries are limited but academy spending is not, wouldn’t a club be more inclined to spend money on the academies to get a competitive edge?

Youth development questions are tricky. England is now in, what, its third decade of hand-wringing over why it doesn’t produce any more Gazzas and Beckhams, much less any Charltons and Matthewses?

You’re not going to solve them all at the league level. And you’re not going to get a Messi through sheer force of will and spending. But neither does it help to sneer at the efforts — which previous first-division U.S. leagues did NOT make — to focus on youth development. Maybe we’ll at least get a few more Yedlins, Hamids and Najars.

MLS offers plenty of ammunition for critics (get the CBA done before December, and just allow outright free agency, OK?). So does U.S. youth development (let’s have five national championships!). The intersection of the two, though is generally a good thing. And let’s not pretend the league structure has any more to do with youth development than the befuddling new MLS logo. After all, clubs and coaches develop players, not leagues.

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U.S. Open Cup: Top 14 teams and upset history

Posted on by Beau Dure

Through May 23, 2014, lower-division teams have beaten MLS teams 66 times. (MLS teams have won 160.) And based on a whole lot of spreadsheets, we can declare one particular lower-division team the most accomplished team in the Open Cup.

The PDL is 38-87 against non-MLS pro leagues. But other amateur leagues are less successful against D2 and D3: 10-72.

For purposes of these upset lists, I haven’t separated D2 from D3. To my surprise, D2 (A-League/USL-1/USSF D-2/NASL) is 38-12 against D3 (D3 Pro/USL-2/USL Pro) since 1997. But the difference today is debatable. The Cup gives us scant evidence: Since 2010, when USSF D-2 split from the USL, D2 and D3 are 3-3 against each other. But against MLS teams, NASL teams (6-9, 40%) are more successful than USL Pro teams (9-21, 30%).

That’s assuming I didn’t miss anything in copying and pasting all the results from 1996 to 2014 from TheCup.us, cleaning up the data for easy sorting and searching, writing formulas to take each league name into account, etc.

Here is, to the best of my knowledge and spreadsheeting ability, a list of every U.S. Open Cup upset since MLS teams joined in 1996:

[gview file=”https://duresport.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/u-s-open-cup-history-formatted.pdf”%5D

As with the FA Cup, once a top-tier team gets to the later rounds, it gets a bit more serious about the competition. That shows when we look at the quarterfinalists and semifinalists:

[gview file=”https://duresport.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/u-s-open-cup-history-rounds.pdf”%5D

In typical soccer fashion, I’m going to take a whole bunch of data and then make a subjective judgment. I added up all the wins and all the runs, then ranked each team’s accomplishments based on how much they overachieved. In other words, a PDL team beating a couple of pro teams is roughly equivalent to an MLS team reaching the final.

Here goes, in reverse order:

14. Carolina RailHawks (USL-1/USSF D-2/NASL): 13 wins in seven years (through 2013). 1-time semifinalist. 4 wins over MLS teams.

  • 2007 (USL-1): Semifinalist. Beat Chicago Fire.
  • 2012 (NASL): Beat Los Angeles.
  • 2013 (NASL): Quarterfinalist. Beat Los Angeles and Chivas USA.

13. Columbus Crew (MLS): 19 wins, 1 Cup, 2-time runner-up, 1-time semifinalist.

  • 1998: Runner-up
  • 1999: Semifinalist
  • 2002: Champion
  • 2010: Runner-up

12. Kansas City Wizards / Sporting Kansas City (MLS): 18 wins, 2 Cups, 1-time semifinalist.

  • 2002: Semifinalist
  • 2004: Champion
  • 2012: Champion

11. Harrisburg City Islanders (USL-2/USL Pro): 15 wins, 5 over MLS teams.

  • 2007: Quarterfinalist. Beat D.C. United.
  • 2009: Quarterfinalist. Beat New England (away).
  • 2010: Quarterfinalist. Beat New York Red Bulls.
  • 2012: Quarterfinalist. Beat New England and New York Red Bulls.

10. Wilmington Hammerheads (PSL/USL-2/USL Pro): 15 wins, 2 over MLS teams.

  • 2003 (USL Pro): Quarterfinalist. Beat Atlanta Silverbacks  (A-League) 2-1, beat Dallas Burn (MLS) 4-1.
  • 2006: Round of 16, again beating Atlanta 2-1.
  • 2009 (USL-2): Quarterfinalist, beat Carolina RailHawks (USL-1) on PKs after 3-3 tie, beat Chicago Fire (MLS) 1-0

9. Mid-Michigan Bucks / Michigan Bucks (PDL): 12 wins. Two wins over MLS teams; total of nine wins over pro teams.

  • 1997: Beat Wilmington Hammerheads (D3 Pro) 3-2 away.
  • 1999: Beat Austin Lone Stars (D3 Pro) 3-2; beat Minnesota Thunder (A-League) 2-1 away.
  • 2000: Beat New England Revolution (MLS) 1-0 away. Lost to Miami Fusion (MLS) on PKs.
  • 2003: Beat Long Island Rough Riders (PSL) 2-1.
  • 2006: Beat Pittsburgh Riverhounds (USL-2) 2-0; beat Cincinnati Kings (USL-2) 2-1.
  • 2012: Beat Pittsburgh Riverhounds (USL Pro) 1-0 away; beat Chicago Fire (MLS) 3-2 after extra time.

8. Richmond Kickers (USL top leagues/USL-2/USL Pro): 22 wins. Champions in 1995, the first year of the pro era and the year before MLS launched. 1-time semifinalist.

  • 2000 (A-League): Beat Colorado Rapids.
  • 2001 (A-League): Quarterfinalist
  • 2004 (A-League): Quarterfinalist. Beat D.C. United.
  • 2007 (USL-2): Quarterfinalist. Beat Los Angeles.
  • 2011 (USL-2): Semifinalist. Beat Columbus and Sporting Kansas City.

7. Dallas Burn / FC Dallas (MLS): 27 wins, 1 Cup, 2-time runner-up, 4-time semifinalist.

  • 1996: Semifinalist
  • 1997: Champion
  • 1998: Semifinalist
  • 2002: Semifinalist
  • 2005: Runner-up
  • 2007: Runner-up
  • 2011: Semifinalist

6. Los Angeles Galaxy (MLS): 23 wins, 2 Cups, 2-time runner-up, 2-time semifinalist.

  • 2000: Semifinalist
  • 2001: Champion
  • 2002: Runner-up. Also won MLS Cup.
  • 2003: Semifinalist
  • 2005: Champion. Also won MLS Cup.
  • 2006: Runner-up

5. Charleston Battery (USL top leagues/USL-2/USL Pro): 29 wins, 1-time runner-up, 2-time semifinalist.

  • 1999 (A-League): Semifinalist.
  • 2004 (A-League): Semifinalist. Upset MetroStars (MLS) in round of 16, beat Rochester (A-League) in quarterfinals. Fell to Chicago (MLS) in extra time, just missing the final.
  • 2007 (USL-1): Quarterfinalist.
  • 2008 (USL-1): Finalist.
  • 2009 (USL-1): Quarterfinalist.
  • 2010 (USL-2): Quarterfinalist.

4. D.C. United (MLS): 32 wins, 3 Cups, 2-time runner-up, 4-time semifinalist.

  • 1996: Champion. Also won MLS Cup.
  • 1997: Runner-up. Also won MLS Cup and Supporters’ Shield.
  • 2001: Semifinalist
  • 2003: Semifinalist
  • 2006: Semifinalist. Also won Supporters’ Shield.
  • 2008: Champion
  • 2009: Runner-up
  • 2010: Semifinalist
  • 2013: Champion. Had worst record in MLS.

3. Seattle Sounders (A-League/USL-1/MLS): 30 wins, 3 straight Cups, 1-time runner-up, 2-time semifinalist.

We’ll treat the A-League/USL Sounders and the MLS Sounders as one entity here, mostly because the club’s commitment to the Open Cup never wavered.

  • 1996 (A-League): Quarterfinalist
  • 2003 (A-League): Quarterfinalist
  • 2007 (USL-1): Semifinalist
  • 2008 (USL-1): Semifinalist
  • 2009 (MLS): Champion
  • 2010 (MLS): Champion
  • 2011 (MLS): Champion
  • 2012 (MLS): Runner-up

2. Chicago Fire (MLS): 34 wins, 4 Cups, 2-time runner-up, 3-time semifinalist.

  • 1998: Champion. Also won MLS Cup. Club’s first season.
  • 2000: Champion. Also lost MLS Cup final.
  • 2001: Semifinalist
  • 2003: Champion. Also won Supporters’ Shield, lost MLS Cup final.
  • 2004: Runner-up
  • 2005: Semifinalist
  • 2006: Champion
  • 2011: Runner-up

1. Rochester Rhinos (A-League/USL-1/USL Pro): 33 wins, 1 Cup, 1-time runner-up, 1-time semifinalist.

  • 1996 (A-League): Runner-up. Upset Tampa Bay Mutiny in extra time (quarterfinals), upset Colorado Rapids 3-0, lost final to D.C. United.
  • 1999 (A-League): Champion. Four straight wins over MLS teams. 1-0 over Chicago Fire, 2-1 (ET) over Dallas Burn, 3-2 over Columbus Crew and 2-0 over Colorado Rapids.
  • 2004 (A-League): Quarterfinalist
  • 2005 (A-League): Quarterfinalist
  • 2009 (USL-1): Semifinalist

NOTEWORTHY RUNS/HONORABLE MENTION

1997: San Francisco Bay Seals (D3) beat two MLS teams (Kansas City Wizards, San Jose Clash) to reach semifinals.

2003: Fresno Fuego (PDL) beat Utah Blitzz (PSL) and El Paso Patriots (A-League) to reach  round of 16, losing to LA Galaxy in quarterfinals. Came back in 2014 with win over Orange County Blues (USL Pro).

2005: Minnesota Thunder (A-League) beat PDL’s Chicago Fire Premier, won a wild 6-4 game in extra time over Real Salt Lake, then beat the Colorado Rapids and Kansas City Wizards (away) to reach semifinals. The year before, the Thunder beat the Los Angeles Galaxy. That’s four wins over MLS teams.

2006: Dallas Roma FC (USASA) beat PDL’s Laredo Heat on PKs, then USL-1’s Miami FC 1-0, then Chivas USA on PKs, falling in fourth round.

2006: Carolina Dynamo (PDL) beat two pro teams: Richmond Kickers (USL-2) in second round, Seattle Sounders (USL-1) in third, setting up Dynamo-Dynamo matchup vs. Houston. As a pro team, reached quarterfinals in 1996.

2007: New England Revolution (MLS) made a rare run in the Cup and won it all. Next best runs: final in 2001, semifinal in 2008.

2012: Cal FC (USASA) beat Wilmington Hammerheads (USL Pro) 4-0 away and Portland Timbers (MLS) 1-0 away.

TEAMS WITH 10 OR MORE WINS

34 Chicago Fire (2nd in the ranking above)
33 Rochester Rhinos (1st)
32 DC United (4th)
30 Seattle Sounders (3rd)
29 Charleston Battery (5th)
27 Dallas Burn / FC Dallas (7th)
23 Los Angeles Galaxy (6th)
22 Richmond Kickers (8th)
19 Columbus Crew (13th)
18 Kansas City Wizards / Sporting KC (12th)
16 MetroStars / New York Red Bulls
15 Harrisburg City Islanders (11th)
15 Wilmington Hammerheads (10th)
14 New England Revolution
13 Carolina RailHawks (14th)
12 Mid-Michigan Bucks / Michigan Bucks (9th)
12 Minnesota Thunder
12 San Jose Clash / Earthquakes
11 Carolina Dynamo
11 Des Moines Menace
10 Charlotte Eagles
10 Portland Timbers

Corrections? Comments? Commiseration for staring at spreadsheets for so long? Share below.

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MLS and single entity: I don’t think it means what you think it means

Posted on by Beau Dure

This post is going to start with an academic question and veer into the approaching collective bargaining abyss.

Major League Soccer is a “single entity” league. So what does that mean?

For lawyers, it’s an intriguing concept, and the lawsuit challenging it might come up in a local law school class. For the league’s detractors, it means MLS isn’t authentic competition.

But does it mean the same thing today that it meant in 1996, when the league started and Sunil Gulati was parceling out players, or 2002, when the league was down to three owners?

The original allocation of players was absolutely top-down. You get John Harkes. You get Tab Ramos. You get this guy who’ll be a bust, so we’ll figure out how to get you another guy.

The allocation structure has evolved into something much more complicated. It’s like having chips you can cash in or trade for talent that’s more experienced than a draftee but less sought-after than a Designated Player.

So MLS has a byzantine collection of roster rules, and it still seems like the big clubs have an advantage. Sounds like every other league, doesn’t it?

The NFL has a salary cap, but the Washington Redskins always manage to outspend people. (Fortunately for the competition, they spend poorly.) The NBA has a cap with plentiful exceptions and exemptions. Even the “open market” Major League Baseball has some quirks — MLS has the Re-Entry Draft, and MLB has the Rule V Draft.

Soccer leagues also have some top-down requirements. Transfer windows. Financial Fair Play, though that seems to have as many loopholes as the NFL salary cap. Revenue sharing on big TV deals. Parachute payments for relegated clubs.

So what makes MLS “single entity” any different from any other league from a competitive standpoint?

You can’t say “it limits investment.” MLS teams have done little but invest over the past decades. New stadiums. New training grounds. Youth academies.

Conversely, here’s what Stefan Szymanski (who’s currently discussing MLS’s future in a way that drew the wrath of Dan Loney) and Andrew Zimbalist said about England in their book, National Pastime (page 6):

(B)ecause competition between teams is so intense, and a club’s tenure in the top flight is so uncertain, the clubs themselves are often reluctant to invest their own money. This can lead to a problem of facility underinvestment, with often tragic consequences.

The authors go on to name the worst two tragedies in English soccer — the fire in the Bradford stands that claimed 56 lives and the Hillsborough disaster. Something needed to change, and in this case, the government stepped in.

Other laissez-faire leagues haven’t fared well recently. Women’s Professional Soccer had a light touch to begin with, then scaled back its central office to the bare minimum needed to run the league. Like weeds in a barren lawn, dysfunction quickly crept in and took over.

So if you’re looking for a professional sports league without some sort of top-down interference with the “authenticity” of competition, you’re going to be disappointed. MLS may have more rules than many, but the blanket “single entity” accusation doesn’t hold a lot of water.

Specific roster rules? Oh, we can argue about those all we want. And with the collective bargaining agreement in its final year, it’s time.

Let’s start with the Re-Entry Draft, a clever concoction that helped seal the last CBA and was then tested in real life by Jimmy Conrad, one of the union reps who pushed for it. Looking back, we’ll always be grateful that it fit everyone’s needs at the time so we could avoid a labor stoppage. But is it necessary now? If teams are bidding against each other for players at the top end of the pay scale, do we need any artificial limits to free agency for those players who are commanding the smaller bucks?

But the league’s biggest challenges must be met collectively.

In a lot of leagues, teams compete only against each other. MLS is trying to compete in a global marketplace. Improving the quality of play is Topic A. (Improving the quality of broadcasts is another issue, with NBC Sports Network raising the bar through its terrific work with the Premier League AND Major League Soccer.) Salaries have gone up from a $1.9 million cap a decade ago to an average of over $5 million per team now — progress, but there’s always room to make the game a bit better, either through more spending or other initiatives.

So as we head into collective bargaining — which actually is unique to the USA — perhaps the “single entity” can roar one more time.

(Or perhaps a couple of coaches quit prepping their teams to play with the negativity of a North Carolina Senate race. Just saying.)

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soccer

MLS history books: The next generation

Posted on by Beau Dure

When I wrote Long-Range Goals, I said the following: “If this is the only MLS book on a bookstore shelf in 2011, that’s disappointing.”

Not sure about your local bookstore, but mine doesn’t even stock Long-Range Goals. The “soccer” section is usually a collection of dubious books on European stars, a few how-to-coach books ranging from mildly helpful to dangerously flimsy, and possibly something on Mia Hamm. Of course, I don’t venture into bookstores that often because (A) I’ve embraced my Kindle and (B) the front displays are always best-selling political punditry written with neither any discernible effort or concern for anyone outside a narrow agenda. But I digress …

Thankfully, we do have some more entries in the MLS history genre. The new effort is Sounders FC: AUTHENTIC MASTERPIECE: The Inside Story Of The Best Franchise Launch In American Sports History by Seattle broadcaster Mike Gastineau. When I saw the press releases for that one, I figured I should finally get around to checking out an older entry in the genre, Steve Sirk’s A Massive Season, the chronicle of the Columbus Crew’s 2008 championship season.

And I owe Sirk several apologies. He’s one of the good guys in soccer media, and I should’ve gotten to this book much sooner. Also, I somehow created exactly the same book cover for Enduring Spirit that he used for A Massive Season. Same template, same modifications to the template. Different photo, of course, and different primary color. Everything else was the same.

I was intimidated away from reading A Massive Season by its massive size. It’s more than 450 pages. If you took two copies on a plane, you’d probably be charged for an overweight bag.

But it’s an easy, fun read — or skim, if you prefer to read a few sections of the season. It’s a collection of Sirk’s witty and informative notebooks on the team, supplemented and annotated after the season. One of the entries written after the fact is compelling — it’s the story of the Crew’s plane encountering powerful turbulence and aborting a landing, leaving even the hardened travelers on the plane in a quivering mix of nerves and nausea.

(Eerie coincidence: The one time I’ve ever been on a plane that aborted a landing, it was a small plane similar to the one the Crew was on, and I was traveling back from Columbus after covering the USA-Mexico game in 2009. Winds were extreme all over the East Coast, and a Colgan Air plane crashed that night near Buffalo (though the investigation attributed the causes to pilot error and ice). I was on that plane with the ESPN commentary crew of JP Dellacamera and John Harkes. JP was astoundingly calm. John and I were both a bit more rattled. John did mention that he had seen worse when the USA’s plane landed in Central America despite a warning to divert elsewhere. We bumped into each other again while waiting for parking lot shuttles. He mentioned what a rough ride it had been. I quipped: “Really? I didn’t notice.” He was stunned for a moment before I said I was kidding — I don’t think I’ve ever been so terrified.)

Sirk gets terrific details from those who were on the plane. Before the situation got too serious, players joked with devout Christian Eddie Gaven to put in a good word for everyone else when they all ventured to the pearly gates in a few minutes. The Trillium Cup (Columbus-Toronto rivalry) wasn’t on the plane — players joked later that the lack of such a heavy trophy may have saved their lives.

Throughout Sirk’s notebooks, he benefits from being inside the locker room (an option we women’s soccer writers don’t have) to catch the teasing and bonding within the squad. Frankie Hejduk is every bit the colorful character you’d expect him to be. Danny O’Rourke is like a hockey enforcer — snarling pit bull on the field, good-hearted fun-loving guy off it.

The whole of the book will appeal more to a hard-core Crew fan than it will to a casual MLS fan. Nothing wrong with that. Every championship season deserves its retrospectives and celebratory words. Maybe we could collect edited versions to celebrate the league’s first 20 champions … hmmm … new book idea …

Gastineau has no MLS champion to celebrate just yet. And the hyperbolic title does the book no favors. Given the reputation of Seattle fans (some, of course, not all) to pull attitudes in online discussions with people who’ve been supporting MLS through some dark years, it’s easy to imagine people outside the Northwest scoffing at the title and studiously avoiding any mention of it.

And that’s a shame, because the book is better than its title. Sure, it’s very friendly to the Sounders. But it rarely makes its point at the expense of other teams. This isn’t the ranting of some Internet braggart who doesn’t realize MLS teams have had supporters groups and tifo all along.

A better title might have been Sounders FC: The Perfect Storm — except that the “Seattle Storm” name is already in use elsewhere. The Sounders didn’t create the atmosphere they have through some innate superiority of Seattle fans. It came about through having the right people in the right place at the right time.

– A USL owner and soccer fanatic who had taught himself how to run a team effectively
and efficiently. (Adrian Hanauer)

– A movie mogul who really wanted to own a soccer team. (Joe Roth)

– An entertainer whose idea of a good time was to drop him to a soccer bar and pick up
the tab. (Drew Carey)

– An NFL team (Seahawks) with a civic-minded owner (Paul Allen) and some soccer fans
(Gary Wright) lurking in the administration.

– A convoluted history of stadium deals that left Seattle with a stadium that had been
built with the promise (and field dimensions) of soccer as well as football.

The book’s chapters aren’t linear. They tell stories of different aspects of the team’s construction. The reader also meets Sigi Schmid and Kasey Keller.

And we learn a few fun behind-the-scenes stories. Why didn’t the Sounders release doves at their first game as they had originally planned? Because they wisely did a dress rehearsal the week before. That’s when they discovered that the hawks around the stadium were rather aggressive. And so the first home game in Sounders MLS history was not spoiled by dead birds.

These are the fun stories that should be part of MLS lore. Without these books, we’d lose all that. So even if you’re not a fan of Seattle or Columbus, raise a glass to Sirk and Gastineau for the work they’ve done.

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Quick retort to the English hand-wringing over Jermain Defoe

Posted on by Beau Dure

Just a few random facts:

– The USA advanced to the 2002 World Cup quarterfinals with a lot of MLS players. Landon Donovan and Brian McBride scored two goals each.

– The USA drew Italy 1-1 in the 2006 World Cup with a lot of MLS players. Only Ghana’s gamesmanship and some ill-timed injuries and loss of form (among the Euro contingent) kept that team from advancing further.

– The USA and England were in the same group in 2010. Remember who won that group? Fewer U.S. players that year were in MLS at the time, but many had spent several years in our little league.

– Other countries that have featured MLS players at the World Cup: Mexico, Trinidad and Tobago, Costa Rica, Honduras, New Zealand.

– MLS players in Euro tournaments: Robbie Keane, Lothar Matthaeus, Roberto Donadoni, Miklos Molnar.

– David Beckham kept going on loan and proving he could still play through the first couple of years of his MLS career. He had already declined from his peak years, yet after several years in the USA, he was still a sought-after player at an advanced age.

– MLS is indeed a physical league. So is the Premier League. You know, we get to watch that on TV here. Rebecca Lowe is our host, and you can’t have her back.

– Some players thrive in different environments. New Zealanders Ryan Nelsen and Simon Elliott looked like better players in England than they were in MLS. Brek Shea is apparently the opposite.

– The 2002 World Cup was overrun by players from unfashionable leagues and clubs. Turkey and South Korea reached the semifinals. The chaotic Brazilian leagues supplied much of the Brazilian team that reached the final (beating England along the way).

– Uruguay (semifinals) and Paraguay (quarterfinals) fared quite well at the 2010 World Cup with only a handful of players at big clubs.

– Who do you think is going to get better service at his current club — Jermain Defoe or Jozy Altidore?

I love you, England, but when will your writers drop the provincialism?

Yes, we know Toronto isn’t the best club in MLS. At least Thierry Henry and Robbie Keane are surrounded by decent players on clubs that have some recent successes.

But here’s the funny thing: In a league built for parity (something Premier League folks can’t possibly understand), teams routinely move from the bottom to the top. Or vice versa. The margin for error is thin; the potential rewards for making just the right offseason moves are immense.

Taking Toronto to the top will be a challenge. But don’t you want your players to be challenged?

If nothing else — look, England plays Costa Rica in Group D this summer. MLS has Costa Rican players, and their best clubs face MLS teams in CONCACAF play all the time. You’re getting a free scouting report. Enjoy.

And if you’re that worried — OK, we’ll let you keep Clint Dempsey.

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soccer

D.C. United has lost the plot

Posted on by Beau Dure

This is the first year I’ve been a Northern Virginia resident and attended no D.C. United games. It wasn’t anything personal — there’s no reason for me to be in the pressbox any more, and the Spirit and youth soccer took up so much of my time that I had little left over. But I would’ve gone to the season finale if not for a conflict.

I did attend an open practice for area youth coaches, and I was impressed with Ben Olsen. He had a good sense of humor about his situation, and he gave engaging explanations of what they were trying to do in practice. (I don’t think he recognized the guy who wrote a USA TODAY feature about him and interviewed him for an MLS book, but that’s OK. I’ve been keeping a low profile.)

The interesting part about seguing from “sportswriter in the pressbox each week” to “local youth soccer dad and prospective ticket-buyer” is that I see the sales operations. A lot. They come out to our coaches’ meetings with special offers. They call me and ask how I’m doing and if I want to come back out to a game sometime. (I turn around and ask if they’ve read my book, but I always have good conversations with them.)

D.C. United has a lot going for it. The youth programs are on solid ground, and they’re actually producing pro players. They’re well-established in the community, so much so that they may actually be able to pull off this massive land-swap thing to get a real stadium built in Washington, where the regional politics are about as easy to navigate as the asteroid field in The Empire Strikes Back. They have a terrific sponsor in Volkswagen.

The only problem is the team. It’s not very good.

And though it’d be nice to get Chris Pontius to stay healthy for a while, this isn’t a mere stretch of bad luck. It’s a solid decade of really bad personnel moves.

The team has responded with a lot of front office changes. Today, they made more.

So they finally got rid of the people in charge of the roster? Nope. Doug Hicks, one of the most respected communications and marketing people in the business. Aprile Pritchet, a D.C. United office mainstay who worked on community relations. And Sarah Lerner in communications.

Let’s make one thing clear. The fan base does seem alienated. But they weren’t alienated by Hicks, Pritchet and Lerner. They were alienated by Franco Niell, Gonzalo Martinez, Gonzalo Peralta, Jose Carvallo, Ange N’Silu, Danny Allsopp, Cristian Castillo and scores of others players who have floated through RFK Stadium in the past six years. (In some cases, the players were OK but were misfits — Hamdi Salihi isn’t bad at all, and Steve Guppy was perversely wasted on the wing banging crosses into tiny “target” forwards.)

D.C. United’s leading scorer this season? Three players tied with three goals each. Little wonder the club finished at 3-24-7.

Ben Olsen has a legitimate case to stay on as coach. He somehow got this gaggle of secondhand parts to win the U.S. Open Cup.

But the club is firing people who built the D.C. United brand while keeping those who have failed to build a competent team? That’s supposed to bring back fans to make the stands bounce for the remaining years at RFK?

How?

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The NASL and the periodic restatement of facts on promotion/relegation

Posted on by Beau Dure

prorelHow did a three-part Empire of Soccer interview with NASL Commissioner Bill Peterson start an epic Twitter beatdown?

Well, it helped that in the first part, he talked about promotion/relegation, the concept that governs most soccer leagues (and other leagues) worldwide, including a lot of U.S. amateur leagues. (I still don’t know whether my indoor team was relegated last season.)

Dan Loney responded with the blog post “Not a Sane League.” That brought out the usual mix of people with an interest in promotion/relegation — some well-intended dreamers who are curious to see if it could work here, plus the people who think promotion/relegation has been kept down by an evil mix of MLS executives, journalists paid off with access or possibly money, and possibly the NSA. I don’t know — I’ve lost track.

That led to the epic Twitter match between Loney and the leader of the accusatory gang. It was mostly off-track, centering on the assertion that the U.S. soccer community has covered up a colorful history in which the old ASL was bigger than American football. Loney showed evidence to show otherwise and demanded that his combatant defend his point, which he completely failed to do.

All of this demonstrates two seemingly contradictory things:

1. There are a handful of somewhat reasonable and capitalized people who think promotion/relegation may be possible in our lifetimes.

2. The people who make the most noise about promotion/relegation online make it really difficult to have a reasonable discussion about it.

For those who are new to the discussion, welcome. Please allow me to bring you up to speed. Read this post for some prior talks, and then please consider the following:

1. Bids for Division I sanctioning were taken in 1993. I have done a fair amount of research on this period for my book and out of curiosity. I know of no effort to have promotion/relegation at that time.

I do, however, know of a bid that had multiple-point scoring like indoor soccer on steroids, and it would have limited players to specific zones and then shuffle them around between periods. This is where soccer stood in the USA in 1993.

2. MLS owners have sunk billions of dollars into this league as it stands now. Municipalities have helped MLS teams build stadiums. The team values and revenue projections that convinced them all to invest in this are predicated on the notion of being in the first division. Many of these investments have been made in the past 10 years — in 2002, the league was down to three owners and had few facilities. People tend to get angry, maybe even litigious, when you get them to pony up tons of capital and then change the rules.

So if you plan to take over USSF and force leagues to have promotion/relegation, bring the lawyers.

3. I have spoken with many team owners and officials in lower divisions. Many of them have relegated themselves. Many owners prefer to play in the fourth-tier PDL than the third-tier USL PRO or second-tier NASL. Why? It costs a whole lot less.

A couple of organizations — Seattle, Portland, Vancouver, Montreal, perhaps Orlando down the road — have made the leap from lower divisions to MLS. They did so over the course of a few years. They brought in owners with deep pockets. They worked out stadium deals. They built up a front office staff. These are not things you do in three months.

4. Promotion/relegation developed in other countries when they had too many teams for one division. In England, the Football League went through its early years occasionally kicking out and adding a new team or two, but a second division wasn’t added until it merged with the Football Alliance. In England and many other countries, leagues developed after clubs had already built their names through Cup competitions.

5. Soccer history in this country has not been ignored as part of a conspiracy to … um … I don’t know exactly how this conspiracy is supposed to work. Seems to have something to do with trying to make people think nothing existed before MLS. Strange argument to make when a bunch of MLS teams are named after their NASL predecessors, or when U.S. Soccer is devoting a lot of resources toward celebrating its centennial this year. (Bill Clinton wrote the preface to the book, so if you like broadening your conspiracy theories, you can now include Whitewater.) Personally, the only reason I don’t often wear my Fall River Marksmen shirt (from Bumpy Pitch) more often is that I’m fat and I don’t fit into it that well.

Several people have made extraordinary efforts to keep U.S. soccer history alive through many dark decades. It’s not as if the NASL of the 70s paid tribute to the ASL of the 20s and 30s. We needed the efforts of Colin Jose, Roger Allaway, Sam Foulds, Jack Huckel, David Litterer and David Wangerin to bring it all to life, even as the National Soccer Hall of Fame ran out of money. (This was all summed up in a terrific story this week.)

The main lesson that can be drawn from those histories: Soccer has had a couple of opportunities to gain a firm foothold in the USA, and it fell apart through in-fighting over petty crap. Kind of like we could end up doing now if we try to upend 20 years of progress in pro soccer.

6. This might be the most important point: There is no evidence whatsoever that a lack of promotion/relegation is what’s holding back pro soccer in the United States.

The point gets muddied here because promotion/relegation is sometimes considered part of an “open system” in which clubs are free to spend what they want. That’s what we see in Europe, though “Financial Fair Play” rules may introduce some limits, and Germany’s Bundesliga is having tremendous success while refusing to break the bank.

But most soccer owners in the USA in recent years have set out to minimize risk. The NWSL, USL, NPSL, WPSL and APS are designed to keep costs down, and they’re not running the risk of losing revenue by being kicked down the pyramid against their will. That’s why MLS had such rigid cost-containment rules for its first decade and change. Only now, in the post-Beckham era, is that starting to change.

If you’re looking for the NASL to change all that, you may be disappointed. For all the bluster of the New York Cosmos and the lack of an official salary cap at the moment, they aren’t spending crazy money. I’ve been told by an insider (anonymous source alert, though maybe he’ll step forward) that the NASL is operating with “less risk, lower operating costs.”

Meanwhile, MLS is spending with confidence — on stadiums, on youth academies, on players like Clint Dempsey. And the league has managed to do so even as the explosion of cable and new media has made it possible for U.S. fans to see every English/Welsh Premier League game (I plan to make “Ew-pull” stick) and every trick Lionel Messi has at his feet.

Would an “open system” help U.S. (and Canadian) teams develop into superclubs that can hold their own with the Man Uniteds and the Barcelonas of the world? Maybe when MLS and NASL owners have seen enough returns on their investments that they’re willing to risk spending more and seeing their teams relegated. The best-case scenario for the NASL, which is probably not the most probable scenario, is that the league thrives to the point at which it, too, meets the criteria for a Division 1 league. And then — maybe — we could talk about merging MLS and the NASL as the Football League and Football Alliance did in England.

Is that likely? Probably not.

But it’s more likely than creating a thriving U.S. league system by taking over U.S. Soccer and starting an “open system” from scratch or trying to force existing leagues to abide by drastically different rules.

And by pointing this out, I’m part of the conspiracy. And I’ll surely attract obnoxious comments. I’d encourage people to ignore those comments and relish the fact that, this weekend, you can see European games on several networks and then check out your local MLS, NWSL, NASL or USL team. If you’re over age 25, you remember when soccer was something that barely existed above the college level, and you have to marvel at the progress.

Simply put: There’s never been a better time to be a soccer fan in North America. And it’s all been done without telling people who step up to risk their money that they need to take risks that are even less likely to pay off than the ones they’re already taking.

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20 alternatives to YSA

Posted on by Beau Dure

Dear MLS Supporters Group,

angryYou may be a little upset that your club is getting more aggressive in its efforts to keep you from chanting “YOU SUCK, ASSHOLE!” every time the opposing keeper takes a goal kick. The argument has been going on for years, but commissioner Don Garber ratcheted up the rhetoric over the last few months, and now the Red Bulls are offering to pay fans not to say it.

What started as a rather stupid drunken chant has evolved into an act of civil disobedience. “Garber can’t tell us what to do,” you might say. “We’re fans. He’s just worried because he negotiating the league’s next TV deals so the league doesn’t find itself without tens of millions of rights … oh … wait a minute …”

Yeah, you can raise any argument you like — the vulgarity, the lack of creativity, the anger from broadcast partners, etc. The bottom line is simple: YSA has got to go.

The good news: The English language offers many other four-syllable phrases. Not that you have to limit it to four — New England Revolution fans have told me they used “RELEASE THE KRAKEN” on occasion.

You may not be able to match the precise meter, with the emphasis on the second syllable and the last two as throwaways. In any case, it’s probably best to do a complete break instead of replacing it with a similar phrase like “YOU STINK, DUMBASS!”

But even if you limit yourself to four syllables, you’ll find no shortage of cheers to harass an opposing goalkeeper. You may even be able to tailor your cheers to specific occasions.

Here are some suggestions:

1. For all purposes, a shoutout to one of MLS’s best: “Ahhhhhh … YOU’RE NO HARTMAN!”

2. If the keeper has dreadlocks: “Ahhhhhh … YOU’RE NO COBI!”

3. When a keeper has a Jorge Campos-style shirt: “Ahhhhhh … PSYCHEDELIC!”

4. When you’re in a George Clinton mood: “Ahhhhhh … FUNKADELIC!”

5/6. If you want to distract the keeper with potential issues elsewhere: “Ahhhhhh … YOUR DOG HAS FLEAS!” or “Ahhhhhh … YOUR CAR’S ON FIRE!”

7. If you think the keeper’s taking too much time, or if you just want to pay tribute to a great Bull Durham scene: “Ahhhhhh … LOLLYGAGGER!”

8. If you want to make a political statement and think the trainers aren’t adequately responding to injuries: “Ahhhhhh … SINGLE-PAYER!”

9. If you want to pay tribute to the Seinfeld episode in which Mr. Costanza is looking for a calming phrase: “Ahhhhhh …HOOCHIE MAMA!”

10. Shakespeare shoutout: “Ahhhhhh … I BITE MY THUMB!”

11. If the keeper has ridiculous body art: “Ahhhhhh … NICE TATS, MORON!”

12. Keeper with obvious cosmetic surgery: “Ahhhhhh … YOUR NOSE IS FAKE!”

13. If you’re feeling particularly Anglophilic and the keeper is pudgy: “Ahhhhhh … YOU ATE THE PIES!”

14. Alternate version for Columbus: “Ahhhhhh … YOU ATE THE BRATS!”

15. If the keeper used to play for Manchester United: “Ahhhhhh … YOU ATE THE PRAWNS!”

16. For keepers who are inept on social media: “Ahhhhhh … YOUR TWITTER SUCKS!”

17. For a young keeper, though the reference may be lost on him: “Ahhhhhh … TEENAGE WASTELAND!”

18. For most keepers in the U.S. national team pool: “Ahhhhhh … YOUR HAIR IS GONE!”

19. Just to make keepers self-conscious: “Ahhhhhh … YOU HAVE BACK HAIR!”

20. And when the keepers’ legs are unencumbered: “Ahhhhhh … WHO WEARS SHORT SHORTS!”

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