Does anyone really know what American club soccer is going to look like in 2010? Because after the news of the last two weeks, I’m starting to wonder.
For starters, we’re on the verge of having two competing 2nd-division leagues in this country next season. The Team Owners Association, a group of former USL clubs disgruntled with the structure of USL, made their big announcement on Tuesday that they were forming a breakaway league. The new league, which remains nameless for the time being, is slated to have seven clubs — Atlanta Silverbacks, Carolina Railhawks, Miami FC, Minnesota Thunder, Montreal Impact, Vancouver Whitecaps and St. Louis Soccer United.
Conspicuous by their absence: the Tampa Bay Rowdies. They had been siding with the TOA all through this saga, but they’re committed to USL for 2010 — probably because they had already signed contracts with and paid their expansion fee to USL and couldn’t afford to break the deal.
USL’s response to this new league? Well, it was awfully snippy. Down to 8 clubs in USL-1 and 8 in USL-2, USL seems a little eager to throw roadblocks at the TOA’s attempt to get the new league sanctioned by the U.S. Soccer Federation and Canadian Soccer Association. The league also puffed out its chest and talked about expansion in new markets, even though that talk has the stench of the National Indoor Football League about it.
Meanwhile, there’s already a monkey wrench in the TOA’s breakaway plans. Joey Saputo, the Montreal Impact owner who was named Chairman of the Board of Governors of this new unnamed league, insisted that the Impact was still in negotiations with USL over the 2010 season. Why would he even say this publicly? All this did was undermine the TOA’s position and made it more difficult for them to attract the 8th club they might need to get sanctioning — or to lure clubs to their side in 2011, which could be the real battle between USL and the TOA.
The only good thing about this breakaway league? It won’t be a winter league. All the talk about American soccer adopting the FIFA calendar is still a non-starter — especially with a league that’s never played before. We have our own soccer calendar. So does Russia, and they’re doing just fine playing in the summer.
But this is all in the lower divisions, right? We’ll still have our Major League Soccer in 2010, won’t we?
Maybe.
The MLS Collective Bargaining Agreement expires on January 31, and the Players Association, upset with the current minimum salaries and lack of guaranteed contracts, is threatening to strike. Both sides are at the negotiating table now, but MLS has already rejected the players’ first proposal and seems ready to dig in its heels and keep things just as they are, thank you very much.
I wonder if these negotiations will end up being a referendum on the structure of MLS itself. Players contracts are owned by the league and not the clubs, who still don’t control their own destiny within MLS’ arcane regulations, and these negotiations don’t look like they’re going to change that.
Even worse, though, is whether the public will even care if MLS doesn’t return next March. Outside of the clubs’ hardcore supporters, few seem aware that the MLS playoffs are happening right now, and that the league’s three most marketable names — Beckham, Blanco and Donovan — are in the thick of it. SportsCenter has made no mention of the MLS playoffs at all this morning.
In light of that, is it really a good idea for MLS to allow a strike to happen? It’s not like there’s no competition. Premier League ratings don’t suck for ESPN or Fox Soccer Channel right now, and the level of play remains much higher in Europe than it is here. Wouldn’t most soccer fans in this country just focus on the national team and the European leagues and forget about MLS if it’s not there?
The next four months or so could go a long way toward determining the future of American club soccer, and it would only take a few missteps for the whole thing to come crashing down, leaving this country back at square one, which would be a disaster. Let’s just hope the folks running the shows here do the right thing. We won’t be any better off if our clubs don’t play next year.
