Don Garber is in England, speaking with the creme de la creme of European football, "spreading the gospel" of the business side of American soccer. Garber's focus is financial restraint, cost control, and the glories of salary cap regulation.
I'll pause for a moment while you throw up. Go ahead, I don't mind. I've already gotten my hurling session out of the way.
The cross that American soccer fans bear, and specifically I mean the ones that look past the forced mediocrity that infects Major League Soccer, is the somehow suddenly trendy idea that the salary cap system would be a good idea for uber-rich leagues of soccer-mad Europe. It's almost like being a uncoordinated clutz and having your super-athletic older brother wonder if he might be better off being more like you. It just doesn't wash.
Yet there he is, our esteemed commissioner, standing in front of the leading lights of Europe while they listen intently to his brand of football socialism. I doubt many of them will completely heed the message, since all that money tends to cloud their ability to sense trouble, but he's there's nonetheless. You wonder how many are playing Tetris on their cell phones while The Soccer Don babbles about forcing MLS clubs to spend for their entire rosters what most top league sides spend on one or two teenagers a year.
Maybe some of them are even on Twitter, passing along their immediate reactions to Garber's message to their friends back home in Spain or Italy:
@calcio4ever You have to hear this crazy American talk! All the teams spend the same? Who ever heard of such a thing?
Europe has a problem. Clubs are waist deep and worse in debt, borrowing again and again to continue to finance the important business of winning trophies in the world's biggest game. It's not enough for many of them to simply be, to slot into a place in the pecking order that fits their locality, the size of their fan base, and quality of their academies. Bigger and better is always the order of the day, and when the revenues coming in from tickets, TV deals, and shirt sales don't equal the money going out the door to buy the hottest starlet and pay the elite names, debt piles up. For some, there's incredible pressure to live up to a distant history written when soccer was a different game; once a champion, they just can't imagine themselves sliding back into the pack.
It's not just about money, though that's what's top of mind for European club executives this week. It's also about the competition, or more appropriately, the lack of competition, that pervades the top leagues across the island of Britain and the Continent. If there's anything that the MLS model does well, it's ensure parity; every team has a shot at competing for the title in theory, because no team can seriously outdistance any other due to the salary restrictions they're working under.
Does that make MLS "fairer"? Don Garber seems to think so, and so does Jack Warner; the CONCACAF president believes a salary cap is the way to go in Europe, the better to enable smaller clubs to compete for titles for which they cannot currently compete.
So while many American soccer fans (I said many, not all-keep it in your pants Fake Sigi) are calling for a massive loosening of the belt on this side of the pond, our most important figures are Over There telling the world that they should be more like us. Ouch.
It's not that I have a problem with Garber telling others that the MLS way is good (it has its merits). It's not that I have problem with an American telling Europeans that "our" way is better (we've been doing that for years, so why would we stop now?). It's not even that I don't think Europeans need a bit of a reality check when it comes to their insane spending (they do). No, my problem with all of this, with the speech and the proclaiming the merits of the salary cap system and the backing from Jack Warner (vomit time again) and the fun trio to London is that Garber's presence validates the way MLS does business.
That's it. That's all I care about. Because now, instead of being pushed to at least review their model, to consider that change could be necessary, Garber and the MLS owners sit atop the moral high ground, able to point at Europe and say "See? They're the ones that have it wrong. We're stable and debt free, and things are just plain perfect the way they are."
Stubborn complacency. Not what MLS needs. If the league isn't moving forward, in all arenas including but not limited to its wage system, it's certain to get swallowed up by the American sports morass, left to wither and die. It won't be a giant flame out, ala NASL, but a slower and more painful descent into ultra-irrelevancy.
I draw no conclusions here, nor do I suggest any alternatives to the way that MLS currently governs its balance sheets; I'm still struggling to determine my own views on the salary cap question.
But there's got to be a middle ground, right? A happy medium between the over-commitment that some fear could doom the league and the barrel-scraping pauper's life that it current lives? I mean, Garber didn't take transatlantic flight to tell some of the world's most powerful soccer figures that their leagues should enforce mediocrity, did he?
Don: Two words to control costs, gentlemen. Salary cap.
Euro-execs: That's very nice, but we couldn't help notice that the quality of your league stinks.
Don: Well, yes, that's true. We don't do very well in international competitions, and many American fans turn their backs on us because the quality of play isn't that good. But we have a salary cap, so it's okay.
Euro-execs: You Americans are so weird.
