by Adam Soucie - Captain Positive
On Tuesday there was a lot of noise about how MLS is mistreating its players by denying them the basic rights of athletes. While the criticism is warranted, the reactionary statements are starting to get out of hand. What everyone's forgetting is that MLS isn't in as good of shape as Don Garber would have us believe. Some teams in MLS have yet to reach the break-even point financially. Four teams have yet to sign a jersey sponsor. The league's flagship franchise (historically), DC United, still pays rent on a stadium where they are the only reason it isn't being torn down and can't get the local government to agree to a new stadium plan.
Soccer, whether we want to admit it or not, is still very much a fringe sport in America. Sure, it's on the cusp of exploding, but it hasn't happened yet. Rather than storming the gates of Garber's office demanding broad sweeping change, the union needs to take a step back and realize that baby steps are the only way.
The big sticking points in the discussion are free agency, guaranteed contracts, option years, and transfer fee sharing. MLS is set against making any major changes to any of these topics. For the time being, they are right in doing so, to a certain extent. There is a middle ground.
The easiest change to make is with the sharing of transfer fees. It has been reported that MLS keeps 10 percent of a player's share of a transfer fee. That has to stop immediately. Simply put, it is stealing. No other business would get away with it, so MLS shouldn't. The league already gets a large portion of the transfer fee. If they are dead set on taking a bigger cut, take it from the team's cut. The owners still get the money either way.
Guaranteed contracts are also a relatively simple fix. Before looking at the solution, we must look at the reasoning. The players that have guaranteed contracts usually deserve them. They've performed well enough to deserve better treatment. Some of the other players, players described as being treated as second-class citizens, quite frankly, are second-class (or even third) in MLS. Rightly or wrongly, some players just plain suck. They don't deserve a place on an MLS roster. A guaranteed contract puts a financially shaky team like Kansas City in a worse position of having to pay a player they aren't using.
The solution to guaranteed contracts is simple: don't give every player a full-season contract. If FIFA regulations require that contracts can only be terminated at the end of contract's length, give fringe players shortened contracts. The NBA, the king of guaranteed contracts in sports, does this with developmental players from the NBDL. If a player isn't a regular starter, give him until "X" amount of games and renegotiate after that point. Find a middle ground and when things get better in a few years, renegotiate a better situation.
The idea of option years dovetails out of the guaranteed contract situation. As it stands now, the majority of option clauses in MLS are in favor of the league. As far as I know, only David Beckham has a true option clause, but even his clause (to my knowledge) involves a buyout. The most prominent player affected by the option situation is Landon Donovan. Donovan wants to make a move to Europe. Technically, his contract is up; however, MLS holds an option for one more season. Essentially, Donovan is stuck unless a club is willing to pony up the minimum $10 million (rumored MLS asking price) for a transfer. Life isn't fair, but contracts should be. Situations like Donovan's shouldn't happen. MLS can fix this.
One way would be to allow players to make a move to a different league instead of accepting an option decision. If the player wants to move to a different MLS team, the two teams need to work out some sort of deal. While that isn't an ideal solution, it is a step in the right direction. Team options appear in other sports, so getting rid of them entirely is impossible. Another option is to create more player options. After all, fairness has to go both ways.
Far and away the biggest sticking point and the major battle in the collective bargaining process is free agency. It needs to happen. More than likely, it won't. Some have said free agency destroys the single-entity concept of MLS. For the most part, that is true. If that happens, it destroys the very thing that makes MLS a viable business right now. As a solution, I propose a modified form a free agency along the lines of the NFL and MLB's compensation system.
At the end of a contract, players can negotiate with any team. If the player and his new team agree to terms, the new team must pay a minor compensatory fee (or an equivalent draft pick) to the player's old team. This would only apply to players who have started a minimum number of games or played a minimum number of minutes. Fringe players would be free to move from team to team as true free agents. These are the players that are routinely cut at the end of the season anyway. In the event that the player leaves MLS in the offseason, the old MLS team loses all rights to the player. If the player leaves in the middle of the season, player rights are retained for the remainder of the current season.
All of these solutions to MLS' contract issues are just ideas. The overall idea I want to convey is that simply handing over concepts like free agency and guaranteed contracts as other American professional leagues would be suicide for MLS. The financial system in MLS works. The league exists because of it. Still, improvements can be made. The goals of the players and fans can be achieved. It's just going to take time. It took the NFL decades to establish itself as America's sport. Why should soccer be any different?
