Another year, another MLS prospect, fresh out of college and ready to go pro, turning his back on Major League Soccer to sign in that hotbed of European football, Sweden.
That probably not fair, and I don't really mean to disparage Swedish soccer. But I'm just a bit frustrated with the situation; players that MLS should be keenly focused on keeping, desperately needs as more teams enter the league through expansion, and ultimately should be a proving ground/launching pad for, are running as quickly as they can to another league.
Scandinavian leagues have embraced young American talent, that much is clear. The troubling part, at least from an MLS viewpoint, of quality college players like Henderson, Marcus Tracy, and Charlie Davies never playing a minute in America's top flight is that those players are better off in Sweden. It's not only about money, though it's certainly better there than here; it's also about the trail to bigger things and better clubs that Charlie Davies blazed only recently. While not every player can burst onto the National Team scene and find themselves moving up the ladder from Sweden to a place like France as quickly as Davies did, the example is now there and supremely tantalizing.
Sweden is only a stones throw from the riches of France, Germany, England, etc., meaning that playing well in Scandinavia will draw interest from a more glamorous club much more quickly than doing the same in MLS might. That's a function of geography at its simplest, and league reputation/difficulty of negotiation at its more involved. Neither is encouraging for the hopes of stemming the tide of talented players looking to the Nordic countries first and Major League Soccer only as a fallback.
I don't know what it would have taken to keep Craig Henderson in the United States, and perhaps there was little that could have been done. If that's the case, then it's probably an unfortunate byproduct of salary and roster restrictions still necessary to maintaining cost control. But changes can be made that would make it easier to keep Americans here, and the league needs to look for ways to keep players like Henderson here whenever possible. Some kids will always look to Europe, Sweden included, no matter the opportunities or money available to them in the US; but it's supremely frustrating to watch good college players leave while MLS seemingly stands idly by.
Absorbing the loss of players to Scandinavian leagues would be much easier if MLS had some reliable mechanism for obtaining young talent other than the draft. But they don't and don't appear to be close to developing one.
It's not quite an epidemic, at least not yet, but it is a troubling trend.
Seems I've been outed on my lack of college soccer knowledge; the player in question, Craig Henderson, is a Kiwi and not American. Still, he played college soccer and is therefore a prime MLS prospect; the point is the loss of talent, not necessarily the specific nationality of the player himself. Thanks to Drew from WVHooligan for catching my mistake
Photo Credit: The Dartmouth
