Major League Soccer’s Existential Dilemma

Personality x 3: Chinaglia, Pelé, Beckenbauer

Wendy Parker's review of Rock n Roll Soccer at Sports Biblio last week highlighted the book's conclusion, where I write about the lack of personality in Major League Soccer compared with its fore-runner, the North American Soccer League. That's an aspect of the book that's been further thrown into focus this week as MLS concluded another season with yet another new champion, the Portland Timbers. All for the good, of course. Who doesn't like to see titles shared around? Who wants to be like Europe, where Barcelona or Bayern Munich win year after year?

On the other hand, there's a major existential problem here for MLS. Commissioner Don Garber is never slow to talk about where his league stands in comparison with its European counterparts. He likes to set vague future goals about when MLS will be big, bigger and biggest. Last week he was talking up the rotating championship title as a reflection of "one of the most competitive leagues in the world". Yet when we think about MLS, what are the equivalent keywords to the NASL's feverishly listed Cosmos, Pelé, Beckenbauer, Best, Cruyff, Chinaglia? You can't answer back with 'parity' and expect to hold anyone's interest. 

But didn't MLS sign David Beckham? Wasn't that the league's Pelé moment? Beckham may be a polite and wealthy young man, but his on-field and off-field personality fell way short of making an impact the size of Pelé's. His former team, the LA Galaxy, may be five-times record champion, but they don't yet have the stature or the style - in any respect - to be seen as the North American domestic giants. They just happen to be the team that has won MLS Cup more than anyone else, without offering many thrills on the way. They also boasted the league's and the United States' best ever player, Landon Donovan, but he needed to be one of many. Instead, he was just one of one. Now he's retired, leaving Toronto's Italian striker Sebastian Giovinco as the league's sole outstanding player in 2015.

In late October, I managed to get a ticket for Eintracht Frankfurt's home game with Bayern Munich. It's the only guaranteed sold out home game for Eintracht, and it's been that way for decades. Every right-thinking German soccer fan hates Bayern, and wants to see them defeated. Though in fact you could leave the word 'defeated' out of the previous sentence. Even as we despise them, we are fascinated at the way they can tear opponents apart with audacious attacking soccer. On the night, Frankfurt defended their asses off and grabbed a point in a 0-0 draw - the first points that Bayern had dropped all season. It's been a point of some pride in a mainly dire season for Frankfurt.

Bayern Munich - hated, but talked about. Rich, hugely successful, and inversely popular. They are a globally massive team. Am I really saying that MLS needs a team like Bayern to win MLS Cup year after year? Not at all. MLS could, however, urgently use four or five teams with some measure of Munich's magnetism. At the moment, parity means 20 clubs that vary from anaemic to presentable. There are still too many MLS games when the teams seem to think that the idea of soccer is to keep the ball as far away from both goals as possible. Importing veteran star names like Andrea Pirlo, Kaka, Steven Gerrard and Frank Lampard is a sign of stagnant imaginations in the league's front offices. These players won't make the league any worse, but neither they will they do much for its future. Eventually expanding the number of teams to 28, as MLS announced just this week, is making me feel tired as I type, and it's only nine in the morning. 

Fatal expansion: Former NASL commissioner
 Phil Woosnam presents quantity over quality. 

Garber pointed out last week that "we’re spending almost $120 million on DPs [Designated Players]. That’s six times what we spent five years ago. So if we’re able to grow our business, our owners are going to spend more money. And it’s not just going to be on our core roster. It’s going to be on areas where we can spend more on players that will improve quality." To paraphrase the commissioner - spending money on big name players means the league will attract even more money, and then we can invest that in long term youth development. That's a leap of faith that's hard to quantify, even with the aid of corporate flow charts. As a Plan for the Future, it's lacking exactly what you would hope for in a plan for the future - a clear-sighted vision, and a cogent means of getting there.

In the book's conclusion I generally show understanding for the MLS approach to building a league during those nascent years. Its caution, its prudence, and its need to develop in a way that will not frighten off new investors with concepts like relegation and bankruptcy. Yet, as that $120m figure above shows, parity and the salary cap have become fluid concepts according to the league's evolving needs. 

That salary cap isn't fooling anybody, and is increasingly meaningless when the league, with a ludicrous and shameless lack of transparency, will not even reveal its teams' profits and losses, transfer figures, or salaries (we have to rely on leaks, Forbes and the players' union for any of this information). What remains of parity's sham are the shackles preventing the emergence of teams with the kind of power and personality that - compared with the old NASL - is conspicuously missing. Still in place is a league more focused on its balance sheet than its league table and the quality of its play.

A possible solution? MLS should stop trying so hard to control its own history. Quit setting grandiose goals, drop the business-speak, and cease caring about how it shapes up compared with Spain, England and Germany. Retire Garber - he's steered the league to security, but his job is done. Bring in someone (former deputy Ivan Gazidis?) who has a genuine feel for the game. Remove parity and let the clubs chart the league's history, mistakes and all. Allow supporters to develop a team's culture, not the marketing department.

It wouldn't mean having to see the same team celebrate lifting the championship trophy year after year. The playoffs will prevent the dominant teams from serially winning titles and always give outsiders a chance. Even the mighty Cosmos only won four of the ten NASL titles between 1975 and 1984. They had charisma, but it was infectious. And as that league discovered too late - better a smaller, vibrant league than ill-conceived expansion for expansion's sake.

Over-rated, Overpaid and Over There - Gerrard and Lampard in MLS

When European players come to Major League Soccer on European wages, we fondly remember the North American Soccer League and the dash for green-backed cash that followed Pele's 1975 signing for the New York Cosmos. Suddenly, every club wanted its own superstar, and the strain which this trend put on owners' finances was one of the chief reasons that many clubs went under, dragging the league down with them.

Paul Gardner: "You know that
the English over-rate their players."

MLS initially eschewed such profligate policies, just as it rejected everything else in the NASL's boom-bust methodology. Then in response to pressure from the LA Galaxy, who were being whispered to by the David Beckham Industry, it relaxed its rules in 2006 to allow clubs the option of signing a handful of big name players on fat wages. It seemed a timely move, but opened up the league to the morose old criticism that America would again attract ageing stars on the hunt for a lucrative final payoff. True, Beckham would ensure that MLS became internationally known overnight. But if he played well, that just proved how poor the league was. And if he failed, that just proved that he was over the hill.

It might unkindly be suggested that Steven Gerrard's move to MLS finally means he won't be the most over-rated player in his chosen league. Reading the eulogies in the UK press these past few days, you'd be forgiven for thinking that the Galaxy has signed a meta-star with the combined skills of Messi, Maradona and Mohammed Ali, rather than an above average club player who is sporadically inspired to the spectacular, but has never lifted a League trophy or a World Cup. 

It's no coincidence that the other player in the transatlantic soccer news this week has been Gerrard's former England team-mate Frank Lampard, for reneging on his commitment to debut for New York City FC at the start of its first MLS season. Again, another solid club player. Yet he and Gerrard, touted as the supposedly shining nuggets of England's golden generation, were a repeated disappointment on the international stage. After several mediocre tournaments, Gerrard was England's best player at Euro 2012, but his team-mates didn't offer much competition, and they went out on penalties after playing dire football in the 0-0 quarter-final against Italy. The England team has been tellingly revitalised since the pair retired from the international game.

Their two big-name predecessors in MLS, Beckham and Thierry Henry, did enough to justify selection for their respective teams, LA and New York, but were they were worth their extravagant wages? It's impossible to quantify, though the league's marketing arm will argue they lead to the exposure that has lured the New York Yankees and petro-dollar backed Manchester City to invest in Lampard's New York team. 

On the other hand, it takes a leap of the imagination to see the millions reportedly being spent on the wages of Gerrard and Lampard as anything other then the enrichment of two already very wealthy Englishmen. It may be facile to say those millions could be better spent on inner-city turf fields and a fund to support talented but impoverished young American players. And indeed, if it wasn't being spent on England's decreasingly pacey ex-central midfielders, it would probably be staying in the owners' pockets. Nonetheless, I'm calling these signings out for what they are - a waste of money in the name of jacking up the league's profile.

"Those guys, the theory is, just show up and the crowds come flocking in," says sceptical journalist Paul Gardner in chapter three of Rock n Roll Soccer. Gardner, who has covered the US game for 50 years, was drawing a parallel between the NASL's marquee signings, and the arrival of Beckham in MLS 30 years later. "You know that the English over-rate their players anyway, and if they [Americans] don’t know that by now then there’s not much hope. The reason the Brits of course were imported [to the NASL] and became popular was simply the language. You want to sell the sport, you want to have players with personality who can go on TV and mix with the local populace, you’ve got to have them speak the language. There was a logic involved to the whole thing, but it was unfortunate because it meant bringing in a certain brand of soccer and that meant certain attitudes that came along with it. Just take a look at British soccer… the sad thing was [that even in 1975] they were playing dull, out-dated soccer."

Gardner wasn't referring to the players who came to the nascent NASL in the late 60s and early 70s looking to make a little extra summer cash. Many of those players ended up falling in love with North America and stayed around to coach and run soccer schools. Gerrard and Lampard, in contrast, are not in the US to 'grow the game', to use that Beckham-flogged cliché. They are here in a mutual pact with their clubs to exploit their reputations in upping the hype. Check out Gerrard's press-released, wooden words this week on his reasons for coming to LA:
    "I'm very excited to begin the next chapter of my career in the United States. The Galaxy are the most successful club in MLS history and I'm looking forward to competing for more championships in the years to come. I want to add some medals and trophies to my collection."

Finally, a League winner's medal for Steven. That's the script which he, his club, the league, and the more invested sections of the media will be reading off until it eventually happens. There's no doubt that Gerrard and Lampard will perform well in MLS. In the long term, however, they will give the US game as much as  they gave England's midfield - publicity-inspired expectations, but nothing of much substance.

Sunday Mirror review: three errors in 47 words

The Sunday Mirror did me the immense favour of reviewing Rock n Roll Soccer this past weekend. It was an astonishing achievement. Not to sound ungrateful or anything, but in the space of just 47 words, the review not only failed to even remotely convey what the book is about, but also managed to make three gross factual errors (or five, if you take into account that one of the errors is tripartite). It also made a grammatical error and a terminology error. That’s an impressive rate of around one mistake every seven words.

Here’s the review in full:

“A nostalgic trip through the early years of the North American Soccer League, the harbinger for what we now know as the lucrative MLS. Its struggle to stay afloat and be accepted by FIFA is fascinatingly explained, with cameos from legends Pele, George Best and Bobby Moore.”  

Mirror, Mirror, on the ball...

Error one: it’s not a trip through “the early years” of the NASL. In fact “the early years” only make up about one tenth of the book. It’s an account of all 17 years of the NASL.

Error two (discounting the following grammatical error - you can only be “a harbinger of” something, not “a harbinger for”; and Major League Soccer is known as “MLS”, not “the MLS”): MLS is not “lucrative”, it is a league that prides itself on its attempts to be financially stable, having learned from the mistakes of the NASL. It has been lucrative for David Beckham, and it may well one day become lucrative for its current owners, but that’s all a long way off – many of its teams have only just started making modest profits, many others still run at a loss.

Error three (and errors four and five): Pele, George Best and Bobby Moore played “cameos” in the NASL? You mean, they showed up, played one game and then left again? Or does the writer (and his sub-editor, and his editor) not actually have a flying clue what a cameo is? Best played for seven seasons in the NASL, Pele for three (bringing it instant world coverage and prompting hundreds more players to follow), and Bobby Moore for two.  

Apart from that, the review’s spot on. Indeed, I am absolutely convinced that the reviewer read the book from cover to cover. Thank you, Sunday Mirror – your review is a journalistic triumph. I have no doubt at all that the rest of the paper is as scrupulously accurate as this towering two-sentence book review.