I meant what I said and I said what I meant. MLS will be a top league in the World by 2022 one-hund

Topic: I meant what I said and I said what I meant. MLS will be a top league in the World by 2022 one-hundred percent!

Grant Wahl has just completed the most recent in a series of interesting interviews with Don Garber. He asked again about MLS’ goal to transform itself into one of the world’s top leagues by 2022. And Garber gave a very detailed and interesting response.

For starters, he made it clear they aren’t wavering about the very ambitious goal:

“When we were bidding for the World Cup, we went to the MLS board and asked them to financially support the bid, and laid out a plan by which we thought if we could win the World Cup bid, here are the ways MLS could benefit by it. At that point we established a goal to say we ought to be able to be one of the top leagues in the world if we have the World Cup. Then we lost it and went back home and licked our wounds a bit. But rather than crawl under a rock, we said let's be men about this and have the same goal, and then we doubled down strategically to say let's do everything we can to put a plan in place to be able to stand toe-to-toe with the rest of the leagues.”

Having doubled down and manned up, they now set about some measurements.

“So we've described it as four or five key objectives. The first is how would we define whether or not we've achieved it? It's one thing to have a goal, it's another to figure out when the 10 years are up are you there?”

Fair enough, here they are according to Garber (emphasis mine):

First: “So we'll define whether we've achieved that goal based on the quality of play in the league: Is that quality comparable with the rest of the other leagues?

Second: The passion of our fans: Do we have a fan base that rivals the fan bases in England or Spain or Italy or Brazil or Argentina?

Third: The relevance of our clubs: Are our teams from top to bottom important in their communities?

Fourth: And the value of our enterprise: It would be easy to go out and get owners who'd want to create an FC Barcelona or Man United or New York Yankees in MLS. There are certainly enough people who could do that. But that would do to MLS what's happened in the rest of the world, which is creating a real economic instability which most people in sports think is bad for the industry. So we want to achieve those three other goals but at the same time have an enterprise that is valuable for all. Because that value will create stability and long-term viability.”

Garber concludes by telling Wahl: “At some point I'll show you the plan, because it's pretty cool. And the strategic process if pretty cool, too, how it starts with vision and goes down to strategy, breaks out on players and marketing and comes together with Soccer United Marketing. It's Harvard Business School-type stuff.”

Seems impossibly optimistic to me, but there you have it.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2012/writers/grant_wahl/11/29/don-garber/index.html#ixzz2Df9fqF6z

I don't think he's doing many MLS fans a favor who abide by the slow and steady route. And I completely understand the slow and steady route and that it's worked for MLS. Thing is, there's no signs of that changing. Even if the next round of tv deals in 2014 double where they are now, it's nowhere near enough of an influx of cash to make MLS a top league 8 years later.

Seems to me either Garber will have to go away from the current model, and soon, within the next couple years which will go away from parity and leave a bunch of the diehards pissed off, or everyone else who takes him at his word will be left disappointed when it doesn't happen.

There's two subsets of fans. Those which prefer the slow and steady route along with parity, and those who want MLS to open up spending, parity be damned, and want the top teams to push the envelope. Garber seems to be trying to cater to both sets, and I don't see it working.

Then there's the aspect of how would we truly measure up against a top league quality wise. What's easier, getting a few teams to a top Ukranian/Russian/Holland level, which means most likely little parity in the league, or getting the whole league to that level, which would take much longer and has no chance of happening within a decade, and probably not within two decades.

If MLS had pro/rel all the way down to High School soccer, MLS would be the biggest league in the world, even bigger than the NFL and MLB combined.

This is probably the hardest objective to achieve, not because it requires more spending but because what is quality to one person may not be quality to another. If I had to guess, I'd say that MLS will define it by how many eyeballs there are via TV, combined with CCL results.

I also don't think we have to spend nearly the same amount of money on players to be competitive with other leagues because our domestic talent is so cheap on the world market and I don't see that changing over the course of 10 years.

It's funny he mentions this and at the same time bemoans YSA. Combined with the mixed messages regarding language on TIFO and smokebombs/flares, well, MLS has a ways to go. That said, in many ways, I'd already say our fanbase (ie SGs) is better than many other countries for the simple reason that we don't have to deal with the racial, political and violent tendencies other leagues do.

I'm personally in the parity camp and I really like that he made sure to include all teams. We all rise, and fall, together. Clearly there are certain clubs that have a ways to go to be important in their cities and I'm not sure how you measure that. For example, would you call the Galaxy "important" in their community? Plenty of people know they exist but probably could only name one person on their roster (who isn't on it anymore) whereas in Seattle you might find more people with more knowledge of the team.

Just trying to point out how it might be hard to quantify this. That being said, neither of those two teams are the problems. I think most would agree with NE and Chivas have the furthest to go in their respective markets.

I'd really like to see MLS get more involved, more hands on, in bringing up the stragglers.

This is the easiest to quantify and I don't see this as being much of a problem. MLS' stock should keep on rising and rising.

I'm excited. Even if we fail in this task, we will have succeeded in that we will be in a better position than before we started.

I know others have wondered what MLS has done this year to get things started. I'd have to say that PRO is probably a big part of that, as is the Disciplinary Committee. The playoff structure is probably another one they are happy with (though not the schedule) and could work for a 20-22 team league that we will likely see come 2022.

Garber really has his bum out the window here. Yeah..we don't want owners with deep pockets who would put investment into their clubs and build up their clubs brand. Give us owners barely scraping buy who can make a return on their investment by us depressing wages with a salary cap and thus harming the play on the field.

He used the Yankees as an example. Ok, just imagine for a second if MLB from the beginning was run like MLS. You wouldn't have the Yankees brand at all. You wouldn't have the Dodgers brand or the Red Sox. You'd have a bunch of clubs with no legacy.

The reality is even if MLS did not have a salary cap and had owners wanting to spend, the pool of players they would have to choose from would still be limited.They wouldn't be able to field Super Clubs. The top players and even the 2nd and third tier players are going to choose Europe. And they should because thats where the passion is for league football is.

NY Red Bull spends $15 mil a year with close to $13 mil of it for just three players. They are horrible to watch. I just don't get MLS. They'll let a club spend $15 mil but they have to spend it on a team full of League 2 quality players paired with three star players. This tells me the league is more concerned with image and and propping up its star players than it is about the quality of football being played.

MLS will not be a top league by 2022. Especially if they still have all these rigid wage caps and no free agency(they intend to keep single entity forever). We can't even keep most of our best American prospects in MLS for the beginning of their careers. They'd rather go freeze their nuts off in the Scandinavian leagues than deal with MLS. What sucks about this is when these players move on to bigger clubs MLS is missing out on transfer fees that they could have put back into development. Tell me one successful soccer country in the world where the players don't start a professional club near their home. Top league by 2022? Please.

Way to selectively read and take from it, what you want.

DON GARBER said exactly what I've said to you in the other thread, if you'd have bothered with the sentences directly after what you bolded.

Highlight from Garber: "But that would do to MLS what's happened in the rest of the world, which is creating a real economic instability which most people in sports think is bad for the industry."

You have no idea what would have happened.

Of course I can just as easily say that if European soccer was run like the MLS from the beginning you wouldn't have hundreds of clubs insolvent, in administration, tossed out and reformed at way lower levels, and miles and miles of red tape and debt.

Oh, so then opening the spending won't really do anything for the league anyway then ... looks like they made the right choice eh ?

Horrible to watch ? League 2 quality players ?

Both of those are merely your opinion. I can name more than 3 players that are above League 2 quality on that team. The league is addressing the issue of pay, quality, and sustainability all at once. Of course the marriage is going to be more on the convervative side. I mean, nobody wants a Malaga on our hands ... well, you probably would.

That's already being reversed. Shea, John, Gonzalez, Zusi, Johnson, Hamid, Bunbury, Gil, Kempin, Top, Villereal, Renken, McBean, Decker, Salgado, Pineda, Kitchen, Okugo, Duka, Rowe, Wenger, Bruin ...

Well, when you completely ignore the fact that for American players, there is still an allure of European football then sure. This relevant history of soccer in this country is only 18 years old.

One country ? I take it you don't actually realize that clubs don't produce the overwhelming majority of their own players. I mean, you're talking about the very method through which they do it, but then turn around and say that they all start at some pro club near their home ? What ?

According to Yanks Abroad, there are 35 US players currently in one of the Scandinavian leagues.

Out of those, sixteen declared for the MLS draft and either went undrafted or spent some time in MLS (e.g., Clay Goodson, Michael Parkhurst). Three more are Scandinavian natives who happen to be US-eligible (e.g., Mix Diskerud). In other words, as many of the Americans playing in Scandinavia are players MLS rejected as are players who rejected MLS.

That leaves sixteen players who skipped MLS and went directly to Scandinavia:

Alejandro Bedoya
Rhett Bernstein
Villyan Bijev
Sean Cunningham
Charlie Davies
Josh Gatt
Patrick Hopkins
Kyle Lutekehans
Shawn Nicklaw
Matt Pyzdrowski
Billy Schuler
Johann Smith
Brian Span
Etchu Tabe
Mason Trafford
Aaron Wheeler

Other than Charlie Davies, Alejandro Bedoya, and Josh Gatt, which of the players on this list do you think make up "most of our best prospects"?

I think we've managed to keep most of our best prospects in MLS if only because we have yet to see a major US star emerge from any other league. MX might eventually be the an exception.

I believe you forgot Brad Rusin in your list... it seems that he never had any intention of playing MLS, but was taking every opportunity he could get, going on trials in Europe.

It was also clearly a big mistake that a player like Conor O'Brien never was drafted by an MLS club ... and if not for pro/rel in Denmark, he would never have made a career in Denmark either, or had improved this fast.... Just like Parkhurst, he was "reinvented" to play a different position, before he became a success in the Danish league.
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And ironically ended up playing in a level(U.S. D2) lower than MLS for a few years.

I posted this in the "business plan" thread, but I wanted to see if it was possible to make a better guesstimate of what kind of payroll would be needed for a club just below one of Europe’s “top” clubs.

Again UEFA defines the domestic leagues with average club revenues over € 50m as “top” leagues, which includes England, Germany, Spain, Italy and France (in that order). According to UEFA's most recent benchmarking report, while there are 98 clubs in these five top leagues, only 57 of them have revenue in excess of €50m. In addition, 16 clubs in other UEFA Leagues have revenue in excess of €50m, for a total of 73 “top” clubs.

UEFA also tracks personnel costs, and the chart on page 71 of the 2010 benchmark report shows these costs averaged for the ten highest spending clubs, clubs 11 – 20, clubs 21 – 30, etc. Personnel cost includes both players, coaches and administrative staff, but in a separate chart UEFA indicates that player costs typically comprise between 77 – 85% of administrative costs.

I assumed about 80% of the reported administrative payroll was for the players, and converted this to dollars. Here are the numbers, the first average player payroll, the second net transfer spending:

Clubs 71 – 80: $35.8m; $2.0m
Clubs 81 – 90: $30.7m; $2.2m
Clubs 91 – 100: $25.5m; $3.5m
Clubs 101 – 110: $21.8; $2.4m
Clubs 111 – 120: $21.1m; $.-9m

For the 50 clubs just outside of the biggest 70 spenders in Europe, payrolls fall within a band of $21m - $35m, with additional spending on transfer fees for all but the smallest of these of $2m - $3.5m. Note that not until clubs 111- 120 do teams make money selling players than they spend, which surprised me. It looks like most of the top 110 clubs in the Europe are net buyers, not sellers of players.

But this is still Europe, where player wages tend to escalate the most rapidly. Is there a “home town” discount? In other words, could MLS pay comparable talent, especially domestic players, less? I think so, but how much less is a more murky picture. At some point, if they really are comparable players and free to move, the difference in pay will entice MLS players to move abroad. Still, having participated in several corporate compensation committees over the years where we adjusted pay downward by as much as 25% from what the top payers on the east and west coast were paying for people in the same talent pool without what we thought was any noticeable drop off in quality. I suspect MLS could do the same. The discount may even be bigger than that, although, again, the bigger the discount, the more enticing Europe becomes for those with the necessary skills, so there is likely some floor.

Apply that discount here, and to me this all suggests that MLS could have team payrolls between $16m - $27m and feature quality comparable to what the 71st – 120th clubs in Europe are paying, that is, those clubs in Europe that are just below the top clubs.

Well, the actual truth of the matter is, that Rusin was promised a contract in 2010 by his present Danish team, that then unfortunately was struck by some financial difficulties after they had suffered relegation, so that the Danish FA took away their license to sign new contracts... so suddenly they were not allowed to sign him, but they kept their promise and signed him in 2011 as soon as they got their license back, but I guess this made him stay at home a year longer than he had expected.
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MLS can pay its players less than a fair market price because the demand for MLS players is very low. As the league improves, the demand will increase among teams that have money to spend. MLS will be forced to pay closer to the fair market value to keep these players. Your numbers are way too optimistic.

That's a lot of players and MLS would be a lot better league of they all played in it. However, when I mentioned Scandinavian leagues I was using that league as an example. For this list to be complete you should really include every player who's not in one of the top 4 European leagues.

Going off of Yanks Abroad there are 104 Yanks overseas. So 5-6 per MLS team if they all came back. Taking everyone who plays in Italy, Spain, England, and Germany out brings that down to 67, so 3-4 per MLS team. Of those I see at least 15 who were in MLS at one point, so now you're down to 52, probably lower if I were to research each one to see if they were drafted but didn't make the team. So less than 4 players per MLS side. Then you start looking at how many of them are natives or have other strong ties to their current regions as opposed to the U.S. and the number drops even more.

Even if we kept 2-3 players per side, do you really think a player that ended up in the 2nd level of Dutch soccer, or the A-League, or the Israeli league would have a noticeable effect on MLS quality? Highly doubtful.

There is, at best, an average of 1 player per MLS team that is playing overseas that MLS could feasibly have kept or attracted back here that would improve current play. And that's being generous.

I don't mean to diminish the achievements of all of these players, and I'm sure some of them really are overlooked diamonds in the rough.

That said...no, MLS would not be a better league if all of these kids were playing in it. Aaron Wheeler was cut by the Whitecaps because they didn't think he was ready for MLS, which is how he ended up in Scandinavia. Which current MLS forward do you think should be cut to give him a place? A few of the others on the list likewise have bounced around the U.S. second division. Like it or not, only a few of those Scando-exiles are there to get a big paycheck and a sniff at the Champions League; many of the rest are there because they're not good enough for MLS.

And even if they all had spots on benches somewhere, displacing the bottom man on the current totem pole, that's a long way from your original claim, which was that "most of the best American talent" would rather play in Scandinavia than in MLS. Are you admitting you were wrong about that?

Including the rest of the world honestly doesn't make that much difference. You add Oguchi Onyewu, Joe Corona, Mike Grella, Eric Lichaj, Stu Holden, Steve Cherundolo, JF Torres and Robbie Rogers. A good bunch, but still not "most of the best American talent." And most of them left before the MLS academy system was really underway.

While I agree with the overall point you made, one thing is that some were cut not because the team did not want them, they just did not want them at the price the players were asking for.

We see this all the time at this time of year.

With the FIRE we have 2 examples, Mike Banner was a decent player that was a back up player, was not going to get 1st team minutes so the FIRE cut him after his injury, Banner was making about 100K, The FIRE probably would have kept him at a lower salary, but he went to Scandinavia and is playing there (starting I believe).

With Segares, he was cut last week, then resigned to a multi year deal a few days later, we suspect at a lower salary, Segares tried Europe and he seems to be happy in Chicago so that was that.

But yes Banner and if Segares would have gone to Scandinavia or Mexico D2, is not a huge deal, those type of players are not game changers.

Even players like Buddle, left for more money, did ok in Bundesliga 2, saw he was not good enough to go higher, so he came back to MLS for I think less money he was offered before he left.

Here is how I see it, and I'm likely wrong on a point or two. Any correction will be appreciated. Maybe.

America has historically not produced enough great homegrown players to take our league to the next level. And frankly, do you know what the next level is? It's a feeder league. People use that term like it's some kind of badge of shame. It's not. If you can keep up with the demand for the players you're producing, the league will thrive. What's more important, all those players can thrive. And when these players, from both foreign leagues and MLS, come together in the World Cup and succeed or at least perform well and consistently, it reflects well on MLS as well as on the yanks abroad. And when that is happening, the league can thrive. Oversimplified, yes, but an essential step towards becoming a league where top talent gravitates towards rather than retires in or moves up from.

Another thing to consider is that money alone will not get the job done. If Tottenham and LA offer a player the same amount of money, chances are he will choose Tottenham. Especially if he is European. There is the grand history factor, the name brand factor, the famous league factor. Heck, if you offer the same money to an American, he will still probably go abroad. If in ten years America can match the money, prestige, history, and sheer numbers of attractive European women, then perhaps MLS has a chance at competing directly with these teams.

Think I've said this elsewhere also, but MLS should not be taking aim at Europe first. We need to be the go-to league in CONCACAF at least, which at this point is still a stretch. Bright young stars from the Caribbean and Central Americas who are still under European radar need to see MLS as the highest league to go to--if for nothing else than for the chance to be seen at a much higher profile by Europe and South America. Eventually, we would need to be the strongest and most attractive league in the Americas entirely. But you know what? That whole time, MLS will be a feeder to Europe. The big three or four (or whatever the landscape is in ten years) will keep a close eye on us, like they currently do with the Brasileiro (bet I botched that word) and try to lure away our best. Part of the structure of world soccer.

So, way it appears to me, MLS needs to significantly increase its level of homegrown ability and quality and its media profile in the US and beyond. As those two increase, we'll start gathering much more revenue, with which we can attract the best regional talent and retain many of our more solid players, while selling off our star talent will increase our revenue further. Then a big enough prestige, a horde of young American talents who like it here, and an attractive system and league to bring in some high-profile (and under-30) foreign stars... heck, we could get somewhere.

Sorry. That got long-winded. Four bonus points to anyone who actually reads the whole thing.

As always, nice research @triplet1. I think I know the answer before I ask but:

Do we know the average for MLS teams? How far do we have to go before we reach the 2nd tier?

I know MLS' financial data is under lock 'n key so I'll take your best guess. I'm just curious how feasable all of this is.

Not that I disagree entirely with your point, but two things. Bijev is a great prospect, and is only in Scandinavia until his WP issue with Bulgaria gets straightened out and he can spend more time at Liverpool. Also, Cunningham is one of our better prospects NT wise imo, and will be a NT player next cycle.

But, it's like any league really, some are there to use it as a stepping stone, others are there because it's their ceiling. If Scandinavia is your ceiling, you're probably not helping the league there or MLS. Chad Barret doesn't help MLS nor the Norwegian league. Just an average player. Makes no difference if MLS loses him or not. But, I do think MLS would gain by having a Bijev or Cunningham here and selling them and getting something out of it.

Yup, I'd say right now players going straight to Europe is a small issue. A few years ago it looked a lot worse. There was Gooch, Nguyen, Feilhaber and a much better Davies. Also Bedoya. A lot has been because of improved salaries, more clubs and roster spots but it also has been the recognition that a lot more Yanks get to the big 4 through MLS than through other venues.

I think OleGunnar20 had a good guesstimate of revenues and current salaries in the business plan thread. He put MLS payroll at $92M last season, including the DPs and pool goal keepers. He also noted a Forbes SportsMoney program in early 2011 (with what must have been 2010 data) showed the average MLS team revenues at about $15.5 million. For those who remember it, this was a rather strange video piece that showed the revenues on a piece of paper, but those numbers were pretty close to the Portland projections, so it makes some sense that $15.5M is (or was) "MLS typical."

Let's go back to the numbers I posted above and remember the goal here -- to position MLS not among the top four or five leagues, but at a level just below that. I applied a discount as I desribed, but let's just make the comparision straight up. To me, MLS is trying to have talent that's comparable to clubs 101 - 120. In other words, clubs with about $21 million of payroll. But even if that's too ambitious and you drop to clubs 121- 130, it's still an average of $18.7M per club, and at the bottom of the chart clubs 141-150 are still averaging $12.5M (again I'm converting to dollars and taking 80% of that figure to remove the estimated administrative payroll).

It's still a big gap.

Even with the DP payrolls (which obviously aren't indicative of what every owner would spend), OleGunnar's number suggests MLS teams average $4.8M in payroll a year, meaning MLS would need to double or triple that to compete with even the small clubs on the fringe of the top 150.

What kind of clubs are we talking about?

Here are the Ligue 1 numbers to give you some frame of reference:

http://swissramble.blogspot.com/search/label/Paris Saint-Germain

Avignon is at the foot of the wages table at $15.6M, but again that includes the administrative staff, so they would be the only example of a club with a player payroll of about $12.5M, which got them relegated BTW. There a a few clubs with payrolls in the mid to low $20Ms, however.

Realistically, I don't think MLS would devote more than 50% of payroll to salaries (yes, some guildlines suggest up to 70% can be done, but that's not typical in US leagues with caps). So we're talking revenues from $25M to $42M to generate that kind of money -- again, that's to fund wages comparable to clubs 150 - 101 in UEFA ranging from $12.5M to $21M.

But if talent comparable to the clubs just outside UEFA's top clubs is the goal, very roughly not quite tripling (that is, about 2.75x) the current average MLS team revenue of $15.5M would get MLS enough revenue to sustain $21M payrolls per team -- roughly what clubs 101 - 120 are now paying in UEFA.

That's over $500M a year league-wide so that every team can spend about what Caen spent in 2010/11 in Ligue 1.

And I see no realistic way to do that by 2022.

I agree with the first paragraph. I disagree with the second.

It isn't so much that there is a stigma for being a "selling league", it's that it is very difficult to make the model work economically. And when I say "selling league", I mean a league that must sell a certain amount of players every year to make its budget work for what it pays the other players it keeps.

Look at some examples. Sidefootsitter and I talked about this in another thread, but the AFC data indicates that 4% of J League revenue comes from transfer fees -- that's just over $24M, or $1.3M per club. Yes, they may have had some high profile transfers since that data was complied, but still it's a recent Confederation report and that's the number.

Link (look at page 17):

http://www.the-afc.com/en/resources...oject/76-pro-leagues-clubs-financial-analysis

Those same UEFA clubs I've mentioned -- those with the 101 - 150 highest average payrolls in Europe. Most are net spenders, but those cohorts who are selling to generate revenue are typically averaging less than $3M.

Finally, there is this. The most recent report on the finances of the top 20 clubs in Brazil indicates that they generated about 15% of their revenue, that is, about $155M, from the sale of players in 2011, a number that's been steadily decreasing on a percentage basis. That's $7.7M per club, but for smaller clubs like Botafogo with about $29M in revenue, if they hit the average that would be about $4.3M in transfer fee revenue for them.



Now, I ask those who think selling players is the answer to league's need for revenue to look at those numbers again. Can MLS honestly generate a net benefit of $5M per team each and every year selling players -- that's selling $100M of players net every season? I think that's wildly optimistic.

So, if MLS realistically needs to generate another $25M - $27M per team to afford payrolls of just over $20M, where can it find it?

MLS best hope is to raise money the old fashioned way and boost TV money, gate receipts and sponsorships IMO, but again all have limits in the near term. For example, an MLS executive is quoted in the TV ratings thread that the league hopes to get the TV contracts to $100M per year next cycle, a bump of $70M annually. That's a great number, but it's an increase of $3.5M per team.

No magic bullet there either.

The stadium capacities are mostly fixed, so it would take a huge bump in ticket prices to generate a lot more revenue. Jasonma noted in another thread that the Rapids average ticket price was about $20. If the Rapids sell 20,000 tickets for 17 games a year at $40, that's $13.6M, and the league takes a third of that.

Again, I just don't see any way.

What MLS can do is what you suggest, see if it can't be the best league in CONCACAF equal to Liga MX for a lot less payroll requirement. That's not easy either, but it may at least be possible.

Ah, yeah. I wasn't referring to selling players as our key source of revenue. Merely that it would be another beneficial bump. And I do hope that TV deal goes through--means I might actually be able to find an MLS game on the tube some time.

Basically, the only way to compete with this level of spending is to have excessive spending from wealthy investors or from risky business practices, correct? A stable model like we have now seems to point towards all clubs doing well, but none becoming dominant clubs on the international scene necessarily. But at its core, if I'm right, the difference in spending between us and others are those two points a few sentences ago that MLS is steadfastly fighting against. Correct?

Not that it annoys me. I'd rather have increased stability and a stronger measure of parity in the league than you see in the top clubs in the world.

Yes, I think so. For all the criticism, MLS' model is pretty well balanced -- it works well with the revenue it has. Without huge changes, it really isn't possible for MLS to generate a lot of additional revenue to get or, in the case of home grown players, retain the players it needs to "catch" these other top leagues by 2022 IMO.

It's like trying to convert a Chevy Cruze into a Porsche with common household tools.