Letter from MLS Commissioner Don Garber re: Wednesday's postponed NY-DC match

http://www.mlssoccer.com/news/artic...on-garber-re-wednesdays-postponed-ny-dc-match

Including the misspelling of my job title.

wow. the guy runs the league and can't get a spell checker or a secretary or know how to spell or anything?

MLS does things on the quick, and accuracy or consideration of best/right approach isn't always executed.

I think it is great that this letter was written and posted (regardless of misspellings).

If he really wants to apologize he can get MLS to pay for tickets and bus for the DC fans to come up to the first Red Bull game next year (and pay for the Red Bull fans who were there as well). But that ain't gonna happen

I really wanted to see them try to play in that slop. I envisioned a shot on goal that picked up so much snow on the ball as it rolled that it bowled the goalkeeper over as it went in.

Garber is useless as a commissioner. Controlling and manipulating the weather at will is part of the job description of being a commissioner. Therefore, he failed.

He half-assed it, and yes that does equal failure. He had Sandy role trough to get NY the second leg versus DC, but he (try as he might with a subsequent nor'easter) couldn't find a weather pattern and conditions that would actually favor the bigger and more important market within that second leg.

He threw the MLS competition rules under the bus because he was unwilling to move game 1 to a neutral venue.

The 2nd storm they ignored Red Bull's request to cancel the game before the storm hit, thus endangering the safety of fans who moved heaven and earth to get there.

Once the cancellation request was denied they made a pathetic effort to prepare for storm. 10 guys with shovels?

Mark Geiger, Ben Olsen and his players and most Red Bull players were ready to play. Hans Backe and Garber were not.

Every soccer fan who has watched soccer in Europe has seen soccer played in similar snow as long as the field isn't frozen solid.

This week is just one failure in a long list of Garber failures. Garber has been a great political and economic leader for MLS, but he's repeatedly shown that he will bend the integrity of the league without any shame

Yet, the results on the field stand. The higher seed moves on. (It may have been "without any shame" -- but it did come with a public apology to the fans, so that's something.)

And the bent "integrity of the league" won't have any significant or long-standing negative impact on the continued and future growth and success of the league and business.

What happened to the fall-to-spring schedule proponents?

I love that this has been up for over a day and MLSS still hasn't corrected the spelling of "commissioner".

Garber is useless

I'd rather have a commissioner who doesn't get into a pickle where he has to apologize.

Single entity is just frustrating. I'm tired of a commissioner overlord who can trump the independence of any club at any time with no accountability. Making up rules is what I expect from a shady Eastern European league, not in a country that holds sporting integrity in such high esteem ...

Would you like to point to the part in MLS rules that states that a home game only counts as a home game if it's played in your usual stadium? I've looked and I can't find anything about stadiums in the rules except field dimensions and the like. On the other hand I found the part in the rules that gives the 2nd seed home field advantage.

No league in the world stipulates that your home games can only be played in one specific stadium because anyone with common sense knows that an emergency can come up any time. Nowhere in the rules does it say that you have to punish an unaffected team when the emergency arises.

As for neutral venues there's a big difference between "couldn't happen" and "didn't want to happen". I've yet to see anything laid out as to why it was physically impossible to move game 1 to Philly or Columbus

I'd rather have a fan base that understands the Commish works for the owners and not the other away around...

There was nothing scheduled at PPL that weekend. The key is they would of had to start planning the switch before Sandy hit, not 2 days after.

Actually our GM was very clear that they did not want this solution. MLS didn't really give an alternative solution. Garber placated the media and said they looked into PPL but never specified why that didn't work out. And anyway my FO went along with it because our GM is basically an MLS underling that happens to be affiliated with DC United. The joy of single entity. In any other soccer league in the world this whole mess would of been explained clearly if nothing else because the media actually ask questions and GMs are not beholden to some all powerful commissioner

They got Geiger-ed Sandy-ed.

I think you are in the wrong forum.

Yeah, I mean the league growing leaps and bounds under his tenure means nothing right. His handling of an almost unwinnable situation is certainly a sign he is worthless. No matter how this was handled, people were going to bitch. Could the league have handled it better? Sure. But, regardless of what he did, lots of people were going to be unhappy. The team that apparently had gotten screwed out of this actually advanced. It's over now, time to move on.

Bigsoccer rule number w/e

thou shalt not criticize Garber (some posters here literally work for the league).

They moved the Big East tournament there from RBA with very little notice.
A little forethought before and during the storm could have gone a long way.
If staffing was that big of a problem I can promise you, DC would have sent people to Philly to help staff it.