Nationalism and the Labor Impasse

[Thomas Flannigan]

American athletes are far more likely to miss important international competitions than those in other countries. We have seen it again and again, whether it is the Davis Cup, ice hockey or basketball at the Olympics. We sent a C team to Athens and got beat by the A teams of nations with lesser talent pools. Kobe Bryant alone could have made the difference, but he always has some reason not to wear his nation’s flag.
In soccer, players in other countries almost have to accept an invitation to play for the national team. To refuse damages your value in the transfer market and the compensation level at your club team.
Let’s look at two examples. Roberto Redondo basically destroyed his club career by quitting the Argentine national team. I know it is a bit complicated, and the coach would not accommodate his hairstyle wishes, but most Argentines put the blame on Redondo. He has paid a heavy price. Mark Chung quit the national team and it had no impact on his club standing or compensation. Chung lives in a country where star players routinely pass up the chance to represent the US, and their careers are not really hurt by this.
Keep this in mind during the next month. The national team is asking for a compensation package that would put them ahead of Brasil. I would like to see them get more money, but should they be paid more than Brasil? I don’t think so. Like it or not, compensation packages for national teams players are pretty low. That is the international standard.
Our national team players may think that taking 2005 off will not hurt them in the pocketbook in the MLS or abroad. Long term, it could be a catastrophe, but short term, there will be no Redondo-like penalty to deter them from taking a hard line. They see Kobe and others prancing around making millions even though they refused to help their country in an hour of need

[jmeissen0]

tom

we live in the country of the almighty dollar

this will never change

and it's not just the players... don't even think that for a second

[CbR]

however in soccer teh big bucks arent in LA (as in kobe's case). Being in a major international tournament gives u the exposure u need to make the jump to europe in most cases.

Kobe could prosper (get the chedder, bling bling..etc...) in our little isolated world we call the USA, but someone like Landon Donovan cant.

[jmeissen0]

we are at the point where our players are getting exposure early on from the youth national teams... when they get to the senior side, they are already made... sure, they can improve... but they are making decent money and should be expecting it from the ussf

instead of piddly winks to kiss their ass and allow them to play games they refuse to market to anyone...

[GIO17]

I understand what everyone is saying, but on a personal level I feel that this is something as a growing football country we can't afford any set backs, including something so disasterous as this labor problem. Stadiums are now being built, slowly exposure is improving, not at a rate everyone would like, but it's improving.

If the first qualifier in Trinidad is going to have replacement players, then in my view everything that all members of US Soccer as well as MLS right after the disasterous 98 World Cup up till now, it has gone to hell and everything has been flushed right down the toilet. This does us no good and everyone is looking to write everything negative against us in World Football publications.

[bunge]

So players in the Brazilian league get paid less than MLS players? That's amazing!

[Thomas Flannigan]

American athletes can duck service on international teams and not face disgrace and loss of opportunity domestically. Athletes in other nations don't have that option. Look at Ronaldinho. He is making how many zillions a year. He has already won a World Cup. Still, he HAS to play for the national team even though he only gets paid $6,000 or so a game. Try explaining that to Kobe Bryant.
I hope our players get the best deal they can by January 5 and get back to work.

[StillKickin]

American athletes can duck service on international teams and not face disgrace and loss of opportunity domestically. Athletes in other nations don't have that option. Look at Ronaldinho. He is making how many zillions a year. He has already won a World Cup. Still, he HAS to play for the national team even though he only gets paid $6,000 or so a game. Try explaining that to Kobe Bryant.
I hope our players get the best deal they can by January 5 and get back to work.
The comparisons to Kobe just don't hold up. Soccer is truly an international game - the world's sport. Basketball is not - no matter how the NBA (and baseball and football) like to call themselves World Champions when they win the Super Bowl or World Series or whatever. Ronaldinho gains worldwide recognition playing for his club as well as his national team - Kobe, by comparison, does not.

[Thomas Flannigan]

Basketball is truly an international game. I have read it is second only to soccer in terms of popularity. Kobe would get more exposure if he played on the Dream Team but he pays no penalty for avoiding it. The phenomenon of American stars avoiding national team duty has been discussed quite a bit in the sports pages. People grumble but it does not have an adverse impact on their pocketbooks. I just hope our soccer players don't adopt the same attitutde.

[aloisius]

To refuse damages your value in the transfer market and the compensation level at your club team.

Let’s look at two examples. Roberto Redondo basically destroyed his club career by quitting the Argentine national team.

The national team is asking for a compensation package that would put them ahead of Brasil.
1.Quiting the national team doesn’t decrees player’s value, it increases it. Most club coaches and managers would love it if there players retired from their national teams.

2. I believe you mean Fernando Redondo. He’s career prospered after quitting the NT. He won two CLs 3 or 4 Spanish titles and was named CL MVP in 2000.

3. Where did you read that?

[PALE568]

the basketball analogy isn't too persuasive. the international basketball tradition doesn't come close to international soccer. professionals didn't participate in int'l basketball tournaments before 1992 & the result was so one-sided that the thrill disappeared almost immediately. (Because who wants to see Charles Barkley slap around Angola?) The simple fact is that soccer players (in all countries) grow up dreaming of playing in the World Cup, while basketball players (again, in all countries) dream of playing in the NBA. It's simply considered a higher standard. And that's not limited to Americans, either - Peja didn't suit up for Serbia in this summer's olympics & Canadian Steve Nash missed an international tournament prior to the olympics. Both cited exhaustion from the NBA schedule, but both tipped their hands to their priorities.

And you have to remember that the demands on soccer players are far more onerous - the qualifying tournaments are ridiculously short in basketball & happen during the off-season. Now compare that to Claudio Reyna, who has to fly from England across an ocean after playing a Saturday game to play as many as two games in a week & then come back to England and pick up where he left off. Do you think all the international stars in the NBA would show up to all their country's qualifiers if they occurred DURING the NBA season?? Do you think ANY of them would fly to Africa/Asia/Europe for a midweek qualifier while the NBA playoffs were approaching? It's a much taller order.

And incidentally, where do you get the US-Brazil compensation comparison? Do you have a link? How was the comparison made - is it the % of the fed's revenue vs % of their feds revenue or total compensation paid vs total compensation paid? Because that's a big difference.

[Thomas Flannigan]

I believe Real Madrid canned Redondo after the fiasco with the national team. Sure, he found work after that, but it was not Real Madrid. It is true some coaches prefer players who have retired from international play. But you are talking about a precious few superstars like Zidane. The vast majority of up and coming stars build their reputations through national team exposure.
If you are correct how do you explain the fact that no one seems to quit the Brasilian national team? Are they more patriotic than the Mark Chungs of the world?
Mike, one other famous athlete made the point you are making. A reporter asked Lew Alcindor why he would not play for the Olympic team. He said something like: "This country never did anything for me so why should I do anything for the country?"
Of course, being born and raised in this country gave him certain advantages 90 per cent of the world can only dream about.

[aloisius]

Redondo stopped playing for Argentina around 95 or 96 ,the trophies I listed were all won after that with Real Madrid.

Nobody quits Brazil because the WC is still the greatest trophy a player can win. It has as much to do with pursuing personal glory as with patriotism,.

[Thomas Flannigan]

Several thread here have advised that US players make about the same, or almost as much, as the Brasilian team. I believe the USSF's Jim Morehouse said that in a statement last week. Brasil gets a one million dollar guarantee to play a friendly. The players are lucky to see, what 8 per cent of that? It looks like a bad deal but still they keep showing up. I can't think of one pulling a Mark Chung. The players on Brasil's side make incredible salaries. Why do they keep showing up and playing for peanuts if the society has nothing to do with it?

[nobody]

Here's a brief bio on Redondo...

One of the most gifted players of this or any other generation, the Argentine midfielder has long courted controversy. He declined to appear in Carlos Bilardo’s Italia ’90 squad as Argentina prepared to defend their title because he wanted to finish his studies.

Four years later, Redondo did make it to the World Cup, where Argentina, their fallen idol Diego Maradona back to lead them, were expected to mount a serious challenge.

Redondo shone in US ’94, but after Maradona was expelled for failing a drugs test, even the sublimely-gifted playmaker was unable to prevent the two-time world champions from falling at the last sixteen, their 3-2 defeat at the hands of Hagi’s Romania lauded by many as one of the great World Cup games of any era.

On returning from the World Cup, 4 impressive seasons with Tenerife earned him a move to Real Madrid. At the Bernebeau, Redondo was at the heart of the Real revival, as the fallen giants set about first, returning to the top of the domestic tree, not an easy task given that Johan Cruyff’s “Dream Team” had won four back-to-back titles, and then conquering Europe.

In 1998, Real defeated favourites Juventus to take the Champions League, Redondo outplaying and outfighting his Juve counterpart (and future successor at the heart of the Real midfield), Zidane. But by then, though many experts had acknowledged him as perhaps the world’s finest midfielder, Redondo’s international career was in tatters after the new national coach, the disciplinarian Daniel Pasarella ordered him to cut his hair. Redondo told his new coach in no uncertain terms what he could do with the request, and by the time he did get his trim, it was too late. Pasarella was in no mood to forgive.

Two years later, after inspiring and captaining Real to their eighth European Cup win (a UEFA panel voted him the best player of the tournament), Redondo was unceremoniously bundled out of the club by new President Florentino Perez, who deemed the Argentine too influential a figure in the dressing room. On moving to new club Milan, Redondo ruptured his cruciate ligament in his right knee. Complications with the injury kept him out for two full seasons. During this absence, the new signing waived his €4.9m annual salary as a gesture of goodwill to Milan.

The player’s principals have perhaps cost him the acclaim his talents truly deserve, for this was a man who would have out-galacticoed the galacticos amassed by Perez after his departure.

So...as you can see, he enjoyed considerable success at Real after quitting the Argentine team. Even after leaving Real, he was picked up by AC Milan, so it's not exactly like he was slumming it.

[petersoccer]

So players in the Brazilian league get paid less than MLS players? That's amazing!

No They are asking for more money than Brazils players get for playing in WC qualifying.

[Thomas Flannigan]

Looks like I was wrong about Redondo. Argentine friends told me a slightly different story, and I remember reading an interview with him shortly before Real Madrid canned him. It sounded like the passion play with Passarella was pretty recent. Still, the Argentines I have talked to loath the guy while Mark Chung seems to be unscathed after quitting the national team.

[PALE568]

They see Kobe and others prancing around making millions even though they refused to help their country in an hour of need

the more I think about this statement the more it angers me. isn't this just a tad ************ing hyperbolic?

the money generated from nat'l team games doesn't feed our hungry's poor, house our needy seniors, or give our brave troops necessary armor. It goes into a USSF bank account & the players have a right to ask how it's doled out. and, incidentally, have you thought to ask why the USSF is refusing to accommodate their players "in an hour of need"?

guys like reyna have shown up for nat'l team duty time & time again and have to put off with fans/owners/coaches in glasgow, sunderland, and manchester complaining that he's forgotten who pays his salary & that's he doing wrong by his club.

these guys don't have to prove their patriotism to anybody. you, meanwhile, have apparently confused patriotism & blind faith.

[Khan]

So...as you can see, he enjoyed considerable success at Real after quitting the Argentine team. Even after leaving Real, he was picked up by AC Milan, so it's not exactly like he was slumming it.

Agreed. I've postulated that Argentina's national team suffered more than did Redondo due to Passarella's stupidity. Here was a national team that needed identity after coke-head Diego was no longer the focus of their team in the mid to late '90s; Redondo would have easily been the most important player for Argentina in the 1st decade post-Maradona...

[aloisius]

Still, the Argentines I have talked to loath the guy
That’s because the WC is the most important trophy in football.
Olympic gold is not the most important prize in basketball.