The Ringer: Own Goal: The Inside Story Of How the Us Missed the World Cup

It's actually in the contract with Bridgeview that no MLS team can play outside of Bridgeview until the current lease is up in 2035-2036 without paying a fee to Bridgeview for each game played outside the stadium.

 

What's the fee?

 

They have to give the town, the amount of money that the town loses out on by not having a game played n Bridgeview

 

Game played by whom or where? There are lots of MLS games every week not played in Bridgeview. If it merely stipulates that the Fire have to play in Bridgeview, then it's a nothingburger.

 

The issue is that the village of Bridgeview has had a 30 a contract with the *league* mandating that any MLS matches in the Chicago media market can exclusively be played at Toyota Park.

IIRC, even for the All Star Game last summer, the village had to be compensated so it could be played at Soldier Field.

 

Wow.

Peter Wilt looks more and more like a turd every year, if that's the case.

At any rate, I bet an agreement could be worked out. Once the Fire fold/move and the stadium is empty, a lump payout by SUM could get it done.

 

That's my guess as to what would happen at least for Ricketts, probably at pennies on the dollar for what the original buyout would have stipulated. I have a hunch Bridgeview wouldn't have the resources for a protracted legal fight considering the financial cement shoes that the stadium has been for them already.

Though a team bailing on a SSS isn't going to make building new ones any easier if you want public money for them (which is probably a good thing to be honest. I live a couple blocks from Wintrust Arena and still have no idea why we built that stupid thing.).

 

Eh?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_League_Soccer_attendance

The "new team" smell has already begun to wash out of NYCFC, as their 17 percent dropoff has shown. They barely outdraw NYRB's New Jersey soccer stadium from their well-placed stadium that everybody knows, despite spending 10's of millions on Lampard, Pirlo, Villa, and others to attract the Europhile NY hipsters.

But perhaps my numbers are way off. I'm sure DCU will now draw 20K because they bought Wayne Rooney.

I don't know about you, but I'd much rather have 24-28 teams drawing 20K playing homegrown talent, compared to 24-28 teams playing rosters of expensive Europeans and drawing 25K. The former (to me) makes soccer feel connected to the fabric of American sports, and the latter makes it seem more like a foreign import.

 

The bolded isn't really true. According to Google, if going by public transportation Yankee Stadium is exactly 14 minutes closer to both lower Manhattan and Brooklyn. While that's not a major difference time-wise, Yankee Stadium is much more convenient (straight shot on D train from Manhattan and requires only one subway change from Brooklyn, whereas RBA requires a subway to PATH change from either) and more importantly is psychologically much closer for NYC residents. Harrison might as well be in central Pennsylvania for a lot of people living in NYC.

 

Presumably the Fire (or a hypothetical deep-pocketed new owner) could buy out the remainder of that contract from Bridgeview.

 

IMO, 5 basic types of players should be on MLS rosters:

1. Young American stars - playing their first 1-3 years of pro ball in the US before heading to Europe (example - Tyler Adams, hopefully)

2. Older but not completely washed up, recognizable US national team players who have spent a decade or so in Europe and are returning around age 30-32 (Clint Dempsey)

3. American/Canadian journeymen, not quite good enough to play in the tier 1/2 Euro leagues but still solid pros - these guys will make up the bulk of the rosters (Kyle Beckerman)

4. Foreign players in their primes who aren't necessarily huge names to the casual American viewer but elevate the quality of play on the field (Giovinco or Almiron being the best examples, but really any solid international contributor fits this category)

5. The occasional huge name foreign star, possibly washed up but big enough names that it's worth it to bring them to the league--used sparingly (Zlatan, Rooney, etc)


This, IMO is a win-win-win situation--it's the best formula for developing young players for the US national teams, selling tickets, and making the quality of play on the field as high as it can be.

There are two problems, as I see it, with how the league currently operates. First, we're blurring categories 1-3 by making it hard for guys in their early 20s to go to Europe and bringing them back while they still have developing to do. Second, we have too many #4s whose jobs could be done by #3s.

 

Nice post. I think the USSF needs to work hard to make sure that

1. our rising youth players have either (a) an easy path from MLS to better leagues quickly after they have established themselves as rising professionals (which has been pretty barren recently, notwithstanding Adams) or (b) a path to bypass MLS entirely if MLS proves to be opaque as to its intention with such players.

2. our elite players remain in the major leagues until they are clearly on the downside of their careers. The USMNT should treat core players coming back to the minors the same as England (Beckham/Rooney), Italy (Giovinco) and Sweden (Ibrahimovic) and recognize that moving to the minor leagues from the major means that it's time to phase out these players. If there's one thing that really worries me, it's Garber's stated intention to bring back CP in his prime to MLS. that would be awful for the USMNT.

 

Rooney and Ibrahimović retired from their national teams before coming to MLS. Not the best examples for how players are phased out after coming to the "minors."

 

For every retired “euro” player, there’s about 2-3 young South Americans being signed into MLS.

 

You give the owners more credit for knowledge about the game than I do. This is a question of the most efficient way to allocate resources, the easiest way to fix a problem is to spend the money on something that works, like say young, high quality South American players.

The vast majority of the value produced will be in those top players. Seriously, go find the 25th most valuable American player born between 96-97. Does producing that make a $2 million a year investment look like a good idea, what about $5 million? Doesn't it make more economic sense to just buy players from a functional culture who have potential transfer upside (cough Atlanta cough)? The solution I prefer is to improve the developmental environment but what prevents that from just meaning a higher quality and quantity of talent poachers?

Unlike you I don't expect individual actors to prostrate themselves on the alter of speculative altruism. Expecting people to do something that will cost them in the short and medium term and will only bring about the desired result with large gains in productivity is naive and futile. Asking an owner to encourage his best youth player to stiff him is laughable. These things are divorced from an understanding of others' realities to an almost solipsistic degree. If one expects others to only act in one's own interest that can only lead to disappointment and an inability to understand how the world, made up of other people, works.

The solution to the problem is to prove that the model works (and thus is in others' own self-interests to copy) or to force a collective action through some higher power. If the way for the model to work is undercut, by the value it produces leaving for inadequate compensation, then it won't succeed and won't be voluntarily copied. Then it will take enough visionary owners (ha!) or the Fed to require teams to spend money on youth teams that they won't get a return on. This tax will initially hurt the product on the field by reducing the amount of money for the first team and will only payoff if teams make the most of the mandate and do a good job, even though doing a good job likely means poaching in the short, and medium, and, until revenue quadruples relative to the competition, term.

 

I'm sure no exec will correlate the lack of Lampard and Pirlo with the attendance.

 

Me, I'm a simple guy, I would just drop players when they are no longer good enough.

 

Doesn’t appear to be the case at least for Ibrahimović:

https://www.si.com/soccer/2018/04/2...-ibrahimovic-returning-sweden-squad-world-cup

In any event, the concept is the correlation between moving to the minor leagues and being phased out. We want our key players to do exactly as you described: retire from national team near the same time they move to the minors.

 

I’d guess that Italy, Sweden and England feel the same way.

 

He might have wanted back for the World Cup, but it's still a fact that Ibrahimović retired from the national team in 2016 before, right before a move to Manchester United. He wasn't phased out because of moving to MLS, which was your argument. Now, perhaps MLS figured into him not being invited back, although given that it was less than one month into his MLS career when the coach stated Zlatan wasn't coming back, I tend to believe there were additional factors at play. Such as the player's two year absence, the fact that he would expect a place on a team he didn't help during a great qualification run. Simply blaming MLS in the Zlatan situation ignores a lot of additional context.

As for mandated retirement, I'd prefer to just concentrate on individual situations. If we had a 35 year old good enough to lead Manchester United in scoring, I wouldn't automatically rule him out for the NT. Same thing for a 32 year old coming off a 10 goal season at Everton. If Giovinco was American while doing what he's done at TFC, I'd have taken him in a heartbeat for NT duty even if that meant sitting Major League Bobby Wood.

 

I understand that you feel an obligation to defend MLS at every turn but my point remains: when top national teams (which I'll define as those who expect to both make it to the WC and hopefully advance to knockout rounds depending on draw) have players who return to the minors, they are phased out of the national team picture. It's not blaming the minor league as you described as these leagues are of course free to pursue their own interests but simply acknowledging that the level of play is far far below that of the majors and the world cup. Therefore, it's hard to see when these former major league player's skills have degraded to where they are less effective at the WC level.

If instead of mandating retirement, we begin a phase out process, that's probably what I'd recommend. They can stay in the pool but at the first sign of inconsistency, they are no longer automatic starters and there should be an assumption that they will be phased out sooner rather than later. Doesn't seem all that dissimilar to what Mexico has done with the dos Santos brothers now that they're minor leaguers who got a total of 50 minutes in the World Cup.

If Giovinco was an American and did what he did that would be terrible for the USMNT. Absolutely terrible both short-term and especially long-term. Thus, my point on CP.

 

Landon Donovan's career was a thing that happened that we all saw. Maybe if he was a different person with a different psychological makeup he would have stuck around Europe but he didn't and he was still our best or co-best ever player. His relative qualities is all that matter.

Carlos Vela exists, Gustav Swenson exists, the question a national team should ask is whether a player is part of the 23 players who make the best team at the WC. I know that some lack the ability to make that judgment but those are the exact wrong people to put in charge of making it.

 

LD is an exception to the rule and given that he consistently performed for the USMNT, he’d be in any squad (as would Pope).

The structural challenge I’m addressing is MLS’ stated intent to bring our best players to MLS before they are in their sunset years (where I’m fully supportive).

You may think this isn’t a problem or is actually a good thing but I think it would set our program back tremendously and therefore the USSF needs to proactively address the situation.

 

It's less about defending MLS and more about correcting alternative facts. Wayne Rooney was not phased out of England's NT because he came to MLS. I'm not sure if you know this, but Rooney has never played a game in MLS yet. And Zlatan removed himself from NT selection for two years, during which time he played for Manchester United. Again, he was not "phased out" because he signed for MLS.

Giovinco, yes, applies to your point, which is why I didn't correct that one. I'm trying to help you be a little more precise with your language and arguments. Along these lines, I would be careful about stating absolutes about top teams phasing players out. Belgium and Brazil both had a Chinese Super League player on their World Cup squads. In 2014 Brazil's starting keeper specifically went on loan to TFC to get playing time before the World Cup.

 

MLS has brought back two major guys still in their primes. One was a rotation starter, whose team had just bought a better player in his position, carrying a lingering injury that would need surgery, and the other was an unwanted flop in a rut. So good luck to them bringing back a star in his prime with options.

I don't think cutting off our nose to spite our face is worth it to prevent the above. If these players drop below the level of the team, don't call them. If they maintain form, still call them in. How this has turned out for their careers is enough of a signal to influence others.

As far as MLS goes, for me the bigger deal is guys who don't leave MLS in the first place when they are in the growth part of the curve. Our real problem is the lack of quality depth. A player like Acosta needs to have left MLS after they have become a key starter for their club. If he, Hyndman, and Zelalem had spent 1.5-2 seasons starting in a second tier Euro league that develops players we would have been in better shape.