mediation time... http://www.espnfc.us/major-league-s...nd-players-union-hire-mediators-for-cba-talks
I think Saputo is in this because he knows that he will make money even if he doesn't do anything. MLS/SUM can make plenty of money without a successful Montreal team, and he's just collecting his slice of the investor/Operator pie that is split up after all the money is collected. Kind of like the Pittsburgh Pirates owners did over the last several years with MLB's revenue sharing.
I would like to know if TFC is profitable though. $50M in revenue says nothing of profit. It is certainly a nice number and a nice benchmark for the league but in DP salary alone they are already down $20M.
Especially when they have the ownership's other venues to actually make that money they can afford to spend. It's not like Precourt has 3 other endavours that are raking in the cash that he can spend on the Crew like well-off folks can buy a sports car for thrills.
Hang on Baby Jebus, this 'gon get bumpy... http://www.espnfc.us/major-league-s...he-reasons-behind-the-potential-work-stoppage
Don't you simple people understand it's a human rights issue, http://www.prostamerika.com/2015/02/13/mls-cba-series-text/109360
This is why the players can't win on free agency: Players of all countries regularly travel all over the world to seek work. It's quite practical. To pick its battle, MLS should cave moderately on salaries.
According to the Prost article: "Erick Torres just signed for the Houston Dynamo. The reason he plays for the Dynamo is because MLS signed him to a contract, offered the contract to all 20 teams, and the Dynamo were the only ones willing to meet the terms and conditions of the contract." I find it highly unlikely that Torres didn't know where he was going before he signed.
Yeah, I'm not certain, but I feel like that Prost article is wrong on a few things (or maybe it's just misleading). Wasn't the supplemental draft done away with after 2013? Also, isn't the re-entry draft more of a "right of first refusal" kind of thing, where a bona fide offer has to be made (in the second round, as the first is for picking up a waived option)? Also also, it mentions a player not selected in the re-entry draft can only go to a new club "if they work out an agreement with the old club", but when DO'R went to Portland I don't remember any discussion about us having his rights. I could very likely be wrong on all the above (except the supplemental draft piece, which definitely no longer exists in its previous form), but the information they're choosing to include is interesting. Anyway, I find it hard to believe MLS world sign him to a contract w/o getting input from GM's first. Despite Prost's angle, I'm guessing Torres knew Houston was the destination (or at least likely). Let's be honest, though - even if he didn't know, who the heck cares? His first concern was clearly the $$, which he got, so why should we give a shit if he voluntarily signed a contract in which he didn't know where he was going?
The Supplemental Draft itself no longer exists, instead it's been turned into the third and fourth round of the Super Draft. As far as the re-entry draft goes, a player in round one must be offered the same money or slightly more than he made the year before IIRC, and if selected in the second round it's the same or less. If a player isn't selected, he can go wherever he wants (gasp, sounds like free agency, thought that would ruin the league?!?!). Of course Torres knew where he was going. Big DP's like him have different rules than the regular players. His problem was that he wanted to go to LA or Seattle, and neither team needed him. He liked living in LA because of the Hispanic culture there, so Houston makes a lot of sense. Now, if he ended up in Montreal or SKC or Colorado or something, then that would've been odd.
Or, in plain speech, the only ones willing to pay him that much money. But according to that imbecile, lots of teams would have bid lots more if only he'd been a free agent. That whole article is, as noted, rife with inaccuracies and falsehoods, but it's the utter lack of common sense that really does him in.
Spare the horses and all the punctuation. A relative handful of castoff players begging for jobs is not anyone's idea of free agency and proves exactly nothing in terms of how it woud affect the structure of the league were it to be more widely adopted. Yes because people only like playing and living in areas where their own native culture is prominent. So Latin American players in, say, SKC or Colorado or Columbus is "odd". German players in Houston, same deal. Polish guys in Portland. Swedish guys in LA. Or for that matter Mexicans in Manchester, Spaniards in Germany, Frenchmen in Italy, Nigerians in France. Or is it only Mexicans who are too parochial to be able to adapt to foreign surroundings? Can't play in New England because there aren't any good Burrito places? Won't sign in Salt Lake due to the lack of Mexican girls? Seattle is out because there aren't any local TV shows with guys in bumblebee suits? Interesting take.
I take your point and agree with it, but actually there are a lot of Spanish speaking German-descent Texans. Like Adm. Nimitz. Surprised me, actually. They came to Texas well before the Alamo. Centered in the Hill Country east of Austin, but lots of other places too. There are some really good German restaurants in Fredricksburg. The Nimitz/Bush museum there is really worth seeing. And that's the US. If you look around a little, you can find just about any culture you want in almost any city. Even Columbus.
Um, torres himself said he wanted to play in seattle or la. And it had been reported that one of the biggest reasons he liked la was of the large hispanic culture amd that he could speak spanish a lot. Thats from eric gomez, heard it on soccer morning a while back. Not just me making shit up.
I thought Torres had a list of teams he'd be willing to play for. He ideally wanted LA, but would settle for Seattle or a Texan team.
From what I've seen of C-Bus, it seems more like "especially Columbus". It seems like Central Ohio has almost every ethnic group on earth.
Wasn't when I moved here in '78. Friends used to say "Wonder Bread is made here--that sums it up". I remember trying to get an import at Planks Bier Garten. The guy told me that they had beer "imported all the way from St. Louis". No joke. Today? There were *four* different Koelsches*--all actually *from* Cologne--at The Andersons today. I went 10+ years once without tasting one back in the day. *It's the beer I learned to drink beer on.....
Thanks for the info. I had always assumed that C-Bus was like the other major Ohio cities (large number of ethnic groups).
Since its not a port city, manufacturing wasn't really as big here as Cleveland (or Cincy), and that's where large immigrant populations ended up iirc. Obviously it played some part, just not to nearly the same extent.
Speaking of beer, Columbus just opened its 100th craft brewery in the past three years. Mindboggling that just 10-12 years ago, an average bar probably had no more than about 10 taps and now, bars seem to have upwards of 50.
30 years ago? One or two... :-( But before that they had more if only for the 3.2 beer (you youngun's don't really want to know).
Maybe its because I've worked with immigrants, but I believe Columbus does have a good amount of immigration -- you just have to know where to look. We have a Hispanic community that is in line with the national average (which says something this far from the border); we have the second largest somali population in the US; we have a very large influx of african immigrants, lots of asian communities around the north outer-belt. Columbus remains a huge test market for products because we are demographically well represented across many fields. It is, however, very interesting to contrast Cleveland with Columbus. The cleve is a much older feeling city, with older, eastern-European, black, Jewish, Italian neighborhoods, etc. Columbus gets newer immigration from latin america, asia, and africa. I think Columbus' ethnic communities feel smaller than they are because we don't have separate neighborhoods and districts where one particular group has overwhelmingly settled in for generations. For better or worse, you kinda have to 'ghetto-ize' Italian-Americans for a long time in order to create something like 'little Italy.' That hasn't happened in Columbus.