CBA Updates & Discussion

So will they or won't they?

 

He doesn't make $12K. He's on the senior roster which you can't be at that rate. In fact, he has to make at least 3x that. When his contract is up, he's free to move since that's what he wants. If he was offered more $ for playing well and declined it, then you can't say the MLS didn't try to compensate him better for improved play.

What are you talking about here? Michael Thomas entered the MLS draft because he wanted to and he chose to of his own free will.

His options were to go to camp and prove he was good enough to earn a contract with MLS or sign with a team in some other league. He chose the latter. So, what. Most players coming out of college that are good enough to play in MLS, do play in MLS. Many that don't, do what Thomas did and eventually just come back. Soccer is a global game. He says he always wanted to go to Europe and so he did. If a player is drafted by a team in MLS and goes to camp and isn't thought good enough and doesn't get signed by MLS, they could try to catch on via another team and still get signed. As far as I know the team that drafted such a player won't block their ability to get signed elswehere.

Once an MLS contract is fulfilled or terminated, MLS indeed has no rights to a player.

If a player is not signed, he can seek his best opportunity all along. I don't really get what you are saying. If you're saying you want players to have contracts with MLS teams instead of MLS, then that won't be single entity any more. And that's all well and good eventually, but it's quite likely that MLS in this day and age would still fail, just like NASL, if the went out of single entity this soon with apparently, only 3 clubs operating in the black.
And then all the 400 jobs in MLS for players will just be gone altogether. Is ability to move worth that?

 

I think the past tense was used

 

single entity vs salary cap. let's not confuse the two!!

Has anyone in the soccer press written an article making an argument for the elimination of single entity while keeping a salary cap intact?

 

Even then it's too low, but the implication was that it never went up as some sort of price BMac was paying so he could move because otherwise he'd be locked into another contract in order to get any sort of raise from $12k.

 

time for some polls?

 

OK, so follow along here LobsterClaw, but before we begin let's be clear about the definition two terms you use fairly often.

Monopoly: is a market form in which only one buyer faces many sellers.

Monopsony: is a market form in which only one buyer faces many sellers

And let's be clear that any sports league is selling a product NOT buying one.

YOU:

ME:

You can't seem to remember what you say from one post to the next. Actually you don't seem to remember what you say from one line to the next. And worse yet, you dissemble and obfuscate. You clearly reasoned the the MLS was not a monopoly because of all the other Soccer leagues in the world. It's right there in your own post.

YOU:

The EPL, Bundesliga, La Liga et al are not allowed to compete on American soil so.....the MLS has a monopoly despite your belief that somehow EPL is selling tickets all over Chicago.

Except the rules the MLS uses to prevent players, even out of contract players from playing abroad if they want to.

Well not when you are an indentured servant.

It was a failure because it was irrelevant to the issues at hand.

A doubled salary cap immediately makes the league a more attractive league to both talent and fans. If the league succeeds then obviously the players would suceed as well both present and future.

Right now the cap is so low that it encourages young American players to go overseas and likewise prevents good overseas players from wanting to come or stay here.

It's amazing to me that in our "fee market" culture the league is doing everything in it's power to prevent the market from operating freely. The time for single entity to expire has long since passed. I honestly hope the players do strike because in the long run it will make the league stronger and healthier.

 

Well it won't be long until we find out for real.

I'm not certain at all, but it looks like one of three things will happen. Both sides have put themselves in a corner. The league doesn't look like it is going to budge, and the players can't really back down now after the way they've played their hand.
Either the union decides to play on under the current CBA, basically losing without admitting defeat or...
There's a strike starting tomorrow.

The only way out I think is for the league to give the union free agency. That would be still a far cry from meeting the union's demands, but it would be a move that would give the union something that they can hold up as a victory. Otherwise, the players are basically stuck without totally capitulating or just dragging the negotiations on until the foreseeable future.

My outlook is pretty grim. I think there will be a strike.

 

Strike? I hope they do. And I hope they get free agency and at least a minimum guarantee on contracts.

In the short term, for us personally it will suck. But in the long term I believe it will make the league stronger and more attractive. face it, no one here is going to stop supporting the league and the game if there is a strike and lost season. We'll all be back and the league and players will be stronger for it..

 

I actually think that once the players strike, then the owners will cave on free agency pretty quickly e.g., within 2 weeks!!

 

The players in MLS for the most part are not like other soccer leagues outside the USA. They come from an American culture which makes challenges their best fiber and college educated. They lack no confidence in taking on an unjust system and they know they can probably make more with their college education. League minimum $22k? Most play for low pay because they are in love with the sport. Yes, MLS may be doing right in its plan but attacking players in public is bad strategy as the players now have no way of saving face but to strike. If MLS administrators are not creative enough provide something to show understanding and respect, than they should resign and have others give it a try.

 

I agree! I'm sure they will not pull and MLB, NHL lockout. Sooner or later the MLS will give in. Let them start in April and finish in December...who cares? I'm sure they can play the MLS Cup final in Florida , LA or TEXAS...

 

Who attacked a player in public?

 

Abbot, MLS Pres said Players union was misrepresenting isues.

 

Well, I'm assuming that your definition of Monopoly is mixed up on accident, but your statement here is incorrect. Every employer buys labor from workers. So the buyer in the context of a labor negotiation is the employer. The workers are the sellers. Sure every sports league/club is selling soccer to the masses, but they are also buying soccer labor from players.

You are inventing a phantasmal contradiction in my arguments. Let me clarify what I said. I do not consider the MLS a monopoly seller or a monopsony buyer. I do consider the MLB a monopoly seller and a monopsony buyer.

There are other ways of consuming soccer than watching it live in the stadium. MLS does compete with any other league that can be broadcast or viewed on pirate video streams. However, that has nothing to do with the labor issue, the MLS does compete with foreign clubs for the soccer talent that is out there. Just ask Michael Thomas how he feels about being unable to sell his services outside of the MLS.

The contract is the only thing that MLS could use to keep a player from moving abroad. If the player has some obligation in their contract than they are beholden to it. The MLS as no extra-legal control over players lives.

I was simply illustrating that one should not have faith in unions to try to deliver optimum outcomes. I'm not saying that unions are bad, just that their incentives are more complex than they might at first appear. I think that is relevant to a discussion about labor negotiations.

I agree with this, of course, but would it actually bring in enough of an increase in the growth rate of the leagues revenues that it would not result in a debt crisis and falling investor confidence in the MLS? I don't know enough about the leagues bottom line to say whether this is a risk they ought to take, but I think that without some caveats to ensure that the MLS's bottom earners are the ones who benefit most from such a dramatic increase, this could leave many of MLS's current players in the dust. I think a more ideal strategy for the long term health of the league would be to have more focus on developing young talent for the time being, expand the dev rosters and give more pay to dev player, while gradually upping the cap above the inflation rate as they have been but maybe up it faster. Hopefully every club will have an academy so that when the MLS starts attracting much better talent with more money, plenty of it will still be home grown.

As true as this is, it will always be the case for as long as the MLS pays less than somebody else. The league can't afford to pay EPL, La Liga, Serie A, or even Colaship wages. The hope is that in time, our little backwater league will some day be an economic powerhouse (and have long since ceased to be a single entity) and will challenge the best leagues in the world for supremacy, but that takes steady, uninterrupted growth. The latest report from UEFA on licensed club finances indicates that the EPL may in a few years time (well, it could be as early as friday for Pompey) make for a great example of what happens when clubs run up unsustainable in trying to punch above their weight.

From my standpoint I think that there is a lot that the league can concede without the economic health of the league being put in jeopardy. Free agency and something resembling guaranteed contracts should be pretty obvious. However if the players get guaranteed contracts, then the league would need more leeway in having the players wage growth over the course of the contract be less automatic and potentially performance based. Teams that make bad personnel decisions (see Bobby Convey) shouldn't have a get out of jail free card, but on the other hand, it would be pretty frustrating if you sign a player on a big salary and then to be stuck with a failed signing that only becomes more expensive each year he sits on the bench. I think the single entity system offers a unique way of having our cake and eating it too when it comes to guaranteed contracts. What if you had a system where all contracts were guaranteed and each team could have one or two players in league limbo? By which I mean that the players are ones that the league still pays a wage to, but the team has released them so that they don't count towards that team's cap or roster space. Those players have a guaranteed contract, but the it is the league that is stuck with them not the individual team, that way teams can get on with the business of trying to build a solid team without being sidelined for a few years by the next Convey.
These may not be the right time for making big demands as far as wages are concerned, but otherwise I hope the players get most of what they want with no strike.

 

I hope you're right, but we could be in for much more nail biting than just the two weeks. It is still possible that the players will cave in instead. I would really like to hear from the league it is about free agency that makes it some huge economic sacrifice. I mean, the economics of it is all that the league and club owners should care about, so they must have some economic reason for protecting it so fiercely. Maybe it is just a ruse by the league to make it look like it is a big deal to for them to give in on free agency so that when they do it will be enough to get the players to compromise on the rest.

I will say that it looks like the league has played their had a little better than the players. If the players will really serious about their bare minimums, then they would have not agreed to extend the old CBA once more. If they had started the walk-out earlier that would have been able to put the onus and pressure on the league during a period when it wouldn't create a significant impact on the player. Had they done this before the preseason and then the preseason didn't start on time, the league would have probably been pressed to concede more than nothing. However, as the actual start of the season is approaching, the strike may pose less of a credible threat. The players might be hurt more by a lost season more than the league itself, therefore, despite such a move putting great pressure on the league, the players won't necessarily have the upper hand.

 

Both sides are doing that. "Misrepresenting issues" is pretty mild to a call "attack," and it was applied to the union and not players anyway.

 

I think the they believe the signal entity would be legally challenged again and without that the case won't be made and it'll then go away, no?

 

Yes. If it can be shown that the teams are competing to sign a player, then they are not a single entity anymore.

What should be the onus on the players is to explain how "free agency" is going to make soccer more popular and entertaining and thereby, more profitable for all involved.

 

In what ways?

Seriously?

Signing Bobby Convey or Claudio Reyna to guaranteed contracts didn't make soccer any more popular.

 

I'm not following you here. What part of the free agency issue has anything to do with the single entity debate? From what I understood, the free agency thing is about how MLS contracts include obligations on the player that last beyond that players compensated playing obligations, namely the "rights" that a club has to them. This wouldn't necessarily be any different if the contract was held by a club instead of the league.

 

Here's an explanatory article.

 

Thanks, that definitely clears that up. I just think that the league wouldn't lose too much of its single entity aura with the free agency thing. I think if they had free agency, the way players and clubs manage contracts would change. With free agency were introduced, a player that was within a clubs long term plans would always be offered a new contract well before the existing one expires. I bet free agency would be remarkably rare, and the competition to sign free players can't really get out of hand unless two team want to pay that player DP wages.

Or maybe I'm too comfortable with this because I think that although the training wheels should stay on for now, the MLS ought to have it in its long term plans to grow out of the single entity system.

 

Yeah, but the point there making is that what it would actually do isn't important compared to what it would legally do. I think if a court came out and said free agency can co-exist with free agency, MLS wouldn't mind having free agency.

I also don't tend see how it makes much difference to players unless they really just have a desire to bust up single entity because they believe the league can still go on without it. I don't really buy the movement thing.
I think players move already. If they have non-footballing reasons to really need to move, like Richard Mulrooney wanting to go to Dallas to be nearer his mom, it gets accommodated. If players just really can't cope with a certain manager but could with a different one, then those players seem to move.
Players that are playing better than they're being paid for, get new contracts with MLS to (MLS hopes) prevent them going to Europe --such players probably don't want to move anyway.
Players that are wanting to use free agency to up their salary via bidding war aren't going to get very far very often because clubs within MLS probably don't place a significantly different value on a player from one another very often anyway and it's not going to be very effective with a relatively low salary cap either. And regarding old players that aren't moving between teams at the end of their careers, they aren't failing to move over the cost of their rights, they're not moving because MLS and no team in MLS wants them because they're replaceable by players that are better for that same money. Teams, the league, and fans alike don't want to be stuck with overpriced players.
Players that just want to move because at whatever salary they're worth they'd rather live on the left coast than the right coast or vice versa and want to use free agency for that, those are the only ones that I see benefitting much over what's going on already and I doubt that's a common thing.