Brian Jennings of soccer365 sits down to ask Garber a few questions about the future, single entity, and his goals for the league. http://www.soccer365.com/_365_Interviews/page_123_46723.shtml
Nice words from our fearless leader. Nothing earth shattering (of course), but well-delivered and ... believable (in a way that Doug Logan's statements rarely were).
Corporate sponsorships, player contracts, etc... These are indeed big years and WC 2006 will be vital to the league.
Is that Ahmad Rashad doing the interviewing or what? Talk about softball questions. Nice interview and all - but I didn't learn a darn thing. Which is kind of the point of an interview I would imagine. Not that Garber would answer any tough questions - but maybe we could get some new info or something.
1. His comment about Landon makes me wonder if the league put alot of pressure on Landon to stay here and grow the league. Food for thought in the Love Landon/Hate Landon debates. 2. I was struck that he said they weren't "quite thinking 5 years ahead." That's a pretty stark statement. I don't know if Garber meant it that starkly, but he seems pretty careful with his words.
some of it was stark but i think what he does or usually tries to do is a combintation of lowering expectations while setting a vision. lowering expectations because they want to make sure their goals are achievable and this has always been about building step by step rather than making a big splash.
PRobably right. I remember an interview with Garber back in July (in the MLSnet.com archives) when he was asked a question about LD staying in the league and he said the pressure was on LD to convince LEverkusen to let him stay, that a lot of it depended on LD doing the convincing and they were pressureing him to do so.
That's the first time I've seen anyone in MLS say that ownership should be more dispersed. Interesting, considering Hunt is about to own Dallas, and expansion is unannounced yet. Overall, I loved it because you can read that and see how far into soccer the guy has become in just a few years. Go Don, make it happen.
Speaking of the Don, When are we going to have the Commish back on BigSoccer? Come on Huss, let's see some action here.
On the subject of expanding MLS, wasn't there an announcement that in some number of months or days an announcement would be made about expansion in 2004? Are we getting close to the unveiling of the proposed unveiling?
Actually, I think it was 365 days from the MLS Cup Final last fall. It was mentioned in an espn chat w/Garber (dated October 17): http://proxy.espn.go.com/chat/chatESPN?event_id=2590 Leaving aside the validity of the cities Garber mentions, the relevant quote is: "Don Garber: I'll give you more than a hint .. we are talking with (not in any particular order) Atlanta, Rochester, Minneapolis St. Paul, Cleveland, Philly, Houston, Seattle and Tulsa, Oklahoma City. We hope to announce definitivly what our expansion timing is within the next 365 days."
Yeah, Because what's really important are questions like "Why aren't Michael Ricketts and Freddy Adu in MLS?" or "Why isn't HONDA plastered on the front my jersey and not FIRE?" or "Everyone knows we can't be a real league untill we start promoting crap teams from El Paso or Minnesota every year" I mean, those are the great ponderances of mankind today, aren't they?