So let's say each club has a "transfer pot" that operates independently of the salary budget. Revenue from sales is added to the pot. Cost of transfers is deducted from the pot. At the end of the season the pot is carried forward and the league adds a small amount. Sponsors can fund signings independently of the pot.
For starters, the roster rules aren't nearly as complicated as some of y'all and the media want everyone to believe. That said, they are antiquated. Particularly the rules regarding the academies and home grown players. Secondly, Tenorio is a wonderful reporter and brings a needed spotlight to the league in an age where there are fewer major national outlets covering the game here in the states. He's promoting his book. He's also been firmly in the camp that MLS needs to spend much more money, and typically either throws shade at or doesn't mention at all any team not in a major market or that is considered small. Third, there are economic realities in a good amount of MLS markets that make significantly raising the salary budget, or instituting a budget floor challenging. Miami currently prints money, but they need stars to keep that cash register humming. Same goes for the LA teams, A similar case can be made for Toronto. Then you have Montreal and Vancouver which have been covered elsewhere. There are small stadiums in KC, Philly, St Paul, Colorado (plus the wealthiest cheapskate owner in the league), San Jose, Columbus, and Austin. There's only so much money these venues can bring in. There are crowded sports markets in Chicago, NY, Philly, & Boston.Can these challenges be overcome? Certainly. Are they easy and inexpensive to overcome? This needs to be factored into the calculus. Fourth, there is currently a small group of owners who really want to open it up and spend serious money. There's also a small group that due to reasons mentioned above are not thrilled with the prospect of being "forced" to spend beyond their means, and are content with the way things are. Then there is the rest of the league, who will spend more money, but they're not going to break their own bank and they're not going to spend unless it makes sense for them. This is ultimately where the challenge lies. How does league HQ bring the two outlying groups together, and find a compromise that helps move the league forward in a meaningful way while also still allowing teams to build, spend and above all compete in different ways. Just like the debate raging about "fixing youth development." Simply having US Soccer say: Pro/Rel is now in. That's not going to magically lead to the American Messi, and it's not going to make pay to play suddenly go away. Tearing MLS' roster rules down to the studs isn't going to suddenly make MLS a top 5 league in the world, nor will it suddenly make ESPN or Paramount or NBC, etc shell out NHL level money or more for a broadcast deal. If MLS were to do what some have proposed above, all it's going to lead to is more Atlanta Uniteds. And I'm not referring to 2017-2018 Atlanta United either. I'm talking post Covid Atlanta United. Lots of money spent with poor results, and even worse team dynamics. Why? Well, out of the 30 teams in the league, less than half have actual scouting departments and data analytics departments. Nevermind most teams have no idea how they actually want to play. Simply spending more money isn't going to lead to better quality play.
There are 34 category 1 academies in England. 22 members of the England squad graduated from them. So get young players into the top academies as early as possible. They don't have to be at MLS academies but we need to identify talent as soon as possible and create a feeder system. For those that at first don't succeed, England has the lower leagues (see Dan Burn), we have the college system. There are lots of complications and challenges, which the fed needs to work on but getting talented kids to the top academies should be the goal.
If the league is afraid to move forward because Atlanta overspent for 3 bums in 2025 and it didn't work out then they are doomed already. Teams all over the world, including its direct competition Liga MX and EPL clubs, fail all the time. Not every single team in the world figures out a way to play or has analytics. MLS can't wait for perfection until every signing works and never fails so they can move on. Sure spending isn't the only way to succeed. That was covered in the video too. But the other ways of succeeding are also blocked off (or capped).
I think Atlanta and Toronto being embarrassingly bad after spending a ton of money is actually a symptom of the current system, although many teams in many leagues have gone on spending sprees only to flop. I do however like the fact that they're forced at times to field home-grown players. That in turn forces them to develop a pipeline. Mind you I look TFC's squad and wonder how they can be so bad with the likes of Etienne, Salloi, Osorio, Laryea, Zimmerman, Yarborough, Edwards, Mihailovic and Sargent
This is not really what they did. What all those wacky rules are actually about rather than some claimed roster insight, was maximizing entertainment value per dollar spent. It was about spending on the guys who move product and emphatically not spending on the guys who don't. And the thing is it worked. It worked really well. It created a league with explosive growth with an establishment in the market that was, for most of that time, aggressively indifferent to their project. And to do what we're talking about involves throwing that away, shifting to a new game plan. Don't get me wrong, I think the argument they hit the ceiling for that several years ago is perfectly plausible (I myself believe it), and further real growth will depend on shifting gears and going Al Davis. But, understand that there's a fork in the road there, and you have to not dance with the girl that brought you.
I agree with this too. Right now there's a tax on taking a big swing. MLS clubs are overpaying guys for what they can produce, and they can't make the follow-on moves the put the 'scaffolding' around them. They often can't get the piano movers that the piano players need.
"Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has held talks about joining the consortium that is seeking to buy around 30% of Liverpool." Come on man, you have teams on your doorstep.
That this is the 31st MLS season is darned impressive. Whatever issues people can identify, the league has already gained a solid foothold. Garber deserves a ton of credit for that.* The big lurking question over the league is less about finances, competition, and player development than about whether the next commissioner will have enough independence to build on Garber's success or whether some of the owners will take back much of that control. The investor-class owners don't hold the league's future in trust like a Lamar Hunt or Philip Anschutz, and may curtail the new commissioner's ideas in ways that hurt the league but let them cash in some quick profits. Not all owners are in this category, but there are enough of them in the league to create trouble. As fans, there isn't much we can do about this tug-of-war except watch it unfold, but it will have consequences for the league, the sport, and soccer;s place in American sport. The best result would seem to be league stability with policy continuity, and the first test of that direction will be whether the MLS can (or will) save the Vancouver Whitecaps. *His role in Precourt's attempted Columbus-to-Austin fiasco was a huge failure of leadership. It doesn't take away his successes, but it was an unforced blunder.
Commissioners are hired by and answer to the owners. The commissioner is the chief executive of the league, but the league itself is essentially an association of the team owners. The owners hire the commissioner, set his compensation, and can fire him. He serves at their pleasure. He has real authority, yes, but "independence"? No.
What I was trying to bring out is that there are two different camps of owners, the investor class owners and the sporting owners. Garber was able to balance their sometimes competing interests. My concern is that the next commissioner may be forced to align with one of the camps, and especially if that is the investor class owners that could affect the way the MLS goes from here. That was the independence I was trying to address. I probably could have made my point better.
I don't get what's the problem is with more Atlanta United's. You make to many excuses and the idea is with more spending comes more accountability. Every league has Atlanta United's and they also have ones that figure it out and you can just look to the South of the US for plenty of examples. . Most teams don't have this most teams don't know that, some teams can't figure this out some teams blah blah blah. The real question is why punish teams that can figure it out? For some reason a league that bringing in over 2.5 billion in revenue still needs to be protected because some teams can't figure it out, that's ludicrous. . You read the article and the sporting directors are pretty much in agreement, floor/ceiling and DP players. Get rid of homegrown territories and you have plenty of ways to compete. Miami spent big and won a Cup. If they can spend 25 million to reach the ceiling and another 50 million on DP players, so be it. If the Union can recruit from anywhere in the world and want zero DP players and are keeping the Cap right at the floor, that's their choice. . Eventually what will happen is more scouting, more dedication to style of play and hopefully better results playing in CONCACAF. Will that attract more eyes to increase media revenue, maybe but keeping the status quo hasn't had anyone knocking down the doors. Obviously, like many other leagues you can still have guard rails. The simplest way is based on revenue and teams can only sign a DP as long as they can cover the cost.
In general, when it comes to the role and authority of a pro sports commissioner, I agree with you. But regarding Don Garber, specifically, I don't. In a couple of weeks he'll celebrate his 27th year as MLS Commissioner. Technically, he reports to the owners. But, after 27 years and considering the dramatic growth of the league (and the value of the teams they own) during that period, the owners aren't going micro-manage the man. His replacement won't have the kind of independence he has, as Commish. But I assume the owners see Garber as more of an indispensable colleague than a direct report at this stage.
He's a CEO, he does what CEO's do. I don't think anyone is taking the job without a degree of autonomy.
i think you're both right. After 27 years the owners have significantly more faith in Garber than they will in the new guy, whomever he is. But Garber and the new guy are the employee of the owners. Now I think its been a long time since the owners made a significant decision Garber disagreed with, and likewise I think Garber's calls have all been with the backing of the majority of the owners. Decisions at that level don't get made without both sides being on board. The biggest thing the change in Commish will bring is a new set of eyes and probably a new set of "personal projects" that the Commish will want to prioritize. But unlike what some of the yahoos on social media want to believe, getting rid of Garber isn't the key to a huge amount of new spending, P/R, or a change in the roster rules. Because Garber never made those decisions, he implemented what the BoG wanted.
I also assume that the next Commish will be more involved in simply implementing a new CBA that'll clearly define those new roster & spending rules than what Garber has had to do over the past 6.5 years. That being the need to tweak (within the limits set by that agreement) an increasingly long-in-the-tooth CBA , negotiated in the early months of a pandemic. An agreement that, over time, fell increasingly out of alignment with the long-term goals of the league, increasing numbers of its owners and the sports and entertainment media landscape. It's not possible to know what'll be included in a new CBA. But it's very likely to be shorter than the current one. Recall, the CBA agreed to in Feb. '20 would have been only five years long. Assuming there's no second pandemic that'll up-end the next agreement, the next Commish's job will be mostly to execute what's said in the new CBA (without nearly the pressure to tweak it once its' been ratified), and to manage issues like expansion, relocation, infrastructural investments and other "personal projects" that you mentioned. Oh, and negotiate the next CBA when this new one expires.
The reported two leading candidates each have or have had at one time ownership stakes in the league. So either one will have a level of trust and familiarity with the other owners and board members.