MLS Chief Soccer Officer Committee

Sam Stejskal for The Athletic described the CSO Committee (Chief Soccer Officer), which consists of all the GMs or top sporting executives for each club. Formed in Jan-2018, they have met quarterly to discuss things such as “homegrown territories, the value and future of academies, regular-season and playoff scheduling and designated player limits.” I assume the upcoming collective bargaining agreement is also foremost in their minds.

Besides meeting quarterly, they also have a Slack channel, email chain, and teleconferences.

The committee doesn’t make official decisions, but it sounds like they probably come to a certain level of agreement and then present their recommendations to their individual owners to formalize in ownership meetings.

I hope the MLSPA players union is getting similarly organized, or they will struggle to improve their CBA very much.

 

MLS is a private company. Sam Stejskal squeezed that info out of people, which means MLS is only going to tell us anything when it suits their purposes.

 

Btw, I had a discussion with a guy on the USSoccer BOD. He says that MLS thinks they can do a better job than USSoccer’s Development Academy (plus of course, MLS now supports Solidarity payments). So MLS wants their academies to be in a separate league and a separate youth organization, In other words, they would be a 4th youth organization in parallel with USYSA, US Club, and the DA. The way he was talking about this, it seems to me that the BOD will cave In to MLS owners, who are putting millions of dollars into their academies and want a return on their investment.

 

The assumption is that the MLS Academies would cannibalize the DA kids. I got on the board member’s case, saying that having these competing leagues just results in cannibalization, such as CYSA’s decimating AYSO recreational soccer. He agreed that what needs to happen is to consolidate all the youth organizations, but he knows MLS wants to go its own way.

His solution is that ussoccer needs to do more outreach and increase volunteerism. I was very disheartened by the whole conversation. Ussoccer needs new blood, not guys who seem to just be there for the perks.