Yeah. Watching grass grow may be more interesting than Sunderland. Watching it die is not. Wait, maybe it is?
Posting this in a couple of threads because I think its relevant to a couple of different discussions we've been having: http://www.denverpost.com/kiszla/ci...set-soccers-version-peyton-manning?source=rss If that's the case, why was only TFC allowed to talk to Jozy's agent?
I get the impression TFC management played hardball with MLS as they had all the cards. My friend at MLSE indicates MLS is rather upset with TFC because of the way it went down.
i get the impression that since the "league" needed to use the tfc asset of defoe, to swap for jozy, that would have meant that any other team that wanted jozy would have had to "buy" defoe from tfc (ie compensate them for losing their asset and not getting back an asset of equal value). that is what the stuff ali c said about it being to expensive for rbny to get jozy made it sound like to me.
Not what I was saying - basically - MLS wanted to use allocation orders or blind draws or whatever. The fact that TFC had the leverage here, and used it, hasn't gone over well at MLS HQ.
DPs have quite regularly caused strain amongst the collective league HQ and those "biggest/richest" clubs who can and do afford the highest paid players in the league. But on the whole, the DP initiative is good and collectively well-liked by MLS -- the very business that created the initiative and has benefitted from it, even as it may in some ways work against and strain the league's single-entity-ness.
Well, yeah. Compared to the alternative (for MLS) a few high-priced DPs is way more tolerable. It's like the best of both worlds for them. They get the glamour and marketing oomph to draw more fans and better TV contracts without opening the floodgates of rosters filled with millionaires and wage bills above $30 million per team. Short of paying that kind of scratch, it's probably the best bang for the buck.
I could easily make a compelling argument - and I have on the related threads - that a hard cap set near the top of the actual spending by the richest clubs would be of a greater benefit than a mix of three $7M/Y and eight $250K/Y players. A TFC with two players in the $3M range - and none of Bradley, Altidore or Giovinco is worth more than that - and eight making $1M would be a far superior club for about a similar $15M-$17M outlay (TFC will spend close to $20M, btw). This will be a mix of sizzle and skill. What TFC has now is unlikely to be far different from the last season, with neither the sizzle nor the skill.
MLS prides itself on marketing. And trying to market a desirable product. Does the "DPs and others" approach work, or would something else work better? Hard to know. And hard to know what the league's real goals are -- and if there are business challenges and realities that cause conflicts between "building the best teams" and "building the best and most-sustainable business entity." Eventually, I think those two will intersect, but for now the business/marketing decisions are continuing to win out within the single-entity ahead of the competitive concerns of how MLS teams can always/consistently beat the likes of Pachuca or Saprissa or whomever.