Growing Up Under the Big Top
MLS removed club soccer from its natural open habitat, micromanaged clubs from above, and appealed to a small fraction of a market hungry for the sport.
Let’s say you like elephants. If given a choice – money no object – would you rather:
1. Head to Uganda for a two-week all inclusive elephant safari
2. Head to Newark to watch elephants perform at the circus for two hours
First of all - nothing against Newark - one of the cradles of American Soccer, and a stone throw from Kearny. Skeeter fans unite.
Second of all – nothing against MLS players and fans. As a two-time MLS season ticket holder, and worshipper at the thrones of El Diablo and Jamie Moreno, I’ve seen great players give their careers to this league - sacrifices for which they deserve tremendous credit. Supporter groups from DC to LA have also contributed mightily to the survival of this league. Their efforts, sometimes in dismally empty stadiums from which NFL lines and baseball mounds glare up at them, truly lend a lifeline to this league.
I’m also not afraid to admit that, in the early days, I often stuck up for the present system. Thanks to the powers that were, the Hunts, the Krafts, and the Anschutzs, we had club soccer again for the first time in over a decade, and they deserved credit for it. Now, fifteen years after the single entity format was hatched, I think we need to be brave enough to count the votes on its tenure.
So, in the interest of specificity, let’s flesh out the analogy – minus the elephants:
Do you like your club soccer canned in a franchise, handicapped in international competitions, its clubs subordinate to the league that chronically underestimates it? Do you prefer a closed system like General Motors or Hooters where products are carefully manipulated from above to produce relatively competitive matches between members of the same entity and, more importantly, to shield investors from risk? Do you like your international stars portioned out in an effort to add marketing luster to an otherwise neutered system? Are you looking for an alternative to putt putt golf, a night at the bowling alley, or a quiet evening at Applebees?
Do you credit MLS restrictive policies and hyperconservative business model with the lack of hooliganism in the league?
Or -
Do you like your club soccer in the wild, natural environment in which it grew to global dominance? Where clubs at all levels are individual entities, capable of making their own personnel decisions and setting their own agendas? Where performance is rewarded, entrepreneurs are encouraged, potential unlimited, and club development is not retarded for the sake of the league? Do you approve of giving coaches and owners license to build clubs with their own goals in mind, unhindered by micromanagement from a league office?
Are you looking for a competition as open and unscripted as the NCAA basketball tournament, or even reality television, where there are storylines beyond who wins the playoffs, and where you can get kicked off the island if you don’t perform?
Drum roll, please…..
ts circus environment by a wide margin. When Chelsea and Inter sell out the Rose Bowl for a meaningless friendly, when seven times as many households tune in to international matches than any single MLS cup, and when average attendance records for league matches remain unbroken since top college players were in diapers, you can see the results reflected in the habits of average supporters.
This league is no longer a wee baby, struggling for attention in a market oversaturated with options for the American sports fan. It’s now a teenager, disabled on purpose, starved of resources by parents whose other kids are, not coincidentally, playing our other football.
Resurrecting the Sounders, Timbers, and Whitecaps names (not histories, mind you, for the responsibly corporate spendthrift MLS is completely separate from that glitzy overspending NASL era) may allow it to survive while still fitting into the ridiculously restrictive business model, for a while, but how long before their supporters begin to resent the single entity for deciding the level of soccer they are allowed to achieve?
Left to their own devices and business model, MLS will redistribute the wealth of average Sounders, Timbers and Whitecaps fans throughout the league until the great northwest honeymoon is over. After that, the franchisers will seek another rescue. If none arrives, this unreformed circus, like the ASL and NASL before them, will quietly disappear into the annals of American soccer history.
Worst of all, as has been the pattern of sports reporters for a century, blame will be pinned on the game itself, and not on another in a long series of failed attempt by moguls of a different sport to run an American franchise soccer circus.
Send in the Clowns.
Or, instead of watching another league flat line, stand up to the moguls, against their debilitating business model, and help free our football from their franchise. Push for the change that millions of supporters await. Tell them that you’d support an American club, if it were free to make decisions on goals and procedures. Don’t let them call you a “eurosnob” with the same venom they reserved for “French Fries” a few years ago.
If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.
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