General Soccer Thread

[thrill]

That intro was cheesy but seeing an American get the Ronaldo at Real Madrid/Neymar at Barcelona stadium unveiling felt like that mattered. To US Soccer obsessives like me, anyway. It was dumb but really special.

Couldn't agree more with Timbers fans clamoring for league rule transparency. That was straight up LA Galaxyesque how they just made a rule up on the spot. No way it was in place the day after they signed the last CBA. None. LA got "the Beckham rule" to exceed the hard cap & "the Donovan rule" that exempted previously existing DP contracts from taking a DP slot and now Seattle gets "the Dempsey rule" to exempt US Internationals signed to DP contracts from the allocation process.

So like a lot of things in MLS, something great came with a drop of a [expletive] you to the little guys. Salary disparity between the big clubs and small clubs is only exceeded by the salary disparity between the big players and the little players. The league, while unfair, rewards the markets that want to invest in advancing the league and Id like to think that if the Timbers put in a bid for $9.5 million to Spurs, he'd have been posing for pics with Merrit Paulson and Timber Joey last night instead. Who knows other than Garber?

Portland wanted to sign Mix Diskerud to a low-level DP deal and MLS shot it down because the league owners didn't think he was worth it (that's what I understand, maybe I read wrong), and while he wasn't a regular with the national team then, he would've qualified for the last rule that they clearly made up on the spot, the "retention fund" that allowed KC to pay Zusi DP $$ without using a DP slot. It's all very suspect and dumb sometimes.

I don't know when MLS is going to take off the training wheels and lose the single entity structure. Probably not until they hit Garber's 24 team goal in 2020 (st Louis will be one), but its inevitable and it'll be great when it happens.

[MrSaigon]

Keep in mind that the Joseph buy down is a brand new rule too. He could have at least made Seattle pay for the dp slot, preferably in talent.

We traded for the top spot in allocation to get Mix, something Garber (citing a bunch of irrelevant examples) conveniently revealed we didn't need to do yesterday. But as I understood Mix walked away from the league with single entity contract concerns. But it was all rumor. Unless Merritt could have paid, which seems very unlikely to me, some Portland fans are a bit misguided in their angst, but I loved the transparency sign.

There's certainly a level of bull [expletive] to this.

Here's a nice quote from Don 'Walk the Walk' Garber in 2010:

And I believe that belief is an important quality for any league to be successful. Therefore I certainly subscribe more to the NFL’s approach to parity than I do perhaps to the structure of the English Premier League, where for the most part only a handful of clubs really have a chance of winning the league each year.

[thrill]

Grant Wahl with how the move happened: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/soccer ... nders-mls/

WTF tidbits include Toronto as one of his preferred destinations (the fact they made it clear in their pursuit of Diego Forlan that they're willing to overpay for a name must explain this), that he has one January loan guaranteed and that Omar Gonzalez has re-upped with LA.
I suspect one other thing will stick out to fans of rivals.
MLS paid the transfer fee? Did they do the same thing for Robbie Keane?

There's certainly a level of bull [expletive] to this.

[thrill]

Adrian Hanauer said he didn't want to get in specifics and then strongly implied the league did not pay the transfer fee.

[MrSaigon]

You can't blame Seattle one bit, if the league hands you a couple wild cards you take them. But the only way this could really be better for them is if the league now changes (or conveniently reveals) rules once more and Dempsey and other components of the roster are grandfathered safe.

[MrSaigon]

The transfer fee was most definitely paid by MLS. I'm just disappointed because when Portland (and it will probably happen at some point, this all sucks far worse for markets like Columbus or teams with owners like New England) is gifted a superstar, the giftwrapping will probably just be money and not money and rules:

“We’re in our adolescence as a league,” Hanauer said. “I sit on the product strategy committee and the competition committee, and we talk about transparency, and we want to continue to have more and more transparency in the league. I think that’s a good thing for fans. It is something that we’re working towards.”

Am I being too bitter to be a little insulted (and a little more agitated wrt to all the dubiousness) by this coming from the guy just handed the wild cards?

I should note that MP isn't upset about the transfer fee, according to Wahl, but he is upset about the allocation thing, meaning FOs probably didn't even know about this.

[Transmogrified Tiger]

Not being much of an expert on MLS roster machinations, what is it that would've appeased people about the fairness of Dempsey coming here? To my primitive understanding it seems to be centering on:

- The league paying the transfer fee, which superficially isn't good, but at the same time, would that have truly impacted Seattle's fortunes going forward if they had been forced to do so?

- Skipping the allocation process, which seems like a necessary evil to have Dempsey come to any of his preferred destinations.

I'm sure I'm missing one or several things here, but MLS is so hazy on the process in general(which I understand is another complaint), that I can't figure out what they are.

[MrSaigon]

The transfer fee thing appears to have been well-known internally. Internally only.
The allocation thing is a bit mistifying. Even if Portland would have passed. Seattle still has that asset. As far as the necessary evil to get to a team on the list, there is precedent with Brian McBride there, and some team was compensated for being on top of the list. They could have worked it out.
A DP has never been renegotiaded out of his slot midseason before, and was widely believed not possible, especially after the salary guarantee date. Seattle gave up no assets.
Also, parity implications. What sure looks like rulebook gymnastics don't speak well to the league trying to avoid European models.
Anyway, as I said before, it's a superstar delivered to Seattle's doorstep giftwrapped in money and if not rules, dubious revelations.

I can put up with a little evil to get Dempsey here, but with that magic rulebook, how hard would it have been for Garber to make Seattle pay somehow, in talent? Especially with the DP slot stuff. They sure as hell made LA pay for Robbie Rogers where they could have revealed some bull [expletive].

Portland had to trade to get the top spot in allocation to get Mix as DP. Garber now says that DPs don't go through allocation (he even listed a bunch of examples, like David Beckham and Rafa Marquez, who never would have been subjected to allocation anyway). So, if I'm scoring it correctly, the score to this Calvinball game is P to 7.(wink)

[thrill]

DPs don't go through allocation (he even listed a bunch of examples, like David Beckham and Rafa Marquez, who never would have been subjected to allocation anyway).

Claudio Reyna to NYRB a few years back is the precedent, which holds up. Red Bulls signed him as a DP and he did not go through allocation. US internationals are the only players that go through allocation. Canadian internationals do not, which is weird. International internationals have no such process for introduction.


The league paying the transfer fee is a bit of a misnomer. The league owns all of the player contracts as a single-entity structured league. Even though they technically had to write the check to Spurs, as the entity trying to sign Clint, the money came from Seattle's ownership group. That hasn't been implicitly stated, but strongly implied by Adrian Hanauer.

As I understand it, no team or fan base has any legitimate cause for complaining in terms of rules being side-stepped or broken (except Toronto, who was strong-armed by the league to not make a bid, leaving LA and Seattle as the interested parties), only that MLS rules are convoluted and not widely understood. Much like NBA salary cap rules. There's no question that the rules are established to favor big names over unknowns. Clint, by nature of his status, was approved by the league owners for a DP salary and therefore superseded allocation rules. Mix was rejected by the owners for a DP salary so Portland had to acquire the top allocation spot to guarantee acquiring him. The single-entity structure then scared him away from signing with Portland because it left power of negotiation for his future in the hands of the league rather than the club and manager he trusted or himself. He knew he wouldn't have freedom of movement within the league and from the experiences of other American Internationals playing in MLS he knew the league would be hesitant to transfer him back to Europe unless the interested club paid a premium (see: Dempsey, Kljestan, McBride, Twellman and many other players who had bids they wanted to take rejected by the league).

[MrSaigon]

Ok, that's a good explanation of the Mix situation. At the end of the day, the only gripe I may have legitimate claim to may be the issues of transparency.

Sure hope they fail, and they have no excuse to.