On the Canadian Dilemma

It's all gone pear shaped north of the border. And I mean, totally. Toronto FC is melting down. Montreal and Vancouver have been kicked out of USL. Bloggers are furiously trying to find the USL teams a home and curb stomp TFC management.

Richard Whittall has coped with the crisis by succumbing to complete, barking madness:

This might put me on the business end of a very detailed flaming post, but why doesn't MLS consider a radical move: a wholesale ideological change in direction away from purchasing "ready-made" talent, either overseas or within the league, and toward investment in superb managerial and coaching staff? The move would be coupled with player development above and beyond the current academy and Generation Adidas college draft scheme, like strengthening administrative ties with USSF development academy clubs, as well as restarting the reserve league (Canada's player development set-up is so outmoded it requires its own post.

Does the league purchase "ready made talent?" Considering where the league has been, namely, that in 1996 "ready made talent" was all there was, whether it was from abroad or the US National "team" (remember that?) I'd say the answer is "Much less than it used to". Yes we have internationals, some teams more than others, but we also have the draft, allocations, etc. I'm too lazy to find Bill's post on the topic, but the consensus is that the reserve teams are coming back sooner rather than later. And academy tie-ins have been growing for a while.

In other words, why not take MLS to the wild extreme of its original mandate? Why not lower the current salary cap across the board while increasing rookie wages, as Ben Knight once suggested, and allow owners to invest not in DPs but top line managerial and coaching talent, at the league and academy levels

Lowering the salary cap and increasing rookie wages won't happen for a number of reasons, chief among them the Collective Bargaining Agreement. The players don't want this sort of arrangement. Seniority rules. When push came to shove in earlier negotiations, the developmental players got thrown under the bus so guys who have been in the league a while have a shot at a decent payday. The union's making noises about changing that, but the proof will be in the pudding.

As for managers, you can already do that. Witness, hey, me. And there's plenty of guys who have been around the league for a while, like Soehn, Warzycha, Mariner. But as we all know, it's harder to bring in international managers than players because it's only after having been a part of MLS for two or three years that it starts to . . . well, not make sense, but you know what you don't know.

Let's transform MLS into a European farm league, hell let's even encourage a European/MLS partnership, investment in player development in return for first rights to players when they reach a certain age.

Wow. Taking MLS to the most extreme conclusion of it's most negative stereotype. It would kill the league. Dead.

My fantasy would be to have a league of up-and-coming eighteen, nineteen, and twenty year-olds, selected from a healthy and interconnected youth academy system, in administrative tandem with both . . .

And I'm going to stop their because fair use, and just because you look at a train wreck doesn't mean you want to see the bodies.

Whittall is essentially taking a few points out of arguments I've made, and by taking them to an extreme conclusion is probing for "Let's see how committed you are to developing homegrown talent, motherfuckers." Although MLS is crucial to developing homegrown talent, it is not a farm system. Yes players get bought by European clubs. No we can't hold on to national team caliber players forever (although Donovan and Chad Marshall seem to significant exceptions). Several of "the best" young players have tried to make the jump to MLS, but that hasn't worked out that well in most cases, and the league also isn't the end all be all for youth development. To be fair that topic is wide ranging enough, and I'm lazy enough that I'm going to stop here.

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Anyway, I had to get that out. Richard Whittall, your link bait worked. I guess it helps when you're me.

But then he floats another idea, or rather links, to, one that Bill Archer has been talking about for a long time: a genuine Canadian league.

Bloggers are now floating that as an interim solution to the Vancouver Montreal problem (until "both" get into MLS), but I think they should look really hard at it as a permanent solution. A lot of fans up there are really unhappy with MLS and how things are run - this would be the perfect opportunity to implement all the features they think would work - high salary caps, 4 designated players who don't count against the cap, unfettered youth development programs. It would be a nirvana of soccer experimentation. Ben Knight would no longer have to worry about Dallas "going bouncy-castle up". And even better - it would create competition for MLS. Because the level of play would be so much higher, it would draw more viewers, and hell, why not expand to other former USL and disgruntled MLS cities? Bring in Rochester, Charleston, even Puerto Rico and St. Louis.

Surely a genuine, Canadian league with all the features MLS is lacking, plus a few strong US markets, would make the overall soccer universe in North America a better, more diverse place. And who doesn't want that?

Think about it. No seriously. Since TFC is sitting on plenty of unspent gate receipts due to MLS's restrictive salary cap, there should be *plenty* of seed money for this league. And it would go from strength to strength.

The reality is that the Canadian clubs are just too unstable to make a go of something like that. They simply don't have the money to make it on their own. So we're left with a frustrated fan base in Toronto, a supposedly flagship team that's managed almost as bad as New York has been, and two other clubs that get a lot of press north of the border but don't know where they'll be playing.

It's bad up there. And I doubt much positive is going to happen before 2011.

-FS

Edit: Bill's post on the USL disintegration is much better and realistic than anything you'll find in this post.