Bill Archer on the MLS Collective Bargaining
2009-12-10 01:43:00
As always, good stuff, most of which I agree with:That's the whole argument in a nutshell: Foose and the union think the league needs fundamental change. Which isn't going to happen.
I'm sorry to disagree with Foose but the league is not "at a crossroads". Rather, it sees itself as on a very nice, straight, long road. MLS is headed in one direction and has no intention of turning off any time soon.
Now if the Union wants to talk about more money, that's OK. The owners expect that and are undoubtedly prepared to go there. But the union wants to get there by changing the nature of the league, and the league wants to get there by changing the salary structure.
The question I have is this: would something like allowing players to negotiate with other MLS teams at the end of the standard 4 year option contract, while retaining a similar salary cap, really change the structure of the league all that much? You can make the argument that something like that is a logical liberalization of how things are handled in line with the teams having taken tighter control over rosters from how it was in the early days.
MLS could still be single entity, and still have final approval over all contracts, but what harm is there in letting a specific team's exclusive claim to a player expire at some point? Tell me, I'm truly curious. You could even make the claim that something like that strengthen's single entity by removing some of the gamesmanship potential of the individual teams.
As an aside, I think Foose has totally misplayed the negotiations in the media. He's coming out with wild story (WE WON"T GET THE WORLD CUPS!!! OR GO TO IT EITHER UNLESS YOU GIVES US STUFF!!) after another, and as far as I can see it hasn't made the owners move one bit. I hope for the players' sake he has a strategy other than transparent fear-mongering at the negotiation table.
Go to the homepage, browse the archive by month, topic, league, international and college competition, or explore relevant keywords: