us soccer: the pool is stagnant and the fish are dying

There’s very little to say after the World Cup champions, and arguably the best national team to ever step onto the field, come over and take a team to the woodshed 4-nil in front of 70,000 fans and an international television audience. This was an embarrassment, plain and simple and a stark and vicious reminder of how far behind the US is when it comes to developing the type of depth and talent needed to compete successfully on the world stage.

The US begins 2014 World Cup preparation today with the first match of the CONCACAF Gold Cup, a tournament that will determine representation at the Confederations Cup, a crucial World Cup tournament featuring the World’s best national teams. Participation in the Confederations Cup is a key test for a team like the US and allows it to scout World Cup venues and the best competition.

As we begin this three year journey to 2014, the USSF and MLS must take stock of themselves and own up to how stagnant the US Player Pool has become and how poorly MLS has served the US in developing and retaining National Team talent. When the US has all of its starters they can potentially play with any team in the world. But once you get past the starting 11, the lack of depth is shocking — a fact that was laid bare for all to see against Spain. Depth needs to be fueled by MLS and right now MLS is failing.

We can celebrate the fact that MLS is adding new stadiums, bringing in new franchises and attendance is slowly, but steadily growing. But, if we measure the league’s success in on-the-field quality it’s been a very stagnant 16 years. Here’s what I’d like to see from the MLS brass:

Be honest (at least with themselves) about where the league sits in the world.
Let’s start here: MLS is not a major league. Certainly it’s the top league in the US, but soccer is the world’s only true global game and when we look at the global perspective, MLS is decidedly minor league. This is not a knock on the league — it’s simple reality. MLS has been around for 16 years and the FA is approaching its 150th anniversary. MLS can’t compete with that, and it should not pretend that it can. League executives must acknowledge that, from a global perspective, the quality of play falls somewhere below the Mexican Premera and the FA Championship, but above the Scandinavian leagues.

Once MLS has a true perspective of where it is, it can set a goal for where it wants to be and identify the the necessary steps to get there. And this is where I have most of my issues with MLS — they don’t seem to care so much about the overall quality of play and growing a sustainable base of players to create a quality league. Instead, they attempt to mask their quality issues with new stadiums, aggressive expansion, commercial sponsorships and signing a small cadre of aging global stars. I get the sense that MLS truly believes that if they put these cosmetic pieces in place, the quality will come. But I have serious doubts about this strategy.

MLS needs to take a hard look at itself and ask, “Where can we get, from a player quality perspective, and how can we get there?” And put that question before, “Where can we build the next stadium and how much can we charge for the next expansion franchise?”

Give America’s second tier players a reason to stay.
Let’s be very clear about this: Sacha Kljestan should not be playing in Belgium, Clarence Goodson should not be playing in Denmark, Alejandro Bedoya should not be playing in Sweden and Freddy Adu sure as hell shouldn’t be playing in Turkey’s second division.

The fact that players like this can’t find value in MLS and feel their careers are better served playing in European backwaters is a massive issue for the league that has to be solved immediately. I obviously don’t know why these players made the individual decisions they did, but I’m sure it comes down to a combination of more money and a feeling that they have a better chance of “being seen” by top European leagues if they are in Europe. (The latter is a supposition, by the way, is both ludicrous and unproven.)

MLS needs to find a way to satisfy the needs of America’s second-tier players — the players who make up the crucial bench and depth of the US National Team — in a way that both benefits the league by retaining quality and benefits the players by improving their skills and developing their careers. Keeping them here increases the quality of the league and signals to the US audience that, with the exception of Europe’s top flight, this is the destination for America’s best players.

The issue here is money and perception, rather than quality. Clint Dempsey, Stuart Holden, Maurice Edu, Landon Donovan and Carlos Bocanegra have all proven that the best of MLS can succeed in Europe’s top leagues. MLS needs to compete with second-tier European leagues on salary to keep America’s second-best players in MLS.

Commit to becoming the best league in the region and a destination for the region’s best players.
You can’t have a top-class national team if your league isn’t the best in your region. MLS needs to become the pipeline to Europe for the Americas — a place to go if you want to be seen by European clubs. It also needs to establish itself as the best league in CONCACAF and among the top three leagues in all of the Americas. This means committing to bringing more international players into the league — yes, sometimes at the expense of lower-quality American players — and committing to win the CONCACAF Champions League not just ‘someday soon” but consistently.

Right now, Mexico is still the top dog in North American club soccer, but MLS has made up some ground. Unfortunately, because of the structural split between the USSF and MLS, there is very little incentive for MLS teams to perform well in the Champions League and the tournament is often ignored by all but the most hardcore soccer fans. It shouldn’t be that way. Soccer United Marketing (SUM), the marketing and licensing arm of MLS, owns the broadcasting marketing rights for the tournament and needs needs to elevate it and make it a priority. At the same time, MLS clubs must take a longer view of history and make winning the Champions League a priority.

Worry a bit less about parity.
MLS needs to come to grips with the fact that Sporting Kansas City is never going to be as big a club as the LA Galaxy. Just as Blackburn Rovers will never be as big a club as Chelsea. It’s a fact and it’s fine.

Leagues need big, successful and flashy clubs — that’s what makes sport interesting. It’s what creates heroes and villains. It creates drama. MLS has no drama. Across the board, teams are so evenly matched that a simple roll of the dice could just as easily determine the winner as actual match play. This isn’t right and it needs to change.

While I don’t think it’s time for MLS to abandon its single-entity structure yet (that time will come), I do think it’s time for the league to let teams with resources open up their wallets to bring in higher quality players. While the Designated Player rule was a step in the right direction, targeting aging European stars is short-sighted. There needs to be an across-the-board investment in player quality to make a real difference and that means aggressively raising the salary cap — something MLS owners proved they are unwilling to do during the 2010 Collective Bargaining Agreement.

The MLS salary cap currently sits at a paltry $2.55 million and will raise only 5 percent per year until 2014. This ensures teams will remain at parity with a low-quality base of players and, through the DP rule, the occasional stand-out star. For the league to take the next step, ownership needs to let go of the idea that all MLS teams are created equally and let the teams that have deep pockets spend some money. Small market teams may suffer in the short term, but fans will come out to see quality and everyone will benefit in the long run.

Start trading on the international transfer market.
See above for why this is going to be exceedingly difficult. But it’s not impossible. History proves that European clubs can and will be interested in MLS players and that MLS players can succeed in Europe. The problem is too many of these successful players leave on a free transfer. MLS shouldn’t let that happen.

This is a more complex issue than it seems — Americans are viewed in Europe as decent players who can be bought cheaply and developed into much better players (see Clint Dempsey and Stuart Holden). European clubs don’t want to invest too heavily in these players because for every Clint Dempsey there is an Eddie Johnson. That means paying a transfer fee on top of player salary can often be a risky investment. This is starting to change and MLS has been able to collect some fees for players like Jozy Altidore.

When MLS sells a player a portion of that sale should go to the club and be designated for further player development or purchase. This will provide incentive for teams to be more aggressive in the transfer market.

But MLS needs to find a way to buy players as well to increase the talent base. If our players are good enough to play in Scandinavia and the Championship, certainly those players are good enough to come here to play. MLS needs to find a way to play on the international transfer market. That means buying and selling players that fit their budget and their league. The players are out there, but I fear the willingness to invest isn’t.

How to get there: invest and cooperate.
All of this is obvious and basic. I’m sure that if anyone from MLS read this they’d agree with every one of them and point to ways they’re implementing them right now. At which point I would promptly call bullshit.

Yes, these are obvious steps. But for whatever reason, MLS has refused to implement them in a robust way. There are signs of progress here and there, but after 16 years and hundreds of millions of dollars in invested, MLS is still the same basic league it was on day one when it comes to on-the-field quality. Certainly the uniforms are sharpers, the stadiums are better and the league sponsorships have increased, but without improving the quality on the field those gains are unsustainable.

To improve player quality across the board, MLS needs to do two things that are going to be very hard if not impossible for them to do. First, they need to significantly increase the salary cap and invest real money in finding better players from across the Americas and the lesser leagues of Europe. As they do this, they need to curtail their desire to spend money on bringing aging “big names” into the league that provide temporary interests but don’t help overall quality.

Second, they need to create tighter ties with the USSF to promote international club competition and find out what the USSF and its coaching staff need in terms of player development. Remember, this post is ultimately about creating the kind of depth in the US National Team that can carry us beyond the second stage of the World Cup. Major global soccer powers have one governing body with one set of goals and one set of measures. The governing body wields its considerable power to create the best leagues it can for the country in concert with managing the needs and priorities of the national program. Here there are two bodies that are often in direct competition with each other. It’s why you have the absolute farce and tragedy of playing the Gold Cup while at the same time continuing with the MLS season. It’s also why the US Open Cup, the oldest club tournament in the country, has zero marketing support and capacity.

Under its current set up, MLS doesn’t view US player development as a priority. It’s priorities are to make money and market the league. Certainly there are areas where the priorities of the two bodies overlap, but in the most important areas they are often on different and sometimes competing tracks.

Without increased investment, deeper cooperation and a shared sense of vision between league and federation the player pool will remain stagnant and US soccer will go nowhere.

(Photo: A Game, by Flickr user rcolonna. Used under a creative commons license.)