MLS facing a strike as CBA deadline looms

The players want free agency and Major League Soccer is holding firm. Just how far apart do the two parties remain, and is North American soccer headed towards a work stoppage?

Negotiations between MLS and its players over a new Collective Bargaining Agreement have entered their final week and with an agreement seemingly still some distance away, a strike is looming.

The major sticking point has always been free agency. Players want the ability to move freely from club to club, but the single entity structure of MLS does not allow for this.

The other major North American sports leagues have all conceded to free agency. MLS, however, remains firm, in part because many of the league’s owners remember just what Major League Baseball and the like conceded to when allowing free agency.

When one group exercises a large amount of power over another, they do not generally like to concede any of it.

The players have been told that they should not expect MLS to budge on the issue, and just last week Real Salt Lake owner Dell Loy Hansen was handed a record fine for publicly stating the free agency issue was a “waste of time” and a “go nowhere conversation”. The league’s position was “not going to change”.

That the negotiations are coming down to the wire is not exactly a surprise, as Seattle Sounders captain Brad Evans explained.

“When I’m negotiating for a house I like to get the best deal and the person selling the house also likes to get the best deal and at the 11th hour when they are accepting bids you kind of battle it out so I expect it to be the same,” he told reporters when the MLS pre-season began in January.

Evans summed up exactly what all his MLS colleagues have been saying — free agency is what the players feel they deserve and they are willing to do what is necessary to get it.

“I think that [free agency] encompasses everything. I think that it involves money, it involves contracts, it involves everything. It’s a big umbrella,” he said.“We’re willing to battle for what we think is right. Not only right, but necessary for everybody.”

When asked if the players were willing to go on strike to get it, his response was immediate: “Absolutely.”

The players were willing to put free agency on the backburner to accomplish other things during the previous CBA talks five years ago. Then as now, the cloud of a potential strike hung over the MLS pre-season — then-Sounders designated player Freddie Ljungberg reportedly skipped out on training because he was unsure if the season would be played.

It is players like the former DP Ljungberg who are critical to the success of any potential dispute between the union and the league. The question has always been, will the big earners be willing to sacrifice to help out the little guy?

This time around, it has been a united front. Robbie Keane, the poster boy for MLS big spending success, told Sports Illustrated on January that he would be “100 percent behind” the players should they go to strike.

How much any potential strike would affect a still-growing league like MLS is difficult to say, but it certainly is not something either side wants. Nonetheless the players appear united in their determination to do what they feel is just and there remains what feels like the enormous distance between the union and the league — just the kind of conditions that lead to a work stoppage.

Originally published at www.fbcollective.com by David Raish.