Over the next few months I’ll be publishing a series of articles covering what I see as fundamental knowledge for MLS fans.  MLS is a bit of an oddity and without an explanation many fans are simply unaware of the environment within which their teams exist and operate.  With Sporting KC on the up, and thousands of new fans crawling out of the woodwork it seemed to be a good time to get going on some basic MLS knowledge.   This first bit isn’t ‘fun’ – but its the essential thing that everything in MLS is impacted by. 

One of the fundamental rules about understanding MLS is forgetting what you know about other leagues and other sports and accepting that MLS is unique. The game on the field may be the same as football around the world however once you get behind the scenes thing get very different.

For example, Manchester City were purchased by a billionaire a few years back, who having to win no matter the cost has allowed the Manchester City management to spend with impunity, bringing in world renowned talent no matter the cost. The rich ownership and strong revenue that Manchester City generate have a direct relationship to the quality of the team on the field. Similarly when Portsmouth ran into financial trouble a few years ago they were forced to essentially sell players (they never could afford to pay when they signed them) quickly to generate revenue to survive.

There are no limits to what clubs can spend in most leagues whether they can afford to do so or not.  And why should their be? Teams in leagues around the world are independent entities, businesses and they live or die by the business decisions they make as well as the players they put on the field. This is not the case in MLS, the structure here is designed to bring stability and financial control to the league and ensure that it survives as whole without the extremes that we see demonstrated by Manchester City, Portsmouth and throughout the world of football.

MLS as a whole is one business (in simple terms). Each of the teams that make up MLS are essentially franchises owned wholly by the league. Owners as they are commonly known are essentially granted the right to operate that franchises. The teams fundamentally do not belong to them, however the owners essentially become stakeholders in MLS. This unique approach to league setup puts all of the league owners in the pool with each other, and the business interests of one group are too an extent the business interests of everybody else. Because of this structure, and the focus of MLS towards stability and growth, and with one eye on the past failure of the NASL (North American Soccer League) the freedom of the franchise owners to do what they will with their teams is limited.

The initial and most fundamental part is financial control, owners are essentially operating an MLS business within their own designated territory. If they turn a profit it is theirs however a chunk of all ticket sales are kicked back to the League so that MLS has cash to operate. MLS uses this money to sign players for the teams, and pay their wages. All players are contracted to the league, not to the teams they play for. On top of this the league has a strict salary cap, so that teams cannot spend to excess – after all it is MLS paying the players not the teams.

What this means is this:

If Bill Gates bought the San Jose Earthquakes and decided to turn them into a super team by outspending the rest of the league … he can’t. He would have the same $3.2m salary cap to spend as everybody. This means that the most commercially successful teams in MLS have no more cap space than the remainder of the league with a caveat. Teams which have the means to do so can spend extra money bringing in Designated Players. The first (approximate) $350k for these players is levied towards the salary cap and reduces the pool for the remainder of the squad. Anything above the MLS paid portion is privately financed, which is why the LA Galaxy can have a $6m a year player, and Sporting Kansas City can pay Omar Bravo over $1m a year. Each Designated Player takes a fairly large chunk of the salary cap meaning there is a trade off between the quantity of DPs a team can have long term and the quality of the squad behind them. The onus is therefor on finding a player or two at most who can really add to your squad without taking away your ability to have substantial depth in reserve. (We’ll cover DPs properly in another 101 — next week).

If a franchise is struggling, losing money like many do, they still have the same $3.2m to spend on players that everybody else does. This keeps teams at the lower end of the economic scale competitive and has allowed teams that suffer poor attendance or circumstances to remain floating while not having to worry about player wages. Before you sneer that was probably the Wizards from 1996 through 2010. Sporting Kansas City would not be here without these controls and the single entity.

Costs are firmly controlled in terms of playing staff, however individual owner-operator groups have a fairly free reign when it comes to other aspects of their team business. Soccer specific stadiums when constructed are seldom paid for by the owners, LIVESTRONG Sporting Park cost our ownership group here in Kansas City something in the region of $50m with the remaining approximate $150m tab being paid by sales taxes generated in and around the stadium and the Legends complex. As we have seen appropriate venues in good locations that are properly marketed and feature a product on the field will draw in crowds, and it is through high attendance and leveraging facilities like LIVESTRONG to host exhibition games, concerts, corporate sponsorship and through the sales of merchandise and concessions that the owners ultimately can make money. The stadium is not owned or operated by MLS, but Sporting Club.

The owners of Sporting Kansas City, if they play their cards right should start bringing in revenue from their journey into MLS now that LIVESTRONG Sporting Park is open however it is worth remembering that during the prior years of their journey from Arrowhead to LIVESTRONG via Community America Ballpark they were unlikely have done so. As more stadiums come online, as more television revenue is untapped and as soccer grows in the USA the single entity structure may eventually go away, but for the foreseeable future it is here to remain and it is fundamental to understanding how almost everything works in MLS.

For example, we currently have a playoff system that includes ten teams. While many fans have complained that having more than half the league play in the system cheapens it, the reality is that when teams are out of contention do not sell a lot of tickets. When a large percentage of ticket sales are kicked back to the league, and the owners are all essentially shareholders you can understand how a compromise between quality and quantity comes about.

The single entity affects everything from who manufactures the team kits, to the font that is used on the back of shirts, and even sponsor logos on the front of them have a mandated minimum sponsorship amount and involve a hefty kickback to MLS. At times it all seems a little like the Cosa Nostra have setup a structure to win territories and supply the Don and his allies with bundles of cash, however the reality is the MLS lost $350m in first 8 seasons and is only know starting to approach overall profitability. In the mean time the various owners have had to foot the bill.

The future is certainly looking bright, but it will be a long long time before the ultra-rich Arabs turn up and are able to assemble a world beater, if ever. The single entity structure will likely be here for as long as MLS is, accepting this fact and learning to think of all MLS teams being partners in one enterprise will help you understand MLS forevermore.

Next up …. Assembling a Squad …

Back in the days when I actually wrote on this blog I popped out a piece I am still rather proud of. It was a contrasting look at how my relationship with game days had changed (or not changed) between the 1990s when I was a regular at Arsenal games and 2010 as a season ticket holder at Wizards games.

A year later I considered amending the piece to account for yet another year, and deciding it would make it bloated and overly long decided to leave it be and discuss it here. The truth is as much has changed in the last 48 months, not so much with me and my aging old bones but my perception and relationship with the Wizards.

Roll the clock back to opening day of 2010 and we were playing DC United in the first home game of the season. We were at CAB and Peter Vermes was about to manage his first game as the “not temporary” manager of the team having opted to take on the job instead of seeking out a replacement. In a delicious twist of irony Curt Onalfo the prior manager had been hired by DC United, who had also picked up Adam Cristman, and the ever unpopular Kurt Morsink. They looked like a disaster waiting to happen, meanwhile I was filled with optimism for a Wizards season that included a vastly different roster. Ryan Smith, Stephane Auvray, Craig Rocastle, and Teal Bunbury were new exciting names and the team was looking like it might go somewhere.

The fan base as a whole was optimistic heading into a new season but pessimism wasn’t in short supply either. We’d failed to make the playoffs in 2009, made them in 2008 only to be dumped out by Columbus in the first round and there wasn’t much to cheer about in between. While CAB was an upgrade over Arrowhead in terms of atmosphere it still made us a laughing stock around the remainder of MLS.

Being a Wizards fan back then seemed like a chore in a way. We turned up in hope more than with any real optimism and despite trouncing DC United 4-0 that day, the sentiment of “they’ll let us down” wasn’t hard to find. If I could sum us up in one word it would have been downtrodden. I summed it up then by describing tailgating in an empty parking lot prior to the game:

“I feel at home with a beer in my hand and the poor sad bastards I stand with. I am one of them. A Wizards fan.”

Poor sad bastards? March 2010.

The funny thing was in many respects, the 2010 season without actually being good was one of the most monumental in the history of the team. We broke ground on LIVESTRONG Sporting Park in January, but there wasn’t enough of it by opening day to be truly exciting. We were still mired at CAB, it wasn’t until spring truly arrived and the wheels had started to come off the 2010 season that the stadium started to take real form and distract us from the horror show on the field. We finished the season strong but still managed to avoid the playoffs.

In November our name changed, our logo, our colors. The Kansas City Soccer Stadium became LIVESTRONG Sporting Park, and we were lumbered with a ten road trip to start the season. Even with the fresh start it seemed like we were hell bent on sabotaging the new season. We won the season opener vs Chivas then hobbled our way through the road trip. New name, same old Wizards.

LIVESTRONG finally opened and we blew our home opener, saving the party for the San Jose. That night remade the team for me, while the opener was a great night it was the San Jose game that made LSP home and the run that followed that night has taken us from nowhere in the Eastern Conference to the pinnacle of the division. Tonight (yeah I am late hitting publish), a win against San Jose will all but land us a playoff spot and it is fair to say that between now and then everything seems to have changed. The team has clicked, the stadium has remained full, the broader media market around Kansas City is taking notice. I see Sporting KC stickers on the backs of cars no matter where I drive in the metro and people contacting me and calling for tickets. I could not give them away last year.

For the first time in my brief history with this organization there isn’t a sliver of embarrassment around the edges. I am genuinely proud of how far this team has come in so short a space of time this, proud of the stadium for sure, but almost more proud of the way the fans within are reacting to it and learning to take part in a growing fan culture which is often mentioned in the same breath as Portland and Seattle by MLS pundits that used to consider the Wizards a blight on MLS in much the same way many fans view Chivas USA.

The ultimate indicator of change happened for me on Wednesday when we climbed to the peak of the Eastern Conference table. I renewed my season tickets in the Members Section the night before the game. It wasn’t so I could get a couple of poncy seats in the Victory Suite or so I could take advantage of it was because the very same people who refused free tickets from me in the past actually want season tickets in the members section next year. Winning over the English Ex-Pat community in Kansas City is a triumph, drilled home more than every by a friend of mine I jabbed at today when his beloved Everton lost.

“I’m in a good mood mate, Sporting Kansas City are heading for the playoffs! Never thought it possible but MLS is giving me a lot more pleasure than the Premier League these days…”

I think most of us can finally say the same about Sporting Kansas City.

There are a mere six regular season games left in the Sporting Kansas City season. Six games that will decide where we finish in the playoffs (if like me you believe we are close to locking this) or six games to decide if we make the cut. That said we do have competition and plenty of it. The Eastern Division is a paragon of mediocrity, a shining light of average and no fewer that six teams have a genuine shot at the playoffs and even the horrible Chicago and probably below have a mathematical chance of making it.

Tonight the Columbus Crew and Houston managed a draw.  A great result for us in what I deem to now be the race for first spot.  It was the first of 34 games that will tell the story of the final few weeks of our season.  If we win out, or do well none of it means a thing … but are we really going to? A win on the road this weekend in Utah will be massive but can’t be demanded the way we can demand to win against Eastern Conference competition at home. We also finish the season at DC United who are my own personal outside dark horse and boogie men. They have a quality experienced squad and they look like they are just starting to click.

Either way here are the 33 fixtures that count. The final one is a bullshit friendly vs Chivas Not USA’s 8th string.  The table below is accurate after the games on 9/14/2011 — it contains a couple of extra columns.  Available Points is basically how many points a given team has to play for, Max points is the total achievable.  As you can see DC United are in a position to wind up near the top ‘simply’ by winning the games they have in hand.

I’ll leave you to draw your own conclusions.

If you are a regular reader of mine you can’t have failed to have noticed I have been writing less. There are two strands to this, a general malaise has overtaken me, there has literally been too much Sporting KC this summer. Fans that I stand with at games have commented on this, that the week or twice weekly games in the heat have been a grind. Throw in blogging, podcasting, going to practice, watching reserve games, posting to much on Big Soccer, Tweeting, Facebooking the odd Radio Show, press conferences, the odd interview, and taking pictures and I hit a saturation point that demanded that I step back a long way and think about what I really want to do.

The reality is we don’t get paid for this kind of gig, and essentially for me now this means less coverage. Burned out, I just needed to take a wee break and go to games and not think about what I was going to write or say but simply watch and become a fan again rather than a mock columnist pretending to be a journalist. It has been nice. No press passes, no mics, no cameras, none of it – just me and the game I love watching again. It has been fun … you can have too much of a good thing.

I’ve opted for the low thrills approach. Buy my gear, buy my tickets, go to games, watch games, swear at referees, go home, think about blogging, ignore it till I come up with something real to write …

… therein lies the rub. I literally have nothing much to say.

The team has no obvious weaknesses aside from depth. Kamara and Bravo are scoring and if they are not there are goals coming from many players, the midfield are dominating, creating and defending, the defense is solid, Jimmy Nielsen isn’t being peppered anymore and we have our stadium. We are in a position in the league standings where we should be gravely disappointed if we do not make the playoffs. All the moving parts are in place, the team has the capability to win the MLS Cup because they can beat anybody in MLS on their day … and they can lose to the fucking Richmond Kickers and trigger a period of rage and writers block in yours truly that can only be eclipsed by the poor hire of a pansy ass German as the USMNT coach. This does not want to go away … I need a silverware shaped cure.

So to summarize the entirety of my Sporting KC thinking for this entire season:

- Auvray kinda blows
- Myers has his last Chance
- Besler needs to come big
- Cesar is shit and his head is tiny.
- Omar Bravo is going to be great
- Teal is a star all of a sudden?
- Sweet we beat Chivas USA
- God dang isn’t this trip over yet?
- God dang isn’t this trip over yet?
- God dang isn’t this trip over yet?
- God dang isn’t this trip over yet?
- God dang isn’t this trip over yet?
- Who is this French dude from Wrexham and Portugal? Collin?
- God dang isn’t this trip over yet?
- God dang isn’t this trip over yet?
- Yes
- Ok the stadium ruled, the result sucked, that referee also drew air inwards at great velocity.
- Yeah baby, we beat the tectonic plate pressure build up and then rapid violent release team.
- Oh god its hot and I’m ignoring the game playing Sporting Trivia
- Oh god its hot and I’m ignoring the game playing Sporting Trivia
- Oh god its hot and I’m ignoring the game playing Sporting Trivia
- Oh god its hot I’m done with the trivia.
- Oh god its hot
- Oh god its hot
- Oh god its hot
- Oh god its hot gan doon the toon.
- Oh god its hot
- Teal Bunbury has been possessed by Herman Munster boots.
- Chance Myers is no longer Reserve Team Jesus but is walking on water for the first team.
- Auvray is shit and is gone
- Cesar is now THE shit despite his tiny head.
- Collin is so awesome he can wear speedo and be cool. He is cooler than Hasselhoff.
- SETH SINOVIC WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU!! YOU ARE AWESOME WHILST MALNURISHED LOOKING!!
- Zusi says Power of Grayskull and gets super powers before games!! But just in his legs.
- FC Dallas and Seattle are stupid fat meanies.
- I think we will make the playoffs
- This weather is awesome, Beckham is still great, Landon Donovan looks like Leisure Suit Larry
- I am worried this team can’t cope under pressure.
- I am worried that we have a lack of players with playoff experience.
- DC United are a dark horse to corn hole us the hard way. Jody Foster and a pinball machine? Worse than that. We need to wrap this up before the last game before Charlie Davies dives us out of the playoffs or Eastern Conference title or De Rosario or god forbid Josh Wolff pops up and kicks us in the dangly bits in stoppage time.

I like the rest of you am basically sitting, and hoping that we make it and that if do that we don’t fold as soon as we play ‘a decent team’. Of course some things never change:

- Michael Harrington is working on his step over move.
- Diop is still smiling.
- Seattle are in the US Open Cup Final … and it is being played in Seattle instead of at …

As somebody somewhere on Twitter said just the electronic orgasm following Jürgen Klinsmann’s announcement as the new US Men’s National Team coach, the umlaut era of American Soccer has begun. The question is now, how do we gauge the success of our German head coach?

Premature yes but I think looking at the parameters of how you gauge success often help frame the debate about how or why somebody was hired. There are the obvious silverware, or progression to the late stage of a World Cup or similar standards but I think these tend to be simplistic. For example Sunil Gulati referred to the US World Cup campaign in 2012 as disappointing, perhaps because the US Men’s National Team bowed out to Ghana however I thought it was broadly successful given the talent available and the lack of depth on the bench for the Men’s team, did we really expect, or even more so demand that Bradley take a fairly average group of players to the pinnacle of the mountain or even to the Quarter Finals?

I am not sure that makes sense, no more so than dismissing a Ghanian team bristling with talent youth and now representing Lyon, Inter, Milan, Chelsea, Sunderland rather than the LA Galaxy, Fulham and Second division German and Turkish football.

You can make argument and counter argument which is why rather than looking at the nations involved it is often easier to look at the coaches and the talent available and in that light I look at Klinsmann’s record and can shrug. When presented with a wealth of riches and abundant talent he has failed to accomplish what was required and he has yet to be tested when that talent pool is best described as anemic and yet he is credited with the entire recreation German football in the wake of the 2006 World Cup in which he took a highly talented, highly experienced yet aging squad to the Semi Finals of a tournament hosted in Germany and then … lost and wound up finishing third.

Not bad?

1934 – Third Place
1954 – Champions
1958 – Fourth Place
1962 – Quarter Finals
1966 – Runners Up
1970 – Third Place
1974 – Champions
1978 – Died in the groups
1982 – Runners Up
1986 – Runners Up
1990 – Champions
1994 – Quarter Finals
1998 – Quarter Finals
2002 – Runners Up
2006 – Third Place
2010 – Third Place

That is Germany’s World Cup record. Forgive me for pointing out the obvious but Germany have always been a world power, they remain a world power and Klinsmann did not elevate them above the the average finishing position of 3rd to 4th that they have historically had. People still persist in pushing the idea that this was a triumph, sorry but Denmark turning up for the European Championships unfit because they did not qualify but were handed a spot when Yugoslavia were kicked out and going on to win the thing was a triumph of tactical management. Germany losing in a semi final on their own turf? Not so much.

I mean take any of the 1996 versions of Michael Ballack, Miroslav Klose, Jenns Lehmann, not to mention World Player of the Year nominee, and FIFA and UEFA Left Back of the year winning Phllip Lahm and see they are not automatic first team choices in basically any team in the world right now. There are few exceptions where it is close. The USA has never had that kind of talent, genuine world class players that could literally play anywhere. The current superstars of US football and deservedly so are Landon Donovan who with the exception of a successful mini-loan at Everton and a poor stint in Germany has plied his craft as a big fish in the small pond that is MLS and Clint Dempsey who as a forward has scored 33 goals in the Premier League in 150ish games since 2006. He is good player but right on a par with his team mate Bobby Zamora and neither of them are going to set the World on fire outside of fleeting moments.

Who is next on the pecking order? Will Charlie Davis make it back? Will Agudelo, Bunbury or Shea come good on a national level? After Clint and Landon the drop off is fairly dramatic with the exception of Tim Howard and Holden. The FIFA ranking of the US Mens team is 30th, and yet the USA won their World Cup Group in 2010 – at the expense of England, reached the final of the 2009 Confederations Cup final defeating a Spanish team that was so stocked in talent that it went on to win the 2010 World Cup and was ranked number one in the World by FIFA at the time. I don’t know about you but I think that since 2007 the USA have often punched well above their weight.

Klinsmann in the world of the sane would simply have to maintain this to be deemed successful however in the magnified and scrutinized role as the USMNT Manager Klinsmann will have no such luxury and in order to be heralded he will need to improve upon Bradley’s record which seems hard to accomplish given that in four years his two biggest assets in Donovan and Dempsey will be deep into their 30s and the obvious replacements have yet to show themselves.

Where does that leave us? Can the US win their group in 2014 in the World Cup? Even Qualify for the Confederations Cup in 2013? Can we compete with a Mexican side where the likes of Carlos Vela are better players than any starting forwards we currently have and Chicharito is being groomed to be a World Star? I don’t know … if we truly have been punching above out weight then the real burden for Klinsmann going forward will be the excessive expectation from a nation of soccer fans who seem to think they are better than they are, better than Ghana and their stacked roster and youth and who demand that the US Mens National team improve irrespective of the status of the talent pool.

Herein lies the rub, Jurgen Klinsmann has never improved anything. He got fired at Bayern Munich with a loaded table and a big budget and yet the advocates are looking to him as a messianic figure who will recreate US football at all levels and stimulate the kind of national production pipeline that has produced Ozil and co in Germany. Forgive me but Germany have always produced World Class players… with or without Mr Klinsmann and they all start out young. I fail to see how that translates to a US based system that is far less progressive and infinitely less developed, it is not a case of tweaking but creation that is needed here if the bright lights of tomorrow are to be a step above Teal Bunbury.

The production of genuine talent in Germany starts so much younger than it does in the states, and even if we can get the youth soccer portion right at some stage this ‘talent’ is still going to be handed off to stables of MLS coaches who have a mandate to win rather than foster the the talent for the future. The fractured, uncoordinated and combative world of US Soccer needs more than one man to help it rise to the level it could be, and it will require more time to accomplish than Klinsmann will be allowed by a nation who are less willing to fail than most. As it is if Klinsmann can pull off two moments as memorable, captivating, and important as the win against Spain in the Confederations Cup Semi Final and the win against Algeria in the World Cup then I’ll be marginally surprised, but if he manages to rebuild the entire soccer landscape then I’ll stop rubbing my eyes when I see flying pigs and find the end of the rainbow.

That that job needs undertaking is without a doubt, but entrusting it to a man with 14 matches of competitive International experience and 43 games in charge of Bayern Munich before they fired him seems like a stretch. That people have bought into this seems even more of a leap forward, so now we not only have the overblown idea of where the US stands in the ranks of US football to contend with but now also the idea that Klinsmann will somehow improve this situation. I don’t see it.

If only you could translate player success and fancy European accents into managerial success, as it is we all have is the talk and no evidence that he can walk the walk.