It’s (Not) All About The Benjamins
In response to MLS president Mark Abbott’s contention the other day that the league is prepared to spend an additional $60 million on player costs over the five-year term of a new collective bargaining agreement, union head Bob Foose says that’s fuzzy math (per Goff).
Foose also goes on to say it’s about more than just money:
“Respect for some basic player rights, not economics, is the real driving force behind the players’ proposals. This negotiation is not about huge raises for players or massive new expenditures for owners. It is also not about unrestricted free agency. Rather it is about basic fairness for our members, and our ability to make improvements to a player system that is one-sided and unfair.”
And I’d have to say I see his point. There’s talk about what happens when a player gets released, what happens when he’s basically in limbo (as Dave van den Bergh and Kevin Hartman are).
Two things seem to me to be readily apparent:
- If you want the player, pay the player. If you don’t want the player, don’t hold the player hostage.
- All this negotiating through the media is unseemly and should stop right now. If you’re really a commissioner, Don Garber, you get both sides on the phone and you say “Not one more f***ing word out of any of you until this is settled or the players walk. Do you feel me?”
Tags: collective bargaining, MLS, soccer
February 21st, 2010 at 7:18 pm
How are van den Bergh and Hartman in limbo? No team in MLS wants them. If they did they would have contacted KC and Dallas by now. A 4th round or 50k in allocation should land either of them.
February 21st, 2010 at 9:38 pm
Did you even read the link?
February 21st, 2010 at 11:19 pm
I gotta think Abbott negotiated through the media with Garber’s enthusiastic approval, if not express orders.
February 22nd, 2010 at 7:23 am
So, Abbott comes out and says publicly MLS is going to spend an additional $60 million on players in the next five years as evidence of their commitment, but it slips his mind that $35 million of that is because they have three more teams coming in? Or that the $25 million that’s left amounts to funding the same annual bump in the salary budget MLS has been making?
Not MLS HQ’s finest hour.
February 22nd, 2010 at 8:11 am
Three new teams? (Portland, Vancouver, Montreal, I guess). Eventually there will need to be a fourth if there’s a third, 19 teams makes no sense.
And I don’t know what the usual annual bump in the salary budget has been. I haven’t seen a public list of the year-by-year budget.
But your point is well-taken. It’s like the story Jim Bouton tells in Ball Four where a young player was told by management that they were going to give him a raise…until the player realized that the new contract that had just gone into effect meant they HAD to give him that raise. So he was getting no amount of largesse at all.
See, THIS is why I say you don’t make public statements.
February 22nd, 2010 at 8:35 am
I would pay good money if Don Garber would, on the record, say, “Do you feel me?”