I do believe this is the first time an owner has actually stepped up and spoke out on the CBA issue in Major League Soccer. The LA Times sat down with LA Galaxy boss Tim Leiweke and discussed the lack of respect the owners are getting right now from the players.

“Here’s our issue, and I’m speaking on behalf of AEG,” Leiweke said in an interview with The Times on Monday. “We have spent to the tune of $300 million on soccer. We have spent money on facilities. We at one point owned six of the 10 teams to keep the league alive.

“I don’t even know how to react when I hear the players now saying that we have treated them poorly and they’re going to strike. The fact is, the Galaxy isn’t going to make money this year. There are only a couple of [MLS] teams that will make money this year.

“It’s not like this league is a work of completion. It’s not like we have accomplished what we have to accomplish to be stable and to know we have a great future. It’s not like we have reached the potential of a soccer league in this country.

“So when I hear them talk about striking and shutting the league down, I’ve got to tell you, they’re going to lose us when they talk like that.

“We do this out of passion. If this were a business, we would have quit this 10 years ago.”

“It would have been easy for us to quit over the last 10 years,” he said. “There were five different times we could have called it a day. But we didn’t. We fought through it.

“So for them to suddenly threaten that they’re going to shut it all down, I’m a little amazed at the lack of respect they show for the commitment that we all have made to get the league to where it’s at today.”

I’ve read and been told in the past AEG was one of the few owners that actually wants to make concessions to the players and based on that I would imagine they were one of the owners this time around that was at the center of making those concessions the league has talked about.

I’ll admit, I’ve been waiting for Leiweke and AEG to speak out on this issue. Its not secret that they along with the Hunts and the Krafts saved this league a while back from going under. Thankfully they aren’t about to quit on the league either even with this on-going issue.

There will certainly be some folks today that see the disrespect line and will run with it in support of the players. I loved that Leiweke talked about the league and the sport in general not reaching its full potential here. The players have to know that too. I kind of wonder too if the players even realize what the owners have put into this league at this point.

Leiweke said that it’s basically up to the players here, which is something we’ve been saying for a while. But like he said at the end of the article, its ridiculous and it needs to get done and be over here.

Yes today is the deadline for the CBA in Major League Soccer. Now no one has come out and said it will be by 5pm or midnight or when today. But it is today nonetheless.

I wanted to start off today with an interesting take by Brian Straus, which may be one of the better thoughts on the labor issues surrounding the veteran players, not the younger players.

MLS has no incentive to make the Hartmans ($165,000 in 2009) and van den Berghs ($227,000) richer. It does have an incentive to leave as much space under its salary budget as it can to acquire notable players from overseas and to retain top young American talent — the kind of athletes that will generate interest in a league in which the vast majority of teams are still losing money. League officials already think many players are overpaid based upon what they’d be able to command from a club overseas, if anything.

Interesting. He had some other thoughts I wasn’t totally in agreement with but that one made me think a bit.

I had been planning all week on posting my overall thoughts on this madness but really the more I read into everything that is written the less I want to. Its all made my head hurt like never before. I’m still optimistic here that something will get done in the final hour but right now it hasn’t sounded good.

We do know that some players at least aren’t going to strike here. That’s positive to hear. I still think a strike by the players does nothing to change the issue here for them. They want certain things so badly but the league still holds all the power here. I think moving to a strike won’t kill off soccer in this country but it won’t help either, especially in a World Cup year. I think Kenn Tomasch put it well earlier, there wasn’t soccer for ten years before MLS and the game didn’t die here.

Hopefully we’ll have good news to report later on today.

I could provide the same quotes and comments as other sites but for some reason right now I just feel that linking everything out is the better choice here. I think I will hold all my thoughts in though for one more day and let them explode tomorrow or early Thursday.

Below are some of the best thoughts and comments I’ve seen out there on the whole CBA issue. I’m throwing out different opinions here so enjoy. Note, I may or may not agree with everything below but it’s definitely some of the best stuff I’ve seen on the matter today (and yesterday).

The 24th Minute: The CBA I Want To See

Match Fit USA: A US Fan Guide To The MLS CBA: Propagada

Match Fit USA: Free Agency – Flatlining Quality Growth

ESPN’s Jeff Carlisle: Work stoppage only option for players?

Fake Sigi Blog: Free Agency and Single Entity

SBI: MMCB On Labor Mess

Soccer America’s MLS Confidential: Clock Ticking As Labor Strife Continues

ASN: MLS, Players Closer To CBA Deal Than You Might Think

Over the last few weeks we’ve seen lots of movement if you will in the soccer journalism world. One guy goes from a blog to a major service, another switches from one big site to another. Normally I like to write about something once or twice and leave it at that but after further thinking and reading the latest Adam Spangler article over at This Is American Soccer I had to dive back into the pool.

Spangler, like myself, loves the topic of sports journalism or in this case soccer journalism. I like it probably for some of the same reasons he does, my background is in journalism (though more on the broadcast side) and for some reason just the talk of media in general always interests me.

We’re at an interesting point though right now in journalism. If you’re reading this then you a contributing factor in some way to the demise of the print (newspaper and magazine) industry. Blogs are killing off those news services quicker than the old bosses at those papers would like to believe. I’ve worked in and around newspapers a decent bit to know that some folks in that industry still are too stubborn to really understand why their business is dying – but that is a subject for another day. Continue Reading…

It is indeed a slow day around these parts. For some reason the cold has come into Dallas and I just feel like doing next to nothing. Thankfully there are others around that are actively doing their part to produce interesting items and this one by Kyle McCarthy got me thinking.

Basically McCarthy offers a suggestion on how the league should re-do their scouting system. In a nutshell he says they should actually be more like the NHL. An idea that actually doesn’t sound too terrible on the surface. Continue Reading…

So if Freddy Adu comes home, where should he go? (Getty Images)

So it is a slow news day and I’m nearly thinking of taking the rest of the year off here. Still I wanted to post some extra thoughts on Freddy Adu and where in Major League Soccer he could go to. SBI posted some teams earlier and I wanted to add to it along with giving my thoughts on the teams already mentioned.

The teams in the discussion are Dallas, DC, Philadelphia, New York, RSL and Houston. Right away I’m throwing out those last three. New York makes little sense to me even though they are known for their poor decisions in roster choices. RSL fans have already let it be known to me that they don’t want Adu back, not even for dirt cheap. Houston only makes sense to me if they do end up losing Stuart Holden but even then I don’t really like the idea of it.

So that leaves Dallas, Philadelphia and DC from Ives’ list. I’m going to go ahead and throw a couple names in the hat that weren’t mentioned. Now you may like the idea or hate either way its a discussion piece.

I’m thinking along with those three others that could be interested would be Chicago, Chivas, Columbus, Colorado, and San Jose. Now given the fact that a couple of those clubs definitely won’t want to spend a lot on Adu they make a bit of sense because of their needs and how Adu plays.

Here’s my reasoning for each (along with further thoughts on the other three): Continue Reading…

The couple links I bring tonight are all solid. In fact they each could have easily gotten their own posts had I not been working on other things today, including the ground work of a possible new design for this site (yeah that’s a long ways off though). Still each are very interesting and deserve a full read if you haven’t done so already.

I want to kickoff things tonight with a look on the issue of reporting coverage surrounding Major League Soccer. Tom over at Pitch Invasion posted a fantastic article earlier today about the lagging media coverage that MLS is getting hit by, particularly in the newspaper industry.

The main question asked is if/when will MLS clubs begin to hire their own beat writers for newspaper similar to what one hockey team in the NHL is doing. Honestly the ship has probably sailed for the league to do something like that since they have so many team blogs now and the cost of hiring a beat writer is probably a bit too much to handle.

It comes down to an industry thing in the newspaper business. I know first hand from working part-time at the Dallas Morning News that coverage for all sports not named football (NFL) or baseball are going down. Yes even NBA coverage is slipping a bit in some markets believe it or not. It also comes down to each newspaper going more digital and having writers be bloggers.

Take the Morning News for an example, their soccer coverage is next to nothing. I know they have a stringer for games and what not but they don’t staff a blogger nor even appear to want one.

I still believe we are a ways away from seeing a club hire a full-time beat writer or even blogger to follow the club on away games just to get their stories in the local paper. For one it is an investment that I believe some clubs just won’t be willing to make.

At the end of the day the thing that is more missed than just a box score in the paper is an objective voice that sees the team and doesn’t just fill copy in paper from a stringer that produces a few lines. Continue Reading…