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.

We know the news yesterday sounded terrible. The players voted 350-2 (or whatever the final tally really was) to strike if a new collective bargaining agreement with the league is not reached in time for the season openers in two weeks. Or so we thought.

Buzz Carrick sheds a little more light into that vote by the players. Apparently as Carrick puts it the players “voted to flip the cover back on the doomsday strike button.” Meaning they have to do yet another vote if they actually want to strike. This news that they voted to strike wasn’t completely accurate according to Carrick, it was only a vote to engage the ability to strike.

The next vote would however to be to push that doomsday button.

We’ve waited a little while for a response from the owners and today we finally got it (h/t once again to Steve Goff for the quotes).

MLS president Mark Abbott gives us an indication that the league isn’t happy with what the players have said this week about the CBA discussions.

“…the meetings were productive and we have scheduled a number of additional meetings. While I can’t discuss what takes place across the bargaining table, I can say that the players’ comments do not accurately reflect the proposals that we have made to address the players’ concerns or the productive nature of the discussions between MLS and the union.

“We have an understanding with both the union and the mediator that we will not publicly discuss what takes place during these bargaining sessions. As such, we were disappointed to see comments from a number of players characterizing the status of the negotiations and the possibility of a strike.”

Players responded to this by saying that their talks of strike were just a matter of showing how unified they are.

All I can say at this point to both sides is get it done people. They aren’t just hurting the game here in the States but more importantly they are hurting the fans of the league. Both need to be a little more reasonable with one another here. Hopefully the mediator will get them there.

Major League Soccer has two weeks to get a new CBA deal done or else it’s players will strike. According to Steve Goff, the players voted 350-2 in favor of striking in two weeks, hours before the season opener in Seattle between Philadelphia Union and the Seattle Sounders FC.

Don’t ask who the two that voted no are, no doubt they aren’t big in their locker rooms if word gets out they voted in that manner.

The ball is squarely back in the league’s corner now with this news. They haven’t said a word since the talks ended the other day in Washington.

The thing I don’t get is why strike before the season? If I were the players I’d get at least a paycheck or two then strike, that’d put some serious pressure on the owners if they just randomly walked out. Maybe I am wrong in that line of thinking but it just seems to make a little more sense to me than doing it before the start of the season.

Major League Soccer and the MLS Players Union both confirmed today that they have accepted the invitation of a mediator to try and resolve the issues currently being experienced in the negotiations for a new Collective Bargaining Agreement.

As part of the meetings, MLS and the Union have jointly accepted the invitation of George H. Cohen, the Director of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS), to serve as a mediator during the discussions.

So what do you all think of the two sides going into mediation here? It sounds like having a both sides are serious about getting a deal worked out soon. MLS commissioner Don Garber has gone on the record lately saying that he believes a new CBA will be hammered out before the start of the new season. I still believe it will too for that matter.

What can I say, today was quite a day. Going in we knew it was going to either be a strike or nothing at all by the players. Some folks around the Internet said it would definitely be a strike while others were more optimistic and said it wouldn’t be.

Next we heard the players would release a statement and that got the ball spinning even more. Talks of walking out or striking really started to come up more with some folks saying it was definitely going to happen. Now I’m not calling any of those folks out for getting wrong or bad information but thankfully they were wrong in this instance.

Then 5pm came and for a few minutes we all stood around holding out breath for a one paragraph statement from the MLSPU that said the players wouldn’t be striking. At that point we all exhaled and moved on. Continue Reading…

First we got the MLSPU on the no strike talk now we get the press release from the league.

Still no plans of lockout so now what?

NEW YORK (Feb. 25, 2010) – Major League Soccer issued the following statement today:

“During the last year, Major League Soccer has been negotiating with the MLS Players Union on a new Collective Bargaining Agreement. The current CBA expires today and the Players Union would not agree to a further extension.

“We have told the Players Union that the League does not plan to lock out the players and we are prepared to begin the season under the current CBA while we continue to bargain to reach agreement on a new CBA.

“We have listened to the issues raised by the MLS Players Union and the League has made detailed proposals that have addressed these issues, including in the areas of economics, guaranteed contracts, options and the ability of a player to move to another MLS Club if he is released by his current Club. These proposals, which represent substantial changes from the current CBA, will significantly increase our spending and provide substantially more rights to the players.”