I’ll have more later on the new details of the CBA.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Shortly after the players release the league sent out a slightly longer release. That release had a little more to it than the players itty-bitty statement. Once again MLS president Mark Abbott came out and said detailed proposals that have addressed issues brought up by the players. Honestly its hard to say at this point when those proposals were made and what exactly were they.

The wording though by the league does sound a little better at this point though. Or at least they hit on the main points that we’ve all been seeing for weeks now, “guaranteed contracts,” “options and the ability of a player to move to another MLS Club if he is released by his current Club” and so on and so on. Hopefully the league bringing up these issues does mean they are trying to find a way to make their players at least somewhat happy here.

With the players not striking today it basically means to me that the players union is out of options at this point. They knew striking was a last resort and honestly I’d imagine not all of them really wanted to go down that dark path at this point. They know in a World Cup year it would only make matters worse for their own. Plus I’d imagine not all players signed off on a strike anyways, there’s probably some agreement within the Union to have a certain amount of votes before they can act on something.

For right now the CBA will expire tonight and the players will at least for the time being be good sports. I don’t think we should assume a strike won’t happen at all here but at this point I doubt it will happen from the players. It seems as though the preseason is back on for now and folks in Arizona and Florida can see some quality games this weekend. Speak of that for a moment interesting to see MLS clubs go to the same locations as baseball teams to train here…honestly I love it.

What did you all take away from today’s madness? Still see a strike happening? Think the players will get anything out of this here? Let’s hear it.

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.”

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.

A couple weeks ago the talks were silent leaving most of us to question how things were going between the players and the league. I guess it truly was the calm before the storm. This morning Steve Goff is reporting that the talks on Monday ended rather nasty, with both sides not meeting on Tuesday.

The bigger note from Goff is that the players are down to their last chip and are deciding whether or not to strike.

From the sounds of things both sides are very far apart. Sadly enough if a work stoppage happens the league could end up losing it’s only CONCACAF Championship League team in the Columbus Crew. They would have to forfeit  or seek a postponement if there is a stoppage.

Today is shaping up to be a real crazy day. I hope to give my overall thoughts on this whole mess at some point. It all depends on how things go over the next few hours.