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Canales Corner: Time For A Seat At The Table
Don't buy any hype that relations between players and owners are going to be sweetness and light, but in the end, the parties came together to get a deal done. Now, it's time to acknowledge the diversity of the league in future representative talks.
Mar 22, 2010 3:59:00 AM
By Andrea Canales
The details of the new collective bargaining agreement are still being worked out, but the main points are agreed to, and the nightmare scenario many fans feared of a delayed or possibly cancelled Major League Soccer season won't happen.
The players and owners came together and hammered out a deal.
Who blinked?
Well, to a certain extent, both sides did. The owners were no doubt surprised at both the unity and the fervor of the union demands for more rights instead of straight financial recompense.
Sources have indicated to Goal.com that the owners were prepared to offer more financial incentives to work out a deal, but the players pressed instead for concessions on issues related to player movement.
Frankly, that freaked the owners out a little bit.
"The words 'free agency' scare the living **** out of them," said player representative Todd Dunivant, not mincing words about the reaction across the table to one of the key sticking issues of the collective bargaining agreement.
It's likely that the new CBA is in fact a fine deal for most players, but it leaves a bit of a blind spot.
For example, it's apparent that the players' union has some dissention in their ranks. The vote for a strike option was 383 in favor to 2 against.
I tried to suss out the dissenting pair by questioning players directly.
"I was with the majority of the players in thinking that we needed to do this," said last season's Rookie of the Year, defender Omar Gonzalez.
One down, 384 to go.
"Are you trying to weed them out?" Gonzalez asked about my mission.
I gave it one more shot, asking Dunivant if he was one-half of the infamous dissenting duo.
"I was not," Dunivant answered in response to my query. "I voted for it."
Statistically speaking, it may take a while for me to find out the two nay votes cast. Realistically, it may always remain a mystery.
"It was a blind vote, a written ballot sent straight to our union," said Dunivant.
I'm still going to guess that the two players voting against the strike were foreign. The player's union has looked after the needs of the majority, and in MLS, that means North American players.
The executive board of the union, the one which represented the players in the final negotiations, consists of Chris Klein, Landon Donovan, Pat Onstad and Jimmy Conrad. (Ben Olsen's spot on the board has apparantly not been filled since he crossed over from player to team staff.)
Unless Canadian Onstad is supposed to represent the foreign players, that means the executive board negotiating the main contract for the entire league doesn't have one person with an outside perspective of soccer in other countries and leagues and the priorities of players from such places. At the very least, it means the executive board has only native English speakers negotiating for a body of players who are the most multinational of any North American professional team sport.
In my own personal experience, what many players from outside countries value is getting paid. Or at least that's the impression I've gotten when I've interviewed recently arrived players to MLS and asked what they like about the league. A significant number mention regular paychecks. Too often, clubs around the world operate under loose rules that allow teams to go for months without paying their players.
It's not that certain foreign players can't benefit from some of the rights the MLSPU fought for. Dutchman Dave van den Bergh, for example, may finally get his situation at FC Dallas resolved. Perhaps for him, married to an American, things like player mobility and guaranteed contracts are far more crucial than total salary.
Yet as the owners and players learned in negotiations, everything is a trade-off. If players left salary cap room on the table while insisting on other aspects of the new contract, that means that every MLS team has less money to spend on new signings - especially quality foreign signings of the sort fans yearn for to raise the overall standard of play across the board.
After all, the shorthand for many fans as a solution to improve MLS has been - raise the salary cap.
Americans can benefit from a higher salary cap as well, however. If, as reported, USA youth star Lee Nguyen recently turned down a chance to return to his hometown, to play for FC Dallas, because the salary offer was too low, it's clear that a higher cap number would have allowed the Texas club to raise their inducement.
However, the focus in this CBA put money as a secondary consideration.
"The players have a lot more rights now, a lot more freedom to have the ability to sign with other teams if you get cut or waived or traded," Dunivant explained. "That kind of player security is going to help this league get better. It's going to improve the quality of the play. Ultimately, everyone is going to win."
Still, at a time when the last remaining original player in MLS is DC United's Jaime Moreno, a Bolivian, it seems a glaring oversight that the foreign contingent of league players isn't represented on the union's executive board by anyone who can relate to their situation firsthand.
Andrea Canales is Chief Editor of Goal.com North America
Become a fan of Goal.com USA's Facebook fan page for all the latest news and insight into everything the related to the beautiful game!
The players and owners came together and hammered out a deal.
Who blinked?
Well, to a certain extent, both sides did. The owners were no doubt surprised at both the unity and the fervor of the union demands for more rights instead of straight financial recompense.
Sources have indicated to Goal.com that the owners were prepared to offer more financial incentives to work out a deal, but the players pressed instead for concessions on issues related to player movement.
Frankly, that freaked the owners out a little bit.
"The words 'free agency' scare the living **** out of them," said player representative Todd Dunivant, not mincing words about the reaction across the table to one of the key sticking issues of the collective bargaining agreement.
It's likely that the new CBA is in fact a fine deal for most players, but it leaves a bit of a blind spot.
For example, it's apparent that the players' union has some dissention in their ranks. The vote for a strike option was 383 in favor to 2 against.
I tried to suss out the dissenting pair by questioning players directly.
"I was with the majority of the players in thinking that we needed to do this," said last season's Rookie of the Year, defender Omar Gonzalez.
One down, 384 to go.
"Are you trying to weed them out?" Gonzalez asked about my mission.
I gave it one more shot, asking Dunivant if he was one-half of the infamous dissenting duo.
"I was not," Dunivant answered in response to my query. "I voted for it."
Statistically speaking, it may take a while for me to find out the two nay votes cast. Realistically, it may always remain a mystery.
"It was a blind vote, a written ballot sent straight to our union," said Dunivant.
I'm still going to guess that the two players voting against the strike were foreign. The player's union has looked after the needs of the majority, and in MLS, that means North American players.
The executive board of the union, the one which represented the players in the final negotiations, consists of Chris Klein, Landon Donovan, Pat Onstad and Jimmy Conrad. (Ben Olsen's spot on the board has apparantly not been filled since he crossed over from player to team staff.)
Unless Canadian Onstad is supposed to represent the foreign players, that means the executive board negotiating the main contract for the entire league doesn't have one person with an outside perspective of soccer in other countries and leagues and the priorities of players from such places. At the very least, it means the executive board has only native English speakers negotiating for a body of players who are the most multinational of any North American professional team sport.
In my own personal experience, what many players from outside countries value is getting paid. Or at least that's the impression I've gotten when I've interviewed recently arrived players to MLS and asked what they like about the league. A significant number mention regular paychecks. Too often, clubs around the world operate under loose rules that allow teams to go for months without paying their players.
It's not that certain foreign players can't benefit from some of the rights the MLSPU fought for. Dutchman Dave van den Bergh, for example, may finally get his situation at FC Dallas resolved. Perhaps for him, married to an American, things like player mobility and guaranteed contracts are far more crucial than total salary.
Yet as the owners and players learned in negotiations, everything is a trade-off. If players left salary cap room on the table while insisting on other aspects of the new contract, that means that every MLS team has less money to spend on new signings - especially quality foreign signings of the sort fans yearn for to raise the overall standard of play across the board.
After all, the shorthand for many fans as a solution to improve MLS has been - raise the salary cap.
Americans can benefit from a higher salary cap as well, however. If, as reported, USA youth star Lee Nguyen recently turned down a chance to return to his hometown, to play for FC Dallas, because the salary offer was too low, it's clear that a higher cap number would have allowed the Texas club to raise their inducement.
However, the focus in this CBA put money as a secondary consideration.
"The players have a lot more rights now, a lot more freedom to have the ability to sign with other teams if you get cut or waived or traded," Dunivant explained. "That kind of player security is going to help this league get better. It's going to improve the quality of the play. Ultimately, everyone is going to win."
Still, at a time when the last remaining original player in MLS is DC United's Jaime Moreno, a Bolivian, it seems a glaring oversight that the foreign contingent of league players isn't represented on the union's executive board by anyone who can relate to their situation firsthand.
Andrea Canales is Chief Editor of Goal.com North America
Become a fan of Goal.com USA's Facebook fan page for all the latest news and insight into everything the related to the beautiful game!
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