This Way, EPL Investors!
The Stretford End’s trial continues…
MLS commissioner apparently has decided to live the “24 Hour Party People” life while at the Soccerex conference in Manchester this week.
The commish — who failed to bring Barcelona and Real Madrid into the MLS fold and might not even have a season this year — says he would like some EPL teams to become partners with MLS and buy a team for the bargain basement price of $40 million. Because sooo many EPL teams have extra money to cough up for an expansion team in another country. Portsmouth West, anyone?
Here are a couple of the best (or craziest) bits:
“I would like to think we are part of the world game, and in order to do that we need to have more deep association with the global football community.”
Really? Maybe if you’d like to be more a part of the global football community (and by the way, he only calls it football when in England because, see, that’s what they do…) you could do stuff like follow the international calendar, use the normal transfer windows, think about a single table and ALLOW YOUR PLAYERS TO MOVE! Sorry. Just got a little wound up there.
Another gem:
“We could learn a lot about youth development and coaching and the technical side of things,” Garber said. “On the technical side, we still need help, and I like to think we are not creating an American version of the world game.”
Dear EPL teams, why don’t you pay us $40 million to come here and teach us how to run a team and a league because we’re not good enough at it?
Jesus, dude. What a nut.
What Garber fails to mention is that there was already a partnership between an EPL team and an MLS team. It’s the abandoned proposal for an Arsenal academy within the Colorado Rapids organization. But why let the reality of the past impede your crazy talk?
At its core, I like the idea of an EPL team having a feeder team in MLS. Manchester City, obviously, is an option. But look at how the Chivas USA experiment changed from the original “all-Mexican feeder team” to just another MLS team. It’s just not gonna work without a massive investment beyond the buy-in price.
Garber is a smart man and quite attractive up close (oops, lost the inner monologue again). I actually think he’s done about as good a job as he can within this system. It’s wise of him to go to England and try to bring money to the States by using phrases like “marketing reach” and “brand building.”
But he’s on ecstasy if he thinks he’ll get anything but polite smiles and chuckles from EPL owners. Now, if you’ll excuse me, Garber and I are gonna dance to some Happy Mondays at the Hacienda.
I’m glad you redeemed yourself at the end of this post; you can’t fault the guy for trying to work to expand/improve his organization. Its a long shot but he’s making moves; one of the problems is the instant-gratification that is pro sports, getting the MLS anywhere near the European leagues is going to take a long, long, long time and so he has to sell it as a long-term investment. The Chivas thing lasted how long??
And the global football community thing, the MLS needs to get on the global schedule of internationals and transfers if they want to play with the big kids
What do we expect from a league that signs has beens and pays them a fortune while young players get 30k a year.
I agree with a few points. A single table would be good. Who cares about the east and west divisions. Rivalries are going to happen as they do, distance may be one reason, but with a young league, there’s no reason to push it.
Regarding the seasons following Europe, that’s obviously going to be a tough point. Few players are going to want to play through the winter in most east coast location. Toronto is putting in grass for the first season. What happens when a foot of snow falls the day before a match?
Don’t get me wrong, I love watching matches in lousy weather.