Archive for MLS
It Will Be A Memorable Year In Canadian Soccer
Nigel Reed
Nigel Reed writes and broadcasts at
CBC Sports
A big year ahead for Canadian soccer
It’s OK to jump on football’s bandwagon in a World Cup year. If you want to drive around with a flag of choice adorning your vehicle, honking your horn in pride and celebration, I have no problem with that (on the understanding you don’t honk outside my house at two in the morning or behind me at a red light). It will be a memorable year, not only in South Africa, but also in our own backyard.
The light will shine brightest for a month in places like Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town where the world’s finest players will showcase their dazzling talents. The global festival will attract hundreds of thousands of fans and millions of dollars and after it’s over we can all rest our ears when the incessant buzz of vuvuzelas no longer fills the living room.
A world away from the World Cup, it will also be a year to remember in Canadian soccer. New teams, new coaches and a new attitude will all spring to mind when we reminisce about 2010.
I Know, I Know
Ben Knight
Ben Knight writes and publishes
Onward!
Drat this little league
I am so tired of “understanding” Major League Soccer.
All the blessed ins and outs of the league’s financial life-support system. Allocation money, discovery claims, low salary cap and young players who make less money than I do. (And, lately, I don’t.)
Yes, it’s all done a lovely job of keeping Our Little League alive in the bad-old economy. No, players have no guarantees in their contracts, any paycheque can be their last, and if they do get cut mid-season, no other team will sign them.
“It’s the only way it can be,” thunder the league’s defender-protectors, who can’t wait for a season when all sixteen clubs finish within a game of .500. How exciting will that be?
If that’s what you want, BigSoccer, why not save a ton of travel money, put sixteen logos in a bingo bin and draw your champion at random? Then the fans can all spend their ticket and travel money on booze and gummy bears, and no one will have to pay the players a thin, blessed dime!
I know, I know. Be happy that we have a league at all. I am. But I wanted so much more from the current CBA negotiations. I actually like the idea of salary caps in soccer. Just not with such stiflingly low ceilings.
Economy, economy, right, right, the economy.
Time To Analyze The CBA Analysis
Ridge Mahoney
Senior Editor
Soccer America
Clock ticking as labor strife continues
It’s time to analyze the analysis of the Collective Bargaining Agreement negotiations as explained, or not, to members of the American press.
This is not done to take potshots at any of the three sides in this issue: the league, the players union, and the media, since all have their axes to grind and/or prejudices to perpetrate. And there haven’t been a lot of specific details provided, other than a few figures who sparked a firestorm of interpretation and interpolation, speculative at best and flat-out wrong at worst.
But as the great scribe Mark Twain once said, “There are lies, there are damn lies, and then there are statistics,” so once uttered, numbers as well as statements can be as ephemeral as the air into which they dissipate.
So here goes:
