Archive for Clubs
Getting The Best Out Of De Guzman
Paul James
Paul James writes the James on Soccer blog. You can reach him at
GlobeSports Blog
No excuses for de Guzman this season
If Toronto FC expect to challenge for a playoff spot this season, then designated player Julian de Guzman will have to make an impact. So far he has received a tepid reception by TFC fans.
Joining the team during the final phase of the 2009 season, de Guzman looked a little off the pace, especially considering TFC director of soccer Mo Johnston laid out millions to acquire the Toronto-born talent.
While reasons for his lacklustre displays can be pinned on his inactivity for most of the 2009 Major League Soccer season – a layoff caused, in part, by the wrangling with his former European club, Deportivo La Coruna in Spain – there can be no such excuse this season.
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:
