The players, lawyers and league are trying to work out a new Collective Bargaining agreement and talk of a player lockout is in the air.
What a nightmare.
That’s all Major League Soccer needs, a strike or player lockout. The one good thing that could come out of it would be that major media outlets would cover it for a day or two, while cutting away from valuable coverage of whatever Mark McGuire is up to that day.
The league needs to raise the minimum salary to something respectable like $50,000 a year and get rid of developmental contracts. Everybody on what should be a full time 26-man roster should be making at least $50k a year so that they can call themselves full time pros.
Players can’t be expected to perform at a high level when they have to go wait tables at night or go to coach a youth club team to make ends meet in the afternoon.
Players should also attain free agency. If a player runs out his contract with a club in MLS then goes to Europe and then comes back, how does that club maintain his rights?
The player should be free to get wined and dined by all suitors and he (the player) should have the freedom to choose which club he wants to work for.
The lockout won’t happen…a strike won’t happen, all because they can’t. And everyone involved knows it.
–Mark Lincir is the Editor-In-Chief of 90:00 Magazine www.90soccer.com
