THE AMERICAN WAY?

Frank Yallop. The name brings a nervous twitch to the faces of Ipswich Town fans even now, eleven years after LA Galaxy’s head coach played at Portman Road.

Indeed, there is an alarmingly high ‘Football League in the eighties’ influence on Major League Soccer (MLS) in North America at the moment – to which I will return.

MLS is part of one of football’s most intriguing and stark role-reversals. Everything ‘bad’ about modern professional sport seems tied up in the Premier League. Exorbitant salaries, exorbitant TV influence, exorbitant passages of Glenn Hoddle diction on ‘Monday Night Football.’

Meanwhile in America – so often the root of such evils – MLS rules and regulations enshrine open competition, sound finance and a genuine ‘league’ of competitive but co-operative clubs.

You can’t even pin the abomination ‘soccer’ on them. It was coined in 1880 in ENGLAND by the indisputably English Charles Wreford-Brown. So you can file such criticism (a staple of English MLS coverage) under ‘lazy journalism.’ If there’s room left.

Dictionaries define ‘league’ as “a collection…that combines for mutual protection or co-operation.” And MLS fits that bill far better than the increasingly protectionIST Premier League.

Financial sobriety is delivered by totally transparent and capped players’ salaries. English journalists were recently able to joke that ex-Middlesbrough and Portugal defender Abel Xavier should ‘have a word with his agent’ when his annual salary was revealed to be $79,000, Michael Ballack’s remuneration for a long weekend) and way below the $400,000 cap.

Salary inflation might, of course, be encouraged by such revelations. But only within manageable pre-set limits. And while there are exceptions allowed for in rule – wouldn’t be writing this piece but for one notable Walthamstow-born instance – even these are regulated.

MLS’s ‘designated player rule’ allows such exemptions, known by some as ‘marquee signings.’ In fact, the rule was nick-named after the latest north-east Londoner to join the MLS roster, over a year before he actually did so. An element of pre-planning way beyond the scope of any English football authority.

Clubs are limited to 28 players, 18 on a ‘senior’ roster, and 10 on a ‘developmental’ roster. This prevents the mass buying of the best talent of which Liverpool were accused in the seventies and eighties to prevent opposition clubs from buying them. The developmental roster is made up of under-24s, or under-25s for goalkeepers, a fascinating and perceptive recognition of goalkeepers’ slower ‘development.’

The ‘SuperDraft’ promotes better competition by allowing the previous season’s weaker clubs first pick of the best available players – a mixture of the American Football system and the school playground – with the better teams having to make do with the rest. A bit like Chelsea ending up with Shevchenko and Ballack last August. Ho-ho.

The draft is a televised event in itself, the BBC’s ‘Football Focus’ was present at this year’s. As is the ‘lottery’, a similar system applying during the season to players missed from the draft for various reasons. Which would give ‘National Lottery Live’ a new perspective and a million extra viewers if replicated here.

MLS clubs are increasingly playing in ‘soccer-specific stadia.’ Never mind the phraseology, feel the progress, with seven of MLS’s thirteen clubs currently spurning the grid-iron stadia which housed the New York Cosmos’s of old.

And the old habit of basing clubs around immigrant communities has been kicked, with the honourable exception of LA-based Club Deportivo Chivas USA, a ‘sister’ club to Mexico’s Club Deportivo Guadalajara. But they are community-based in the way that supporters’ trust run clubs are attempting here. And their roster includes the distinctly un-Mexican sounding Johnathan Bornstein.

Aside from the disturbing purchase of an LA Galaxy season ticket by J-Lo, its all prudent, solid foundation-building, everything the Premier League is not. Making the afore-mentioned Football League influence all the more fascinating.

Frank Yallop was just the start. He was quickly followed on ‘Football Focus’ by a bloke wearing a Paul Mariner fright-mask who turned out to BE Paul Mariner, assistant coach at New England Revolution to ex-Liverpool squat Scot Steve Nicol.

Further down the roll of (dubious) honour came FC Dallas head coach Steve Morrow, last in the mind’s eye being dumped collar-bone first onto Wembley’s turf by a Tony Adams ‘celebrating’ an Arsenal League Cup triumph.

MLS newcomers Toronto FC are being coached into the world by Glasgow’s finest – Maurice Johnston – who’ll doubtless coach their bitter city rivals when they are formed (says a “no, I’m not still upset after all these years” Celtic fan). And John Spencer, formerly of hitherto unknown ‘the Ranger FC’, according to his current club’s web-site, is assistant at Houston Dynamos, who have Paul ‘son of Kenny’ Dalglish on their roster.

The influence is surprisingly positive, with Houston and New England challenging for the West and East Conferences respectively (into which MLS is divided). Only LA Galaxy let the side down. But Frank Yallop is Canadian rather than ex-Ipswich in such circumstances.

MLS isn’t immune to the American’s execrable mangling of English. Away matches are ‘road games.’ Some players are ‘generation adidas’ (youngsters allowed into MLS without – gasp! – graduating from college) or ‘domestic and international underclassmen’ (first or second year college students). While sendings-off are ‘ejections’, evoking the image of Wayne Rooney in orbit after a major indiscretion – an idea that improves with age.

Some bemoan a ‘sanitised football-watching experience.’ But this is like northerners complaining about southern ‘softies’ after every seventies’ Wembley final without Leeds United. And if MLS lacks a Norman Hunter or two then…good.

Little wonder that Americans are ‘coming over here, taking our clubs.’ If the Glazers and Gilletts of this world were really just in football for the sport, the MLS would satisfy their needs. But it’s the money they’re after. And only English clubs can make that sort of money. But only a few at a time. For, say, Aston Villa to succeed, someone will have to make way. English fans are right to be worried.

There, 1000 words about MLS and I didn’t mention Beckham’s name once…oh, b**ger…

‘MotorMurph is written by Mark Murphy.

Entry Filed under: MotorMurph Column

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