My Take: No Libertadores for MLS untill success in CONCACAF

Far too much talk recently has been dwelling on the possibility of MLS teams playing in the Copa Libertadores, South America's version of the UEFA Champions League. The Libertadores is largely viewed to be the second-most prestigious club competition in the world, after the UEFA Champions League. Many fans in the Western Hemisphere seem to love this idea, quaking at the idea of a packed stadium for a final clash between DC United and Boca Juniors or watching Beckham and the Galaxy take on River Plate, but I'm not convinced. Major League Soccer should not be admitted to the Libertadores, at least not yet, and here's why.

Success in CONCACAF

Major League Soccer teams should not be guests in a prestigious competition unless they have earned their way there. And they have not. Admittedly, some CONCACAF teams participate in the Libertadores, but these are Mexican teams. They have risen to the top in CONCACAF. Mexican Clubs joined the Libertadores in 1998. By that time, Mexican clubs had won 7 of the prior 11 CONCACAF Champions Cups. There was nothing left to prove, so they moved on to the bigger fish. The first few years in the Libertadores, Mexican teams routinely got destroyed by South American sides. This is because the best of North America are not on par with the best of South America. It's not even close.

On this point, Major League Soccer teams are not even the tops in their own region. The last time an MLS team played in the final of the CONCACAF Champions Cup was 2000. LA Galaxy managed to take home the title without having to play a single game outside of Southern California. The entire tournament took place on US soil, since then, MLS teams have struggled on the road. DC United lost their away semifinal leg to Pachuca 2-0 this year. Houston Dynamo lost their away semifinal 3-0 to Saprissa. The competition has been dominated by Mexican and Costa Rican teams. If MLS teams were to participate in the Libertadores, they would be routinely massacred, as Mexican teams were, but at least the Mexican sides were the biggest fish in the small pond.

Fixture Congestion

One of the main reasons MLS teams would falter is lack of depth. Players 1-12 on an MLS roster can hang with almost any team in the world, however, in continental competition, your depth is strenuously tested. Recently, DC United had a league game Saturday, a CONCACAF game midweek, a league game Saturday and a CONCACAF game midweek the following week, followed by another league game on Saturday. For deeper rosters, this is not a problem, but due to a restrictive salary cap in MLS, after the first 1-12 players, depth is very limited, even on the best teams who presumably would be competing in the Libertadores.

Now, in this recent stretch, DC went 2-2-1. And their continental trip was only to Mexico. In the Libertadores it could be to Argentina. The Libertadores runs from early spring to mid-summer. This would cause fixture pileups with CONCACAF Champions League knockout stages, the MLS league campaign, and possibly SuperLiga. Because of MLS's limited salary cap (about $2.2 million per team, plus a Beckham Rule player outside the cap), the depth just simply is not there to compete with the South American giants.

Travel

While a New England vs. Boca Juniors match-up may be very exciting, a two-legged tie between them would chart huge distances and long travel times. It is approximately 5370 miles between Boston and Buenos Aires. At that point, travelwise, it would actually be a shorter flight to have MLS teams compete in the UEFA Champions League, as it is only 3800 miles from Boston to Milan. This kind of travel is just unreasonable. The world is too big and the technology is just not fast enough to hold a meaningful hemisphere-wide competition from Canada to Chile.

Fan Interest

When MLS in the Libertadores comes up, passionate scenes and great games are always brought up. There is this general consensus that MLS sides would regularly be butting heads against star-studded Latin American sides in front of packed houses. But this ignores a critical fact. Not all Libertadores sides have significant followings, or even knowledge of their existence in the United States. Without "name" opponents like Boca Juniors, River Plate, Sao Paolo and maybe a handful of other Brazilian or Argentinian clubs, would anyone care?

Would New York be able to attract a decent crowd midweek to see the Revolution play Bolivian Champs Real Potosi? Could Chicago bring in a decent crowd in March to watch the Fire play Uruguayan champs Danubio? Not likely, and these are what could be the more "diverse" cities with a larger South American population. What about MLS's more "vanilla" towns. Could Kansas City? Could Salt Lake?

Outside of that small handful of clubs who could draw a crowd based on a name, the only teams that could guarantee a gate draw are the Mexican clubs, and MLS already has involvement with them through the CONCACAF Champions League and SuperLiga. It would be redundant and superfluous to go through the Libertadores.

I'm not saying that MLS can't play in the Libertadores eventually. They just shouldn't be there now.

In Defense of the Cup-tying Rule

In many competitions across Europe, players are "Cup-tied" each season, meaning that if you play for one team at one stage in the competition, you cannot play for another team later in the same competition. The focus of the rule is to keep the rich from getting richer by poaching players from teams already knocked out of the competition.

Mike Collet writes that it is time for the rule to go. While it would be unfair to presume, it would not suprise me if Collet is a Portsmouth FC fan. Pompey's Jermain Defoe is unable to play for Portsmouth in England's FA Cup Final against Cardiff City at Wembley in May because he played for Tottenham Hotspur earlier in the competition before coming to Pompey during the Winter Transfer Window. However, Defoe is able to play for Pompey in their English Premier League campaign, where PFC currently sit sixth in the table and are chasing a UEFA Cup slot.

Likewise in Europe, players who played for one team at one stage of the UEFA Champions League or UEFA Cup cannot play for another team in later stages of the same tournament, yet are allowed to play for their new clubs in their national league.

Collet says this is stupid to have one standard for cups and one standard for leagues. But in Collet's criticism lies its folly. Cups and leagues are entirely different competitions. If one team loses in a cup tie, they are out of the competition. No worries. It would have been nice to advance obviously, but it's not the end of the world. League play on the other hand carries with it the very real chance of relegation.

Teams in poor positions in league play have much less incentive to sell their players to the teams that advance (which more often than not, the teams that advance are higher in league play) due to the risk of relegation. In addition, to deny a player to participate in League play after joining a new team in the winter transfer window could mean him missing close to 20 games. Missing the Cup games means denying a footballer his trade only 3-5 times.

For these main distinguishing reasons, the cup-tying rule is good, and will affect only a handful of footballers each year, but in exchange, will allow the mid-level teams (and high-mid-level teams like Celtic, Porto, Benfica, PSV, and Olimpiacos) to keep their best players and grow as a team, rather than being glorified farm teams for a handful of conquering finalists.

Save the Wales

To say this season's FA Cup has been topsy-turvey would be an understatement. In English football's version of March Madness, Barnsley has done their best George Mason impression and have reached the last four by knocking off traditional powers Liverpool and Chelsea. With only one Premier League side left in the tournament (Portsmouth), the possibility that a European spot will go to a lower-division team is very real.

The winners of the FA Cup are granted a spot in the UEFA Cup.

Except....maybe they won't.

Another one of the last four to compete in the world's oldest knockout competition is Cardiff City. Yes, Cardiff is not in England, but rather in Wales. Wales (like Scotland and Northern Ireland) has their own league, but Cardiff plays in the English football pyramid because the Welsh league was not formed untill 1992. With no league to serve the club upon its founding in 1899, Cardiff City simply hopped the border and began play and developed rivalries with English sides.

Therein lies the dilemma for Cardiff. Financially strapped, the side could use an influx of cash that European competition would bring. But the FA of England will not grant them a spot because they are not an English team, and the Welsh FA will not grant them a spot because they are forbidden from competing in the League of Wales or the Welsh Cup (a sort of "back door" to Europe in the past for Cardiff).

This is not right. If Cardiff win the FA Cup, they should be given the right to test their mettle in Europe. Cardiff is the 9th-largest UK city competing in the English league system (Glasgow and Edinburgh furnish teams in the Scottish Premier League). If the FA wants to reap the television revenue and gate revenue from a team in a city like Cardiff, then they should be open to letting them take a spot in Europe should they play their way in, which Cardiff has certainly done. If they want the FA Cup to be an English-only cup, then kick Cardiff out. What is so difficult about this?

The US Open Cup is a competition that is only open to US teams, and since Toronto FC, Montreal Impact, and Vancouver Whitecaps are all based in Canada, they don't get to play. So they hold their own tournament (their version of the Welsh Cup, I guess) and use that as a route for qualifying to continental competitions.

Even AS Monaco FC, which is based in Monaco, gets to participate in the French league and cup, and have qualified for Europe, despite being from another country.

Let Cardiff in!!!!

Suggested Philadelphia MLS names

With today's announcement of the worst-kept secret in MLS, Philadelphia finally has a team. They'll begin play in 2010 at a brand-new soccer stadium in nearby Chester, PA. The team remains unnamed (The early favorite is Philadelphia Independence FC), but I've got some ideas.
Philadelphia Rockies
-Sure, Colorado's nine already have it, but it would make it a little less trite and cliched when they take the field to "Gonna Fly Now."



Following a Rocky theme, a name that was briefly bandied about for the name of the Houston club when they started up (now the Dynamo). The Philadelphia Apollos.

Philadelphia battery-chuckers
Philadelphia Santa-haters
Chester Molesters

The Supporters Bus Expansion Guide

With Philadelphia looking to come into MLS in 2010 (announcement coming Thursday), it appears that one of the main selling points was a ready-made fan base who had already travelled to hate on DC and New York, each only a two-hour drive away.

With that in mind, I'm throwing the money out the window, and picking the cities that would make the best expansion candidates solely based on the ease of fostering rivalries with traveling supporters. The precondition being that each city had to have at least two other clubs within an 9 hour drive of each other. I also imposed a restriction of at least having heard a rumor about expansion, or suggesting that the city would make a good MLS city. I added team names for authenticity, capped myself at a 24 team league, and did not count expansion cities as rivals within driving distance, although if all accepted, many of them would join the ranks. It's a very exciting time to be an MLS fan.

Detroit Rovers

This one may not be too far off. I've heard rumblings of something being put together, possibly renting out the Silverdome before a new stadium is built. Detroit coudl tap into a large suburban population as well as an ethnic population from the Middle East and Canada.

Nearest Rivals
Chicago Fire: 4.5 hours
Toronto FC: 4 hours
Columbus: 3.5 hours

Las Vegas Aces (Or Hearts! I slay me.)
Again, far off rumblings of a casino/stadium, but nothing really concrete yet. Could be difficult considering most people don't come to Vegas for the soccer, and it's not really a major media market, but it's smack in the middle of the Western Conference rivalry train, and who could resist a weekend in Vegas with a soccer game to boot?


Nearest Rivals:
Los Angeles: 4 hours
Chivas USA: 4 hours
San Jose: 8 hours
Salt Lake: 6 hours

New York City FC
Tossing around another expansion idea that has surfaced at least in the league's long-term plans, New York City does not have a team. If their stadium gets built in Queens it will be the first Major professional sports team in New York City in decades. It also sets up an obvious derby with Red Bull New York.


Nearest Rivals
Red Bull New York: 45 minutes
Philadelphia: 2.5 hours
New England: 3.5 hours
Toronto FC: 8.5 hours

Olympic Montreal CF (Olympique?)
Playing in a brand new stadium in the shadow of Olympic Stadium, Montreal seems a natural fit for a Canadian derby with Toronto FC, as well as other rivals throughout the Northeast. The political tension between Toronto (Canada's national team) and Montreal (Quebecois separatist team) could explode on the same level as Celtic-Rangers, Barcelona-Madrid, and other derbies where the game means much more than soccer.


Nearest Rivals
Toronto FC: 5.5 hours
New England: 6 hours
Red Bull New York:6 hours

St. Louis United (Stupid Archies)
Jeff Cooper's group appears to be next in line, but may have to ward of newcomers New York City, Montreal, and Miami to get it.


Nearest Rivals
Chicago Fire: 4.5 hours
Columbus: 6.5 hours
Kansas City: 4 hours

Tennessee Blues
With no major league sports in the summertime, Nashville would set the tone for MLS's Southern expansion without leaving a team geographically isolated, as a team in Atlanta or Miami would do. Blue and Orange as colors to appease the UT and Memphis fans.


Nearest Rivals
Columbus: 6 hours
Chicago: 7.5 hours

Oklahoma Wranglers
Yea, I ripped it off from the AFL team, but it's a solid name. Put the team in Oklahoma City, where there is no major sport in town outside of Oklahoma Football and the eventual Oklahoma SuperSonics.


Nearest Rivals
Kansas City: 5.5 hours
Dallas: 3 hours
Houston: 7 hours
Colorado: 9 hours if you speed

Milwaukee Barons
So Peter Wilt's stadium plan died. Milwaukee may still be able to support an MLS team if only to give them a reason to hate on Chicago. The Hiawatha would be a football special twice a year, and the Cheese curtain would be a formidable barrier for soccer fans.


Nearest Rivals
Chicago: 2 hours
Kansas City: 9 hours
Columbus: 7.5 hours
Toronto: 6 hours from Muskegon, MI, plus ferry across Lake Michigan.

By this point, MLS would be a 24 team league, enabling each team to play a home-away balanced schedule for a 46 game season. So a cut-off would probably be introduced at 22 teams, or some sort of promotion/relegation system set up for future expansion. If MLS decided to keep it at 24, and go with conferences anyway (conference foes twice, other conference once with alternating home advantage?)

WEST
Seattle, San Jose, Los Angeles, Chivas USA, Las Vegas, Salt Lake, Colorado, Houston, Dallas, Oklahoma, Kansas City, St. Louis
EAST
Chicago, Milwaukee, Columbus, Detroit, Tennessee, Toronto, New York Red Bulls, New York City, Montreal, Philadelphia, DC United, New England

Last Four Out
Baltimore
Cleveland
Vancouver
San Diego

Wag of the Finger to our former Colonial Overlords

Yes, I know I haven't posted in months. Like soccer, law school has a way of consuming your life untill it reaches the point where you can't think about anything else. Unlike soccer, you do not get the dizzying highs, however, you also learn to recognize a blatant miscarriage of justice.

Manchester City had looked to sign Iraq international Nashat Akram during the winter transfer window in a move to help solidify a place in European competition next season. If the transfer went through, Akram would be the first Iraqi to play in the Premiership. However, Akram's work permit (issued by the British home office to non-European players) was rejected because Iraq is not in the top 70 countries in the world for soccer.

They are #72.

While this technicality may put Iraq south of an arbitrary line, keep in mind, that due to security fears and reprisals from terror groups and Saddam Hussein, Iraq has not played a "home" game in 20 years.

This did not stop the band of players from the war-torn country from winning the 2007 Asian Cup in Southeast Asia. A team of Shi'ites, Sunnis, and Kurds uniting as one team to take on all comers. Iraq defeated 2006 World Cup Finalists Australia, South Korea, and Saudi Arabia on their march to the title.

This did not stop the Iraqi team from winning the Gold Medal at the 2004 Athens Olympics.

An exception should be made in Akram's case. The Iraqi team has had to overcome more than any football team should be expected to do. What this decision smacks of is protectionism. England has the most popular league in the world, drawing in fans and players from all over the globe. What this has meant is an influx of foreign talent, and a dearth of opportunities for English players, a shortcoming that has seen itself reaped at the last two World Cups, where English teams were perceived as underachieving. Akram was a solid contributor and if allowed to play, could very well have led City to a European place, but he would have done so at the expense of an English player. (City has 8 on their roster, more than any other country).

City will try again during the summer transfer window, but Akram should be suiting up for the Sky Blues this season.

Last Minute Champions League Picks

And as such, not really thought out, more gut reactions.

Who and Why?
Group A: Liverpool and Porto
- Liverpool and Porto's European experience and good form to start the season coupled with the lack thereof from Besiktas and Marseilles.

Group B: Chelsea and Valencia
- Chelsea's star power overpowers Schalke's lackluster form starting domestic play (1-0-4) to take second place after Valencia takes the group. All teams should be over the moon to have drawn Norwegian champs Rosenborg.

Group C: Real Madrid and Olympiacos
Real Madrid are off to a lfying start domestically. Frankly, I don't feel that great about Werder Bremen or Lazio, it's a pretty lackluster group even with los Meringues, so I'm gonna pick Olimpiacos as my upset special.

Group D: AC Milan and Shakhtar Donetsk
Celtic may sneak in, but the holders are too powerful, and the group is too weak. Benfica has had an average start to the season (2-0-2) and will probably not make the knockout stages. Tuesday's Celtic-Shakhtar game in the Ukraine looms huge and will set the pace for second place behind the Rossoneri. Come on the Celts!

Group E: FC Barcelona and Rangers FC
As much as it pains me, Rangers have been near perfect domestically, and Ibrox is a fortress. I can see them running the table at home, and maybe pipping a few points off Stuttgart and Lyon away. Damarcus Beasley's game is more suited for the European competition than the knockdown-dragout SPL and he should blossom.

Group F: Manchester United and AS Roma
United has the star power, and Roma looks to make a serious run at the Italian title this season. Sporting Lisbon and Dynamo Kiev have all the makings of also-rans.

Group G: Internazionale and Fenerbahce
I got a good feeling about the Turks and Inter is always Inter. Not too high on CSKA Moscow (or Russian teams in general) and PSV.

Group H: Sevilla and Arsenal
Slavia Prague and Steaua Bucharest round out the group against the English powerhouse and the near-Spanish-Treble-winners (UEFA Cup, Spanish Cup, 3rd in Spanish League) winners from last season. Need I say more?