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Could the MLS have a lesson for the English Premier League? 

A incongruous as it sounds – how can an upstart, tier two organization teach the world’s most successful soccer league anything – consider the following.

1) The MLS and their players have broken off talks for a new contract. Chief among the rancor in the ranks is the MLS policy of the league controlling contract and dictating whether players can move or not. There’s also a salary cap which keeps all club on the same financial footing and theoretically means skill, discipline and shrewd management will prevail over the course of the season.

2) The EPL is in serious financial turmoil which threatens the survival of the world’s biggest money league. Portsmouth FC is in administration; the storied Manchester United and legendary Liverpool FC have both been saddled with smothering debt courtesy of their American owners who borrowed heavily to buy the clubs in the first place. Around the league there are stories daily about who is in trouble and who isn.t.

3) Playing along in its own seemingly isolated drama, the MLS has called for arbitration  in contract talks. The players have called on FIFA, the world governing body, to intervene, saying the MLS set up is in contravention of FIFA’s own rules. FIFA has declined to get involved.

So here’s the take away points from the above which ties the two story lines into one: FIFA will not and cannot intervene in the MLS dispute because it was complicit in allowing it to be created. When the MLS was born circa 1993-94 when the

Since the arrival of Toronto F.C. in 2006, Seattle Sounders last year and the debut of Philadelphia this season and

Simply put, the atmposphere at MLS games are becoming as passionate as any Championship or Le Championat or Series B. Top foreign players are being lured here and top MLS players, David Beckham and Landon Donovan are holding places in

So, where’s the lesson? FIFA has been rumbling for sometime – as has it’s regional arm UEFA – about the “mad money” being sunk into the EPL and how it threatens to create a bubble which will eventually collapse and leave the game with a massive black hole.

FIFA’s Sepp Baltter has mused openly about instituting some kind of control system to reign in the spending. The issue has become even more critical with the purchase of

It means that owning a EPL club is no longer the domain of billionaire Russian playboys (Chelsea) or highly leveraged American businessmen (Manchester United and

It’s as if

Part of the issue is also that the scrutiny process for prospective owners is lax. Apparently, all you need is a chequebook, regardless of whether you have the smarts or long term backing to stay in the game. And that’s what has done in Portsmouth FC this year – four owners, each of whom bungled and frittered away the franchise.

The EPL says its approach to a wide open ownership and anything goes strategy has created the most successful sports spectacle in the world and that is true. But it is clear in the race to stay in the EPL or even to get in to the EPL, clubs are recklessly gambling with huge sums of money and in doing so are indeed creating the bubble FIFA fears.

With the Euro in dire straits as the fallout from the global credit crisis still grinds into the economies of countries like

It’s at this point that the MLS model looks more attractive to FIFA to impose on the EPL. Make no mistake, the EPL is in danger of becoming the tail that wags the dog. It is so big, so rich and has such a following that it threatens to overshadow FIFA and that’s a power struggle the governing body cannot afford to lose.

FIFA and UEFA needs to find a way to bring the EPL down to earth and at the same time stop the frenzied spending from infecting other leagues too deeply because it is creating another monster that the controlling bodies will have to find a way to control and shape to their own purpose, the Euro Super League.

We’ve already started to see the European Champions League start to take on a form of its own. If you’re not in

It’s been predicted that the Euro Super League will “break away” just as the EPL did from the Football Association League, bringing with it those lucrative television rights which will be shared among a smaller group of elite clubs.

The rich will get richer and the poor will get poorer and in the end it will hurt football. Already fans complain they can’t afford to see their favourite club because ticket prices have escalated astronomically. That’s not the case in the MLS.

So, which is a better model? The MLS has outgrown it’s training wheels and needs to step up to the next phase, a more open, freewheeling form of ownership and contracts but the EPL needs to reign itself in or find that FIFA will impose a new set of restraints.

Either way all fans like me care about is the game itself. We want top class player, top class entertainment that’s affordable and accessible.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 6th, 2010 at 2:45 pm and is filed under Bark with Byte. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.