Reigning in MLS Foreign Player Addiction

Two of these DC sign­ings have already been waived/photo from MLSNET.com

At the con­clu­sion of a suc­cess­ful 2007 sea­son which saw MLS’ atten­dance at it high­est level since the inau­gural sea­son of 1996 and media cov­er­age beyond once imag­in­able lev­els, the league opted to increase the num­ber of inter­na­tional squad spots to eight from the pre­vi­ous four senior and three youth inter­na­tion­als. This new rule has cre­ated a sit­u­a­tion where clubs no longer have to con­sider waiv­ing a for­eign player to sign another (since few clubs are at their limit con­sid­er­ing green card hold­ers are exempted from the eight player limit) as was the case for much of MLS’ exis­tence. Eight inter­na­tion­als is four more than were allowed through­out most of MLS’ exis­tence a period of time when the league helped the growth of the US National Team as well as the CONCACAF region in general.

MLS Teams rushed to fill their new found for­eign player slots. Some sides like DC United unveiled four for­eign sign­ings in a sin­gle press event and other clubs talked up the sign­ing of for­eign play­ers most of whom had lim­ited or no national team expe­ri­ence as the types of play­ers who could trans­form MLS and grow the club game in North America.

For every Luciano Emilio and Chris­t­ian Gomez their seems to be as many if not more Math­ias Cordoba’s or Franco Neil’s. This sit­u­a­tion mir­rors that of 1998 when using the addi­tion of the Chicago Fire and Miami Fusion as a jus­ti­fi­ca­tion the league added a fifth for­eign player spot for each MLS side. This led to sign­ings of the likes of Mar­quinho, Roger Thomas, Gilmar, and the unfor­get­table Jerry Tamishiro. The next year the for­eign player limit was dropped back down to four.

Much like ten years ear­lier, this sea­son MLS clubs seem to rely on rep­u­ta­tion or nation­al­ity to sign for­eign play­ers rather than their actual value in enhanc­ing the prod­uct on the field. In other words if play­ers have not been reg­u­lars on their national teams in most cases they will not con­tribute pos­i­tively to MLS. Franco Neil, Franco Car­ra­cio, Celes­tine Bab­yaro, Jose Car­vallo, Math­ias Cor­doba and oth­ers are evi­dence of the prob­lems MLS faces in sim­ply sign­ing ran­dom for­eign play­ers with no inter­na­tional pedi­gree. Even those play­ers who have thus escape being waived by their clubs in the league like Ivan Tru­jillo seem to be deleiver­ing less on the pitch than was adver­tised while Amer­i­cans who come back home from Europe this sea­son like Nat Borchers, Ramiro Cor­rales and Josh Wolff have paid instant div­i­dends for their MLS clubs.

The sit­u­a­tion as it cur­rently stands is not con­ducive with the goal to build soc­cer in this region and pro­duce a respectable prod­uct while help­ing to the devel­op­ment of home grown play­ers. For exam­ple just last week, Toronto FC waived Andrea Lom­bardo a Can­da­dian for­ward with some promise to sign yet another for­eign player. This leaves TFC with only four Cana­dian field play­ers on its squad, and as Canada’s lone FIFA sanc­tioned first divi­sion pro­fes­sional side this is appalling and totally unacceptable.

I pro­pose sig­nif­i­cant changes to MLS squad struc­ture assum­ing the salary cap and cur­rent ros­ter lim­its remain in place:

• All play­ers from the CONCACAF region are exempted from for­eign player limits.
• Play­ers under 21 may be signed with no restrictions.
• Each MLS Team is allowed three non-CONCACAF nation­al­ity play­ers over the age of 23 and only two of these play­ers may not have been called into their respec­tive national team squad (not played, a key dis­tinc­tion between my pro­posal and the work per­mit rules in Eng­land) at least 50% of the time in the last three years. In other words, at least one of the three play­ers must be a cur­rent national team player In addi­tion all three play­ers will be up to review at the end of each sea­son. If they do not fea­ture in at least 50% of the matches they were healthy enough to play in while under con­tract in MLS, they will be released from their con­tract at year’s end. These spots are not trans­fer­able between clubs.
  
• Des­ig­nated Play­ers are exempted from all above cri­te­ria. Each squad may have one non CONCACAF nation des­ig­nated player and one DP from the CONCACAF region for a total of two DPs. These spots are no longer trans­fer­able between clubs.
  
• Toronto FC must main­tain a squad with at least ten Cana­dian players.

With these sim­ple changes to MLS squads will be more com­pet­i­tive and also deliver more qual­ity in the terms of foot­ball. In addi­tion, the con­tin­ued devel­op­ment of play­ers from the CONCACAF region will be stressed over the con­tin­ued sign­ing of mediocre tal­ent from out­side the region. MLS will long term be a bet­ter prod­uct and the national teams of the CONCACAF region and ulti­mately the regions com­pet­i­tive­ness on the world stage will be ben­e­fi­cia­ries of the new MLS.