Yanks Soccer

This weekend, Kristian Dyer reported that the New York Red Bulls are hot on the trail of their third Designated Player.  This news comes in addition to the fact that New York will ink Thierry Henry (the world’s worst kept secret), sometime next week, and he will be revealed at a press conference scheduled for Thursday.  The news of a potential third Designated Player signing is perhaps the most interesting of all.

New Rules concerning Designated Players were instituted this year in MLS.  Each team now receives two designated players slots, and can spring for a third if they pay a “luxury tax” to the rest of the teams in the league.  New York seems willing to part with the requisite 250 thousand dollars it takes to sign a third Designated Player, on top of the salary the third Designated Player will command.

This talk begets an interesting question.  Is MLS losing the parity it has prided itself on for the 15 years of its existence?

The answer is still up in the air, as the new DP rules have yet to be fully tested and utilized, but the competitive balance is certainly tipping towards the teams with owners keen to open their pockets.  New York, for example, currently has Juan Pablo Angel as their sole Designated Player, but with the addition of Thierry Henry, and perhaps Rafael Marquez (assuming Marquez played in the midfield), or Freddie Llungberg, opposing defenses will be staring at not only one of the top attacks in MLS, but one that would not be out of place against Premiership or Serie A defenses.

In comparison to a team like New England or San Jose whose owners have not been keen to splurge on Designated Players, New York seems a lot like their non-frugal neighbors to the north, the Yankees, who win in Major League Baseball by outspending their opponents.  Can you imagine Thierry Henry and Juan Pablo Angel supported by Rafael Marquez, lining up against Jimmy Conrad and Shavar Thomas?  It isn’t even close to a fair match.

For all its progress, MLS is still a very mixed league.  Some teams can afford stars, others cannot.  That hasn’t stopped low spending teams like New England from succeeding, but with the new rules on Designated Players, the talent gulf between those who use all three Designated Player spots and those that don’t is even wider.

Part of MLS’s charm is that on any given day, the team in last place can beat the team in first.  This is true in any competition, including the ultra inequitable English Premiership and La Liga, but it is far truer in MLS.  If MLS were to move in the direction of the premiership, where you can predict with uncanny accuracy which teams will make the Champions League each year, it would be an unfortunate departure from the unpredictable nature of the league.

This isn’t to suggest that the signing of stars is bad for the league.  On the contrary, signing of stars can make a team successful both on and off the field if done correctly.  But the new Designated Player rules serve only to punish teams that are money conscious, and reward those who have money to burn.  Just because Seattle can put 26 thousand more people in the stands than Kansas City, doesn’t mean they should be able to use their monetary advantage (gained from increased ticket sales) to increase the talent gap as well.

Since the Designated Player rules haven’t been used to their full extent yet, it is hard to say whether or not front offices will be able to build teams that are a class above the rest.  We are now entering a period where New York, and perhaps Los Angeles, Toronto and Seattle will try.  If their experiments succeed, it would certainly be at great cost to an integral feature of the league: parity.

–Max Zeger

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