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MAJOR LEAGUE SOCCER: STATE OF THE LEAGUE MEDIA ROUNDTABLEDecember 2, 2014Don GarberTHE MODERATOR: Welcome everybody here to many MLS, Commissioner Don Garber's special presentation of his State of the League Media Roundtable, I'm Greg Lalas from MLSsoccer.com. We're here in NewYork City at the Union Vision Studios for this event which is just one of many in the lead‑up to the MLS Cup final between the LA Galaxy and the New England Revolution opponent Sunday, December7th, the game will kick off at 3pm E.T. Let's introduce our media panel a legend for the U.S. National Team and he a winner of the MLS Cup in 2000 with Kansas City, he is currently the co‑host of Counter Attack on Sirius XM, Tony Meola. Next up Tony is a former Canadian international and a ten‑year veteran with the Montreal Impact he is currently the color commentator for the RBS networks up in Canada, Patrick Leduc. The primary play‑by‑play man for the Union Vision broadcasts of MLS and in many ways our host for today, Jorge Perez‑Navarro. On the other side we're going to go to a long‑time staff writer and recently getting into video with ESPN.com, Doug McIntyre and a long‑time broadcaster with Fox sports who is back where he belongs covering in 2015 but not before you're going to host the Women's World Cup draw on Saturday, Rob Stone. And director of social media, Amanda Vandervort from MLS. Now, Amanda has been collecting questions from the fans so you can be part of this discussion during today's show. You can tweet at MLS using the hashtag MLS SOTL. That's MLS state of the league. COMMISSIONER GARBER: Thank you, Greg, and folks I appreciate everyone coming together. We at MLS try to do things a little bit differently. I didn't want to sit in front of a electricity turn as we've done so many other times and there have been times we have sat around our conference room table and have a teleconference and don't necessarily get to show who we are and what we are and allow all of you that are so important to talking about our league and holding us to task and representing the points of view of all of our fans. I look forward to this and I want to thank all our broadcast partners, past and present and all you folks that have been so important to our league and to you, Greg, and everybody at MLSsoccer.com, for everything you do every single day I wanted to thank you for everything you guys do every day, communicating with our fans, thank you on behalf of MLS. I will give brief comments because in the past I get hammered for talking formally and nobody cares about the prepared remarks they want to hear what our fans have to say but there are a number of things that are important. It starts with thanking Union Vision. This is a great environment, you can see the Skyline behind us, we appreciate your partnership and look forward to another 8 years. Thanks for giving us the platform and the studio to be able to have such a great event today. Our game coming up this weekend is going to be an exciting one. It was a great season, very compelling, our playoffs were perhaps the best we've ever had our television ratings over the last couple of weeks were the best we have had leading up to a game that beer all very excited about. We have a number of goodbyes to say and one won't be until after Saturday but one is very special goodbye and a thank you yesterday to Thierry Henry said goodbye to major league soccer and you guys might know more than we did about his plans. I'll talk a little bit about Landon, we have something very special planned for Landon, we're not going to do it at MLS cup we're going to wait for the super draft, but it will be a very appropriate honor and way to celebrate and thank Landon for making major league soccer a league of choice. He was the first guy to say this is a league I want to get behind this is a league he hopes with all the work he's done over the decade or more to help us establish ourselves as one of the great rising leagues in the world and one that we all hope will be one of the great leagues in the world in due time. What can you say about Terran, you guys talk about him every weekend. He's thrilled us, he's entertained us, he's shocked us with his skill and he's done things that I think will be forever embedded in the history, the video history of our sport. We have been honored to have him be a part of our league. It's hard to imagine it's been four and a half years. I'm sure many people would liked to have seen him lift a cup during that period, that didn't happen but I know having had contact with him over the years and certainly recently he loved his time here and knows he's helped major league soccer grow. When you think about what 2014 was really about, it started with the World Cup, and we have talked so many times about what the World Cup was in the United States, I get hit by so many people who have had interest in investing in the league, they say they are now new found fans of the league, or new sponsors, like Heineken a new MLS sponsor, that want to engage in our league because of what happened this summer. Every four years I think it will get bigger and bigger, certainly we're hoping for even great things to happen with the Women's World Cup coming up in Canada this summer. Something seems to happen when we have the eyes of the world turning on the American and Canadian soccer market where all of the sudden the sport rises to higher levels and as it relates to MLS the fact that we have had Michael Bradley, Clint Dempsey, and now Jermaine Jones and so many ‑‑ Graham Zusi, and Matt and Omar and so many players that were part of that roster and a young guy like Deandre Yedlin, proving this story about our home‑grown players and our development system, saying that we are a key driver to the National Team, it's why I feel so passionately about what's been going on in the media over the last month as it relates to you're National Team. We believe with our federation that together we can win the World Cup and importantly, I said this when we appear announced our team in Canada in 2007, I don't think our job will be done until Canada qualifies for the World Cup, and when I leave this job if we haven't achieved that, it would be a mark that I truly regret. We're going to continue to work with the CSA, I'm sure you will have questions about that, we will continue to work with Peter and Victor and their staff to try to do what we can to help Canada qualify for the World Cup. Canada, the United States and Mexico are a power house and we should be able to take that power and have CONCACAF and have this region be far more influential than it even is today. As you know, 2015 we have things we are looking forward to, not the least of which are new TV agreements, extension with our long‑time friends at ESPN and Doug I look forward to chatting with you, Rob, welcome back, I remember the days when Fox Soccer Channel was launched and we had so many great things we were doing together, I remember your time at ESPN and how valuable you were to help us promote this league, it's great to have you back. We look forward to David and to Eric and to everyone else helping us grow the sport. And Union Vision has been part of our world since day one and we look forward to another great eight years with you together and frankly, and I think you will start hearing more about this what we're going to do with Union Vision is going to transform our relationship with the Spanish‑speaking market in this country. It's going to be the beginning of a new day for all of us. So our new television deals and relationships are a big part of what our 2015 is going to be all about. We have a brand new identity. Fans don't care that much about logos, logos actually matter, they represent what you stand for, that club and community and our country, these two countries that matter to the U.S. and Canada, that's the red. The club that you can relate to and the community such a big part of what our players and league is about with MLS Works and Jay Delarosa, a guy that was our humanitarian of the year, think about what he's been through so that represents a big part of our character and we're looking forward to continuing that. The CBA, you guys will talk about it, we're spending time over the past couple of weeks, we'll spend time over the next couple of months, I look forward to your questions, big, big priority for us to get a great relationship to figure out a right way to continue as partners together with our players. A number of things happening on the field. People complained it's not enough news being announced here. We got a couple of things that we will announce today that will be part of what we will present to our board on Saturday. Some of these things still need approval but we feel pretty good about these initiatives. The first is for two, really, TV initiatives. Decision day. We want to have a weekend, it's going to be at the end of the year where we're going to have offensively our competition focused on what the best match‑ups are during that period of time in that last weekend. We want offensively those games to potentially take place at the same time. Which is what they do in the world can you be. If we can't do it all at the same time we want the games within the same conference to be at the same time. Our marketing guys are going to market it as Decision Day where all of our attention will be about that last weekend. We're also going to look into flex scheduling. The weekend before, I see all the social channels, Amanda sends it to me, why do we have games on at the end of the year that have been scheduled at the beginning of the year that aren't as excelling from a national perspective? We're looking at ways that we can have the second to the last weekend be a flex scheduling weekend like the NFL announced they're going to have coming up this weekend and working on ways we can have those games be moved around from our Union Vision Friday night schedule to our Fox and ESPN Sunday schedule so we have some compelling stories to be able to talk about. A couple of things that I think are important when you're trying to fund all this, a bunch of new television sponsorship deals, Heineken, a big sponsor of the Championship League, engaging with us, you're going to see a level of activation from our beer partner that's going to be unprecedented. Making, in the next couple of weeks we hoped to announce it today another big deal that will change how we are managing our relationship with corporate sponsors with activation, community support, about using our players in advertising, the kind of activation you see in other professional sports leagues that's the kind of activation that you're going to see from us. Last willing and probably most importantly, and I think expansion will be a big part of the discussion, two new teams coming into the league. We have a second team in New York City that will be playing in Yankee stadium, signed two great players, Via and Lampard, they have other players that they will be announcing soon, they will be great rivals for the Red Bulls and the Red Bulls need to be applauded for their experience and success on the fold and their success off the field and that rivalry is going to be something that we hope will raise the water level for the sport here in this market which is important to drive the media debate. When you look at what's going on in Orlando, the noise that's coming out of that market, they were just in last week, it is absolutely unprecedented, Kaká joining the league, lots of great activity with their new stadium, I just saw some video of that stadium going up, Orlando and New York City are going to be terrific, somebody will asked me about LA, another new big team announcement, so we've got a lot of noise going on that's going to make 2015 a great year. Not unimportantly our 20th season. So think about the fact that many of you have been around the game and you, Tony, playing in the game back in the early days, to think about Major League Soccer is 20 years strong and we will be stronger in the years to come is something that is really a credit to our two countries and a credit to our media partners and all of our great players that have done so much to help build this league. Q. Speaking of great players let's find out who were determined to be the greatest players in 2014. Let's look at the best 11 in 2014. (Video playing. ) Q. I heard I was going to have the first question last night, and there was a big expectation about what kind of question I can come out with. Instead of trying to make something by myself I'm going to become the voice of a lot of the fans who wants to know something, Mr. Commissioner. Will the MLS exercise the option to keep Cubo Torres playing here or not? COMMISSIONER GARBER: It's a great question. Let's say we would like to. We haven't been able to make that decision yet. We think he could be and has been a great player in our league and certainly deserves to be in a position where he can thrive in a new team setting, rather than the one that he was in. We're going to go through that process. We extracted him from the way that we went about a process for the other players that were on Chivas USA. Decision hasn't been made yet, but I'll tell you we would love to have him continue in the league. Q. Don, you alluded to the CBA in your opening remarks; that's one of the big questions. Where are you with the discussions? Have you had any of the negotiations at this point? When will they start to ramp up? Where are we with that? COMMISSIONER GARBER: Of course we have started discussions. They've been formal. There have been a number of meetings with the league, management, and the leadership of the players union, including some players. This process now is just the beginning phases. Every league goes through it, went through it five years ago and the agreement prior to that. It's sort of talk you can about what our respective priorities are and that's where we are at this moment. There will likely be another meeting in Decemberand then we will get down to the negotiations in earnest and I'm confident that we will be able to reach an agreement that will be good for the league and good for the players. I will say the dynamic is one that I would describe as positive. We have informed the players in a transparent way that the league isn't performing financially the way we would like. I think they accept that and understand that. At the same time I think there are a wide variety of things that are important to them that we're going to have to listen to and get our owners to recognize and then continue to move it forward to try to get a deal done. Q. These negotiations by their nature always tend to go right down to the wire. You came within days of a potential work stoppage four years ago. I think it was about a week before the season started, you reached an agreement. Given the amount of money that the players now see coming into the league, do you anticipate the potential for a work stoppage being possible this time around? COMMISSIONER GARBER: At this point I don't think they or we are thinking about a work stoppage and, Doug, you never go into a agreement thinking we have this date, and if that date doesn't get hit, it's Armageddon! You go into these decisions with an open mind and a desire to reach an agreement and trying to be as open as you possibly can and I think, very importantly, being as transparent as you can, as to what are the issues that are important to ownership, what are the issues important to players. How do you recognize that the dynamic is continually changing. That which is important today might not have been important five years ago, and it might not be important five years from now. So you've got to just be smart, focused and recognize that we do believe that we are all in this together to try to grow the game. Q. Is the league at a point that it could handle a stoppage if one happened? COMMISSIONER GARBER: The league could handle stoppage as the players could handle a stoppage. There isn't any league that doesn't understand, or any union that doesn't understand, that you have your points, and if you get to that point where you've got to make those decisions, you go about making those decisions, but we never reached that point last time, and I don't believe we have that kind of relationship with our players, and I don't believe they look at the league and ownership in that way. Last time we had a mediator involved, that same United States designated mediator that is designated by the White House, works with all the leagues and worked with us very effectively, and that process is there to ensure that everybody goes in with an open mind and everybody is sitting around the table trying to get a deal done. Q. Commissioner, I'm listening to you, and collective bargaining from a player's perspective, how difficult with new television expansion fees coming in, you said you sort of informally let the players know we're not financially where we need to be going into this, with everything we have read, how difficult is that going to be really to convince players and the players' union of that? COMMISSIONER GARBER: Tony, it wasn't informal; it's formal. The disclosure of that information is a formal process and I don't want anybody watching this or anybody here to think that this is a set‑up for us to lay out a negotiating position. It is what it is, and what is very important, that we have the union and the players understand what is. That doesn't mean they're going to ask for less or ask for things that are‑‑ or not ask for things that they don't believe are important to them. There are certain things that are very important to the players, and they'll talk to you about those, they will become public at some point. We need to recognize and react to what is important to them. They need to understand how the league needs to operate, certainly in its‑‑ training wheels are certainly off. We're no longer a toddler, we're kind of getting into the college age, where we're still trying to figure it out. Nobody has all the answers but we recognize we're standing on our own two feet. All you can say, Tony, is it's very good for everybody, including our players, that the state of Major League Soccer is better today than it had been 20 years ago or 10 years ago. What we all need to do is recognize that we need to have an agreement on what we need to do to continue to grow, to continue to prosper, to continue to have a way to invest in player development, to invest in all the things that our fans and media and everybody is looking for from us. One key factoid is we're investing more in youth development today than we were spending on players' salaries in its entirety ten years ago, and all of that is part of growing the game. These are the discussions that Mark Abbott, the League Deputy Commissioner and Bob Fosse and John Newman and all the players will have, and it will go around so that everybody can get a deep understanding of where we are, what are the respective priorities, and how do practical people get into a room and join hands in trying to grow this together.  It's never Kumbaya, but it is a dynamic where you hope is one where I can walk on the field and have a player feel good about the league office and its representative and we can have the owners feeling good about the way the league is representing their interests and all of it is hopefully going to resolve in a dynamic that will be a solid partnership and relationship between us and our players. Q. Another Pandora's box expansion? COMMISSIONER GARBER: It's not the single table anymore in the calendar anymore, right? Q. I'll start with this point. We're going to 20 next season. Two parts. What is the end game? How many teams can MLS sustain? What's that playoff number going to be that you guys are looking at for next season? COMMISSIONER GARBER: Let me take the 30,000 feet first and then format second. Clearly we have this goal of being 24 teams by the end of the decade; we will be 24 teams before that. Q. Do we need to go beyond 24? COMMISSIONER GARBER: I don't know the answer to that, Rob, and I think it speaks to the fact that we're not a mature business, not a mature league. I think that X number of years from now, and whether that's, you know, two years from now, five years from now, ten years from now, 25 years from now, however long that is, you would imagine that there will be major markets in this country that would have a Division I professional team and MLS fans would be able to be connected in the United States, and similarly in Canada, where we have markets that have interest in the game at the highest level. But I can't answer that today because we don't have all the answers about what our future will look like. We're very, very focused on the question everybody is going to ask, whether it comes from Amanda or you guys are thinking about it. We're going to go into a board meeting, we have had presentations from four different ownership groups: Two from Minneapolis one from Sacramento, and one from Las Vegas. We know that LA is coming in in 2017. We're not sure what's happening in Miami. We need to make some decisions and come out of that meeting with a point of view on timing, what do we think is going to happen where the next number of teams are going to be formally announced? We are very focused on that happening in 2015, for sure. It's conceivable it could happen within the next six months from January to June, and that's really our goal, to be able to put a stake in the ground on when the next team or two teams are coming in. Then we need to determine how many more teams could come in after that, and that is something I don't have the answer to today. That's why I have an expansion committee. They were all in a week ago Thursday. Larry Tanenbaum and Cliff Illig and Joe Roth and they met with all these expansion groups, and they heard compelling conversations, and they will make a report to the MLS Board on Saturday in LosAngeles. Playoff format got leaked, and God bless Brian Strauss, who found out from somebody, my leaky board that talked about the idea that we were going to expand number of playoff teams. We are looking at that. We have not made that decision. That won't be made until our ownership has an opportunity to evaluate that. Q. Is that Saturday, during your meetings? COMMISSIONER GARBER: That is Saturday during our meetings, so I think it's conceivable that at some point perhaps during the game, and maybe Alexi will ask that during the halftime ‑‑ Q.Who is Alexi? COMMISSIONER GARBER: What is compelling about that idea is today you have three times that basically are guaranteed a spot, they basically get a bye. Today what we're looking at, if we go to those 12 teams is that would only go down to two, and three would play six, and four would play five, so while there would be more teams in a higher percentage than we have today, we believe once we have 24 teams that it makes more sense, and now that we have TV deals rather than constantly changing, change it now, which is what the league is going to recommend, keep that for as long as we have 24 teams, which will be for some time and in essence be at that percentage of playoff qualification that exists in the NBA and the NHL, which is in and around 50%, 50 to 54%. I know some of our fans don't like that. Nobody can argue with me that our playoffs this year weren't the most exciting games that we have had in Major League Soccer. So while I might believe and agree with some point of view that the European model is what made the beautiful game beautiful, nobody could argue that Sunday night and Saturday night those games in frigid cold weren't among the most‑‑ among the best games in MLS history. That's why we love playoffs. Q. You hinted at the uncertainty in Miami. It's a sexy topic with a sexy guy associated with it, with David Beckham. And if Miami doesn't go through, what is Beckham's retention with still having an ownership stake with an MLS club? COMMISSIONER GARBER: The latter part of that, Rob, that's a discussion that needs to be held between us and David and Simon Fuller. That discussion hasn't taken place, let me say I can't answer that today. We love Miami. Miami is a very cool emerging market in this country as an influencer city. Univision has a major headquarters there, it is the gateway to Latin America, there is so much incredible ethnic diversity going on in that community. We all know that there have been pro sports struggles there, so people are questioning whether Miami can support an MLS team. I believe it can, but only if it has the right stadium. If we don't have the right stadium, we're not going to Miami, nor should we go to any market without the right stadium plan, so that's not just exclusive to Miami and David Beckham. We don't have that stadium finalized today, so until we get it finalized, we can't make a commitment to go to Miami. Much more than that, I really can't say. I want to reiterate. We want to be in Miami, for all those city leaders who are listening, help us get the right stadium downtown, and this is a very easy process for us to go through. Q. You say you're not going to Miami if we don't have the right stadium situation, but NYFC doesn't have a stadium situation, it's a baseball park; right? There's a big issue. LAFC does not have a stadium as well, yet they have franchises and one that's starting in a couple months. Why did they get in, yet we are debating Miami and some of these other places? COMMISSIONER GARBER: So we believe we have in LAFC a stadium solution that could solve that issue and are confident enough in our stadium opportunity that we belive we could solve that issue, and before we did that, we had multiple places and environments that we were comfortable with that if one option didn't work, we have three others that would work just as well. When we made the decision to come into NewYork we were not just confident, we were at agreement level on a particular site. We thought we had that site in our hands, and we lost it. Rob, what I will say to you and everybody listening, this is not an exact science. There are no things that you could look at and say, the decision you made today is one that has to be the precedent for every decision you make going forward. We will have a stadium in New York City FC. They are committed to it; they are very, very focused on it. They have been working from the day their team has been announced to try to get that stadium solution, and the temporary solution in Yankee Stadium is going to be a good one. I think they have 20,000 season tickets sold. So that's more than most of our teams have sold, so that temporary solution is, in fact, temporary. We know in Miami if we don't play in an environment that will be the center of what's happening there culturally, we will not succeed. We can't go into a situation where that is up in the air because of our failure in the past. Let's basically call it what it is. We were in the wrong spot, we were in that market and we failed! We folded a team. Now when all you guys rate the Commissioner, we folded a team. That's not a good thing. We folded a team in Tampa; that's not a good thing. Coming back to Orlando, and that's looking like it's going to be one of the best teams out of the box in our history. So times change a bit, but we're not going to Miami if we don't have a stadium site that we are convinced will be successful for us. Q. Let's talk about Canadian content. Is there progress being made concerning the status of Canadian players being considered, domestic players in all MLS clubs, not just Canadian teams? COMMISSIONER GARBER: I get asked this in every interview I do up in Canada. I know it is an emotional issue and when we went to Canada one of the benefits is how strong and relevant the sport is. Put Major League Soccer aside, we're doing well in Vancouver, Montreal and Toronto, but the sport itself is embedded in the culture, so we knew that would work. We also understand that the character and the nationalism of that community and the flag and the national anthem are all things that make it a very special place for any American business to engage in and do business in. We have this rule of having Canadian players‑‑ American players counting as domestics in Canada, because we don't have enough Canadian players that are good enough yet to be able to allow those teams to be competitive. Our goal as a league should be, with the CSA, to change that issue, and when that issue changes, we will be the first ones to say that that rule should change as it relates to Canada. Now going back to the United States, unfortunately, and we've said this publically many times, we can't, from a labor perspective, treat a Canadian citizen different than we treat any other nonAmerican citizen. All the other rules about border issues, aside. A Canadian in the United States is no different than a Mexican, no different than a Honduran, no different than a Brit. So we cannot do that. What we can do is address opportunities for the Canadian player. One of the things we are talking to Victor Montagliani about is can we provide more opportunities in Major League Soccer for Canadians? Can we give our clubs an incentive to sign Canadian players? Can we provide them with more opportunities to train and develop? Those are the things we're talking about. I think we have a great president of the Canadian Soccer Association in Victor. He is very focused on this issue, not because Twitter is forcing him to, but because he wants the Canadian National team to get better, and so do we. Q. Are the Canadian teams asking for more Canadian content? There was a rule about that. Is pressure coming from the CSA or is it coming from the clubs? COMMISSIONER GARBER: I don't look at it as pressure; I look at it as a dynamic, right? How do we work together to get the National team better, and what kinds of things need to happen? What does the CSA need to be on their own and how could Major League Soccer make that happen, similar to how we're helping US Soccer make that happen. If you were to ask the president of US Soccer did he want us to help the Canadian National team get better, he would say yes, because we do think of ourselves as aligned with Canada and Mexico as a block, if you will, and actually CONCACAF use us as the North American block in ways that we are trying to work together. Q. We have questions about the playoffs and what an exciting period this weekend was. One question is, will the away goal rule continue to be used in future playoffs? COMMISSIONER GARBER: Well, you know, very timely. The answer to that is yes. It's interesting. If you're a Seattle fan you might not like the away goal rule when you lost out to LA, but you really liked it when you were playing Dallas. So we believe that rules can help games become more competitive and also we are trying to attract the large soccer market that we only have a portion of. So I might get that a baseball fan doesn't understand how Seattle won in Seattle but lost out and isn't going to be playing in the MLS Cup, but there is no soccer fan in our countries that don't understand that, particularly all our friends that are connected to League MX, so for now it is going to be part of our rules. Q. Talking about different cultures and different ways. Going to 24 is probably going to become the American model, because most of the league is operated with 20 teams, but when we try to match the international scene, like US Soccer with the rest of the world, have you envisioned to go with the international calendar, Septemberto June? Will we ever see MLS teams‑‑ I know this is a‑‑ COMMISSIONER GARBER: I love it! Q. Will we ever see MLS teams competing, for example, in Copa Libertadores or Copa Sudamericana? COMMISSIONER GARBER: I smiled because I was meeting this morning with one of our expansion committee owners and we were talking about how the weather would affect the markets that we are looking at, and it was minus zero in Minneapolis yesterday, minus zero in December. Imagine what it would be like in February, imagine what it's like in Toronto where we're playing outdoors in a newly renovated stadium next year in February. The weather issues we have are insurmountable until we start heating domes or building new stadiums, and that is an unfortunate reality that we have to manage to. I will say that we are getting closer to CONMEBOL and the FMS and the leadership at League MX, and more today than yesterday this idea that all of us should be thinking about competitions that could have this part of the world, this hemisphere, be as important to football and soccer as Europe is to the game of football and the rest of the world. I think we should look at that. I don't know how you manage the schedule issues. You know the Liga MX schedule issues are unbelievable now that they have their version of the Europa League, of the US Open Cup, I'm sorry, in Mexico. So I don't know how we get there. I will tell that you Copa America being here in 2016 brings us closer to CONMEBOL. They got a great new president there. We spent a ton of time with Deserde Maria and Gestino Compion, and I think League MX and FMF is managed in a best‑in‑class way. I would love to find more ways we can compete together either in official tournaments or exhibition tournaments. SuperLiga was an event ahead of its time, it was a great, great event. I would love to find a way we could bring something like that back. Q. Do you anticipate ‑‑ knowing that the schedule can't go to a European schedule now, but will there be a way to accommodate international windows going forward? COMMISSIONER GARBER: I can't answer that definitively. It's a discussion that's going on at our competition committee level and it will be discussed at the MLS Board meeting. These are challenges that the NBA and the NFL don't have to deal with. We have a FIFA schedule that falls smack in the middle of our playoffs, and last year we had to have two weeks between our first leg and our second leg. This year we moved it later, and now we have one week between the MLS Championship game and our MLS Cup Final. So it is an insurmountable issue; it's a square peg in a round hole. It would be good for us to take off all FIFA windows, not have to have competition with our National team, which we are so closely aligned and partnered with, but I can't answer that definitively as to how many weekends we will be taking off. Q. We saw just before the playoffs the Octoberwindow. A lot of teams are in the race to make the playoffs, and there is that tug of war which came about ‑‑ was the premise related to Jurgen, the discussions that you had with Jurgen, that ongoing tug of war between MLS and the National team. Is there a way late in the season when playoff raises are going on to accommodate windows in that portion of the season? COMMISSIONER GARBER: I would love to have the National Team say they won't call those players. We had the Caribbean group had their own qualifier, which Jamaica qualified for, and we had a player that was called in. We had to find a way to ensure that he could play in his playoff game but also get home and compete in his competition in the Caribbean. These are the issues that I think this country needs to address and be aligned with. We are committed to club in country. There is nothing more important to us than having the U.S. qualify for the World Cup and Canada qualify for the World Cup. At the same time, it would be great not to have Robbie Keane worried about being called into Ireland in the middle of our playoffs. Adam Silva is not dealing with that with the NBA Championship playoffs, right? Q. He is not dealing with designated players, either. You have to ‑‑ you don't evolve, you die; right, and particularly in sports, and designated player has evolved. What's the next evolution of this DP rule? Is there a lot of talk out there about money being moved around, and how you can manipulate that, talk about maybe the total number of DPs will increase as well. What's the update or what's the conversation going to be Saturday with the Board of Governors around DPs? COMMISSIONER GARBER: Rob, I think the better response is the conversation. There is no answer to this. There is nothing coming down the pike where all of the sudden there is going to be a dramatic change. The discussion, and it's a smart discussion, is that we have been able to within our system evolve how we attract players to our league and how we accommodate them on our rosters in a way that our clubs can be competitive with each other, and yet you can have one club in the case of NewYork paying Thierry Henry dramatically more than any other player in Major League Soccer is paid, and nobody would argue even those teams that might have lost to the Red Bulls that having Thierry Henry in our league is not better than not having him in our league. But we do continually need to be committed to this idea that on any given day any club could win in they're smart. That's what the Cup was like last year, and certainly Kansas City is a model and Salt Lake has been a model for the last five years. So we've got to evolve this system so we could continue to attract an every‑growing knowledgeable fan in these two countries at the same time, not putting ourselves in a situation where any fan coming in Marchdoesn't believe their team is both committed to and has the opportunity to win the championship. Q. Talk about attracting players, I love that phrase. One of the ways that you want this league to be in the top‑ten tier in the world, attracting players. You gotta get players in their prime. How are you guys going about saying we can get these European guys, I'm talking European players who represent their national teams who are still considered in their prime? How do we get those guys to Major League Soccer? COMMISSIONER GARBER: I don't want to be snarky here but Robbie Keane and Tim Cahill are not just leaders but certainly in Tim's case the captain of his team. I don't know if Robbie is the captain or not, but just because a guy is not playing at their prime overseas does not mean he is not an important player who is driving the success ‑‑ Q. You know what I'm getting to‑‑ COMMISSIONER GARBER: I know, but in many cases that's part of the problem because people view a player who might have made the decision to leave Europe at a particular time that he's no longer a top player, and I don't believe that to be true. I believe that when Robbie came to this league he was in his prime. David was 31 years old. David Beckham was 31 years old. You know at 31 you're not over the hill. Michael Bradley came in his twenties and Clint Dempsey, putting aside what anybody else may think, I don't think Clint Dempsey came to Major League Soccer because he wasn't in his prime and couldn't make it in Europe. He decided he wanted to make the MLS a choice. I think without being cute about it, how do you get the next Messi in their prime to play in MLS? That's something that is going to happen one of two ways. We either develop that player, and we're able to sign him, which we very much want to do, or we're in a position where we have enough revenue to be able to go out and attract that player and be able to have him decide at 25, put Michael Bradley aside, that this is the place which is best for him and his career. Money is part of that, but there are certainly things than won't have to depend on having you guys decide you're going to tear up your contract after year four and pay us three times as much money. Our training grounds, our infrastructure, our coaching, and the environment in our two countries that we're playing in. Having somebody play in Seattle and say, this is an experience that is good for me as playing in Bernabéu, and I would hold that game on Sunday, or the game in New England, up to any game that was played last weekend. So it's about money, it's about infrastructure, it's about coaching, and it's about having people respect our league more and that's why I fight so hard to have our league respected by anybody who has an opinion about it. Q. How do you plan to keep professional soccer players from North America in MLS? COMMISSIONER GARBER: Well, it's about having this be a league that they believe is good for their career, where they could make a good living, as goofed a living that they can make somewhere else, where they believe that they're going to be trained as well, and they believe they're going to be respected and basically have the environment around them that is going to help them become better. What we can't recreate in the short‑term‑‑ can we haven't rehearsed this, for everybody who is watching. We can't recreate in the short term 100 years of history. We can't recreate what exists in Italy or in England or in Spain when some player is being harassed in the press and if he has a bad game he is being sent down‑‑ we can't recreate that in the short‑term. What we can do is try to manage the things that are in our control. What kind of league are we, what kind of training do we have, what kind of environment do we have for our players, how competitive is our league, and how relevant is it, a marketing question, and how cool is it to be an MLS player? You're going to walk down the street and have everybody say, hey, that's Landon Donovan. And I think that's happening now. It wasn't happening ten years ago. It wasn't happening when you were playing or when you were playing. Q. Commissioner, are you seeing a sense of frustration from the academy? I coach in the youth national system and we're seeing so many young guys leave, leave academies to go to Europe to play, to go to Mexico to play, are you sensing frustration that, hey, we're spending more than we are but we're also in a lot of ways losing more young players at the age of 16, 17, 18, rather than signing MLS, but going to other‑‑ how are we going to take care of those clubs, the Dallas' of the world who do such a great job with their academy and Red Bull and so many others, Seattle, how do we take care of those teams that spend an awful lot of money but in the end unlike Europe where you can sign a player and hold their rights where they just lose these players? COMMISSIONER GARBER: That had been the debate going on, and I think it's a healthy debate. It's good that these issues are being discussed publically, because ten years ago we weren't developing those players and nobody wanted to play in our league and we had no mechanism to allow them to come in, our home‑grown player rule was created to allow us to have a mechanism where a club is incentivize to spend money to develop a player and doesn't have to lose at least internally to the MLS draft. I go back to the thing I said to Amanda and Rob we need to have and we should be able to‑‑ there is no stopping us from be having the best possible academies in the world, that's resources and frank. We need to have our academy coaches be like Brad Friedel is, a license at the highest pro level. There are some MLS coaches that are not even licensed at the highest level. So part of that is ensuring that they're coached well. You look at some of our academies, I think anybody who is looking at this will say some of the academies are really, really good, not all of them are as developed as far. US Soccer is going to announce later this week a mechanism they have put in place to get a sense of how good are our academies, they have hired Nelson Rodriguez who is a founder of MLS and long‑time college coach and competition guy to be a liaison between the players and what's going on in their professional decision‑making processes. I think that will help. So they're not just getting attacked by agents when they're 16. The last part of it is they can't get signed anywhere when they're 16, that is against FIFA rules and we need to have our federation and we need to all recognize that all this stuff that's gone on around the world where moms are giving‑‑ dads are given jobs that are not real jobs and the player is signing a pro contract at 16, he's buried in an academy not playing that stuff has got to stop and I think the federation is going to put a mechanism in place to address that is. Q. On the subject of mechanism, one is allocation money, and allocation money from the fans' perspective is mysterious, does MLS intend to be more transparent about its distribution in the near future? Would it make some fans less cynical about the league's mechanisms? COMMISSIONER GARBER: I didn't expect this question to come out of an allocation money question but we obviously talk about this stuff a lot. What I intended to say in my opening remarks and I didn't want to get into that level of detail in the opening is that we recognize that things aren't as easy for people to understand as they need to be. We look at the Jermaine Jones situation we had a mechanism that was the only mechanism that we could have put in place to have Jermaine Jones signed in Major League Soccer, no other way to do it based on the rules that we have but the public doesn't understand our rules and most of the media doesn't as well so as I did say in 2014, transparent say is a priority, transparency is a big priority in 2015 and one of the things that you'll start seeing is that the concepts that we have in place that allow players to come into the league, that allow a priority order as to how we have some management of who gets the rights to certain players outside of our draft and outside of the youth system, all of that will be shared with the public after we have come up with a way to try to organize it in buckets so people can understand it and whether that's allocations or priority order all that stuff that the hard core fan is trying to figure out today, you have a commitment from me that at least a heck of a lot more of it will be transparent than it is today. Q. You signed a new contract. COMMISSIONER GARBER: I did. Q. What is your biggest regret so far in your tenure? What would you like to be your legacy? COMMISSIONER GARBER: I well have a lot of ‑‑ regrets that's not the right word. Regrets‑‑ I don't think any leader of any business if you don't look at what you've done in the past and rethink almost every decision then I don't think you're a good leader. You can't get paralyzed by that but, boy, there are so many things that we've done‑‑ I wish we had willing handled the Jermaine Jones situation differently approximately we did what we needed to do, we did it at the time we did it, would it have been easier for us to eliminate skepticism? Sure, that's one of 100. I look back at the development of the league over that period of time and it's come along further than I thought. When we went through our real questions whether the league would survive in '02 and we added more teams in 2005 at $5 million, $7 million, and we look where we are with the LAFC deal and the fact that we are in a position where we've got lots of great things going on in our markets, that happened pretty quickly, faster than I would have expected. I've got four years left in my contract I won't think about what that legacy is until after I leave. What I will say is everybody in the league office is committed to trying to create a league that everybody can be proud of and everybody associated with it can respect. And I know our owners are committed long‑term generationally to try to make the U.S. and Canada, our league in these two countries among the best in the world. When and how is a lot of work that needs to be done over the next number of years. The one thing that I am proudest of and I say this without doubt, when I walk around fields as I did this weekend, and a bunch of players come up to me and they say, hey, excited to be in the league today when things are going the way they are, man, I remember when it was not so good, and it is really thrilling for me‑‑ I have no idea how happy I am when they come over and they're ‑‑ I kick the ball around, like we were on Sunday night in Seattle, and a bunch of guys come over and say, "Commissioner, keep it up, the league is doing well." That to me is a proud moment for me and there are hundreds of guys that have played in our league that are working in the league now. That's probably the legacy when you think away the stadiums and expansion, the facts that we have a soccer profession here for all those guys who weren't making a bunch of money and were committing, you came back, you committed to it at a time where you were not making much at all, you had to work three jobs and now you're working in the sport, coaching in the sport and we've got countless coaches and head coaches, Jay Heaps, look at what Jay has been able to do, that warms my heart. Q. The Chivas USA situation, the disappearance of that team, do you think it could have been different if it would have been handled different or no regrets with that? COMMISSIONER GARBER: Handled differently? Hindsight is 20/20. I look back at what happened with Chivas USA and I would have made the same decision again we thought at that time having a team‑‑ remember we were at 10 teams in 2005 we thought the idea of targeting the Hispanic market in LA was a good one, I've said that many times, I take full responsibility for that. We had to buckle up, suck it up, buy the team at market value from Jorge Vergara, turn around and sell it to somebody else and try to get a stadium deal done but am I pleased to have had that process for us all to go through so that we can learn from it and we can grow and more job opportunities for those players and seeing some of the great history there, I am proud of it and at the LAFC announcement we had the representative of the fan group and they're here with us. They said hey, we hear you, we are here through thick and thin. We want a team that we can support because we believe the galaxy has enough fans and we want to have another team. Q. Chivas was the most popular team in Mexico at least in '05, now America has taken the torch. It didn't work, that relationship adapting the model to the American market. Aren't you afraid that can happen‑‑ that the same can happen bringing Manchester city to New York City? It's a different mentality, the European, maybe the Americans wouldn't relate to them or for example those fans who would live here that root for Chelsea or Manchester United won't feel attraction to‑‑ (Talking over one another) Q. It could lead to the same situation as‑‑ (Talking over one another.) COMMISSIONER GARBER: The smart thing about smart people is you learn from your mistakes and you try to put mechanisms in to try resident to let that happen so we would have to be dopey to let that happen again and we went into discussions with man city with that and uniforms aside they have a plan that is solely focused on New York City trying to be a competitor with the Red Bulls, be building a great stadium and doing everything they can to be part of the Major League Soccer movement where the problem we had with Chivas Guadalajara is they were half in half how the and the they were never committed to one thing and it was all over the place and that is what it is and we've got to learn from the challenges and the mistakes we made then. Q. Is there a chance we will see the league MX All‑Stars playing the MLS All‑Star in the place of a top European opponent in the future? COMMISSIONER GARBER: We talk about this a lot and maybe this could be a debate, take take break for this and curious what everybody's view would be. When we win, as we won last all‑star game we beat the top people in the world and arguably a majority of those players were on the World Cup team what could be better and we were the kings of the universe then, when we lost 6‑0 or whatever the score was in Houston‑‑ Q. It was 5. COMMISSIONER GARBER: 5 against Manchester United we couldn't have felt any worse. So that's the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat it's sports, actually we believe our all‑star game is a competitive one, it's not a skills competition. So the fact that Bradley write scores a terrific goal and you had so many compelling moments was good. That being said a league MX MLS All‑Star Game would be fantastic. Scheduling is a challenge, and I would love to get there but I don't believe it's going to happen in the short‑term, what do you think? Q. East/west come back? COMMISSIONER GARBER: We talk a lot about that and we haven't mid a final decision. I think our league is getting to the point where we can attract enough attention here in our two markets with just our best players playing against each other. The question would be what kind of statement would it be when you have this unique format which is different from every other league's, you are putting yourself up against the best in the world and getting people to pay attention to you in ways that they're not seeing the best players play every weekend with different uniforms on. That's always been my point of view though I know there was social chatter about, hey, we might be ready for it and maybe at some point we are and that might be soon. I'm not being cute, we haven't decided on it yet. Q. Will there be a handshake between the coaches at the end of that game? COMMISSIONER GARBER: I think that added to it; right? That speaks to it. Our guys weren't going out there just to put on a show, and I'm not sure their coach believed that to be true. There was no agreement beforehand, "hey, wink, wink, let us win," our guys aren't going to go out there and let, you know, Bayern Munich put on a show, running around our guys, I mean that's the opposite of what we're trying to achieve with our All‑Star game, and certainly not something people believe in, why would they tune in to see an exhibition. Q. That game was played on artificial turf and Bayern Munich accepted those conditions, and you mentioned that the games this weekend were exciting, they were, but they were played on artificial turf, a surface that has been criticized by many designated players, Thierry Henry I don't know didn't want to play on artificial turf until these games. What's your take on that? Do you think the league should raise playing surface standards for all of it's clubs? COMMISSIONER GARBER: Raise standards, yes, and ensuring that we have at least the best artificial surfaces while we're playing in places where we don't own the venue, Seattle is an example of that or in Toronto where you're not growing grass in the wintertime and in most of the year right we have that same issue in a number of other markets. I do believe that we need to have the best possible surfaces. Nobody was complaining about the New England surface and there was some question I heard by one of our broadcasters, making a big debate that Henry decided not to play, that wasn't true. He may have decided want to play prior to that, that was between him and his coach and his fans and whether or not elbows that's something he should be held accountable to, the league can't force players to play on a surface or not we can't do it for that player and not other players because we're not forcing our teams to have surfaces that are uniform. We can't. That speaks to the calendar and schedule issues that we have. Just not something that we can do at this point. Q. Do you have a problem with tier Yankee not being able to play in the league? COMMISSIONER GARBER: I would have preferred that he played in every game and I would prefer that some players decide to go away on National Team duty when it's a meaningless game in the middle of our playoffs, too, but that doesn't mean that we have the right to do that. Could you sign a doctorate that says you're not going to agree to play on a certain surface? Perhaps. That's not what happened in Thierry Henry's contract but that she had not cloud the broader story here. The league is infinitely better with Thierry Henry having played in it than not. And like anything else in life there are certain conditions you have to expect, and you have to accept I think if we had a situation and said you must play on every surface, I'm not sure he would have signed the contract, and I would have still made the decision to sign him. Q. Big void for the Red Bulls, with Henry leaving, and a lot of discussion. There's some ownership issues with Red Bull as well, and you have the most iconic, American soccer brand, the Cosmos, sitting right here, playing in a wonderful league, the NASL that doesn't get much attention. Where is the Red Bull ownership stand? How committed are they to staying here in Major League Soccer, and what are the odds that there is maybe some reconciliation with the Cosmos brand and bringing them into MLS? COMMISSIONER GARBER: Let me start with the first.  And let me‑‑ if I don't get to the second, remind me to, because I think you said two totally different things, because they really are different. The Red Bulls are committed to Major League Soccer. How this discussion got out that they weren't, I don't understand. I was out in Austria recently I met with Dietrich Mateschitz, as we have met in the past, How anybody can question the commitment that this team has ‑‑ they've spent more than any other club. They have built and spent, privately financed, the most expensive stadium in Major League Soccer. They compete in a market where the costs of operating from a marketing perspective and a staffing perspective are more than any other club, and they have invested more by significant percentages, than any other club in Major League Soccer. So there has always been this intrigue because you have a situation where you have somebody that doesn't come to games regularly. Well, he owns F‑1 teams and owns extreme sports‑‑ he doesn't do that. We have a lot of owners that don't go to every game, and that's true in the NFL, and the NBA and Major League Baseball, also, but there is this thing that has this momentum here that is wrong. Because their commitments ‑‑ they may not have operated the way people would have liked them to operate. That's not a question of commitment. I think it's good that people are held to task as to whether or not they believe a team has been operated properly. Their success‑‑ since they have owned the team they have been in the playoffs almost every year. You guys would know exactly. Almost every year? That's better than almost every MLS club. So when you think about it, the facts really sort of speak for themselves. I don't know what their plans are, their competitive plans. Obviously they just got out of the playoffs Saturday, so I'm not sure anybody knows yet what their plans are, but I believe in the Red Bull ownership, I believe in Dietrich Mateschitz, I believe they'll get it right. MarkDeCambre, who is running that club is a really, really sharp guy who left a great job to come back to the Red Bulls and run that organization. They've got new management of all their clubs over in Austria, very bright people that are focused. As it relates to the Cosmos and reconciliation, there is nothing to reconcile, Rob. We've never had any relationship, nor is there any relationship to have outside of the fact that they are in the second division. We support the NASL. We support them in every way we can. We have a team that's announced it's going to come in LA. I just heard something that they're taking over Atlanta. We will do everything that we can that we're asked to to support the NASL, and I'll get to our support for the USL Pro. I don't see there being the run. That's fan rub. I love that. I love the debate. That's media rub. That's good, too, that creates a conversation. I hope the Cosmos are successful. If they're successful, more people in NewYork will pay attention. I understand there's going to be ‑‑ the "NewYork Times Magazine" cover is going to have an MLS player on it this Sunday. Henry had an unbelievable article written about him that was the cover of the sports section. All that's good, and the Cosmos are getting their share of success, and I think that's good as well. Our support is going to be for whatever we're asked to do on the NASL and deeply committed to the USL Pro, and I didn't mention that in our opening. Reserve league has gone away. 2015 news. Every one of our clubs is either going to own or be affiliated with a USL Pro team. And the reason why we're doing it with the USL Pro is because they're interested in doing that. They're interested in affiliating with us and working together, both in Canada and the United States to help develop players. And if we do our job with the USL and the NASL does their job developing their markets, whenever those markets are, being as good as they can be, which is what Bill Peterson, their Commissioner, stated their intent it, and we support that, and we do what we're supposed to do, the sport in this region will be much better. Q. D.C. United, big vote today down there in the District. If the votes go against D.C. United, how many times have they go against D.C. United. If the votes don't go their way ‑‑ I'm not trying to be negative, is it time to pull ship out of the District? COMMISSIONER GARBER: Well, the votes are going our way, right now. We had a good vote today. I don't know if you guys heard that. There was a vote out of committee. We have one more vote, which I believe is coming next Tuesday, and we're encouraged by Mayor Bowser's support for that plan and all that the new mayor is trying to do to have Washington, D.C. be a major market that you can be considered for the 2024 Olympics and having a soccer stadium will help with that. So I always a half‑full guy, unlike most my friends in the media. I am thinking that we are going to get a deal done. We're going to have a new stadium in D.C., sorry, Greg, we're going to have a new stadium in Boston, that NewYork FC will get a new stadium done. We'll have a new stadium in Orlando. D.C., Orlando, a new team in Atlanta in 2017, Boston, NewYork, that will give us that power and connection and ubiquity that we have in the northwest. That will be a great moment for the league. Q. Will there ever be promotion and relegation in MLS? COMMISSIONER GARBER: Ever is a long time. I don't know what will happen after they kick me out of here; it's not happening anytime soon. THE MODERATOR: Commissioner, you said 20,000 season tickets for New York City, but it's 11,000 tickets. COMMISSIONER GARBER: Sorry. Don't let the facts get in the way of a good story. THE MODERATOR: Thanks to everyone. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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