Examining your career and how things played out, do you feel as though your progression and the general progression of the best American soccer players of the last 10 years could have been much further with the right infrastructure? Undoubtedly, the coaching in place, the facilities, the education is probably MUCH better than what you and I experienced in our youth. Are you satisfied with the speed and improvement of the grassroots level of the game (coaching included) in the United States right now?

This is one of the more interesting dynamics in American Soccer and not easily answered as I honestly believe the last 10 years in MLS and US Soccer should be completely separate.

US Soccer has made some incredible strides and had some incredible setbacks. I’m not going to touch the ’98 team because I’m positive someone will write a book giving an in-depth look at what really happened. 2002 was an incredible run in Korea/Japan and ’06 was going to be difficult from the start. But the World Cup in general is largely based on the luck of the draw, injuries heading into the tournament, coaching decisions, player decisions and referees. Look no further than France to see how turbulent a Cup can be. They win in ’98, don’t get out of their group in 2002 and find themselves in the finals in ’06.

But if you look deeper at what Nike and US Soccer have given to young players, it’s pretty incredible. Now they have the Development Academy where they focus on nutrition, strength and conditioning with just one match a day. In the past it was a 7 am, 12 pm and 4:30 pm game on Saturdays, with the quarter, semi and finals all taking place on a Sunday

The question that US officials are trying to figure out is if providing these incredible facilities and the latest ground breaking equipment such as boots and kits still might be too late. How do you identify players at a young age, give them everything they could possibly need to accelerate their growth and still make sure they respect what they’ve been given. In my opinion, this has always been THE American problem.

MLS is becoming stronger each season, but competing with the landscape of American sports will always be difficult. NBA, NFL and MLB are out of reach. But the idea of being in the realm of the PGA, NASCAR and say a WWE, this is something that can be attained though it’s going to take some time. And if MLS wasn’t a solid product already, you wouldn’t see the likes of Clint Dempsey, Jozy Altidore, Timmy Howard, Carlos Bocanegra, Brian McBride, Brad Guzani, Stu Holden, Michael Bradley and Ricardo Clark making their way into the bigger European Leagues.

I would suppose that for the United States, based on their business of professional sports, they can really draw no references or help in developing soccer from other countries when it’s in such a highly competitive landscape. We sort of forget that for the rest of the world, soccer is a very easy sell, but as you mentioned, NBA, NFL and the MLB are products that have extremely long histories and foundations in American culture. Circumventing this is beyond difficult I imagine cause you have not only 1 competitor, you have a total of 3. I guess let’s hope for eco-friendliness to run its course to overshadow NASCAR and have Tiger not return to golf.

And this is exactly why MLS has had to be so protective of the growth of the league in general. Too many times we’ve seen soccer leagues in America such as the NASL and WUSA rise and fall because of the “Big City” dynamic and poor business choices. That’s why this current Collective Bargaining Agreement situation becomes that much more interesting, with both the league and players looking to make strides and concessions on both sides. The hope has to be that both sides have enough common sense to figure out a level playing field (and in no way, shape or form a lockout) so that the positive growth can continue.

Editor’s Note: Both sides came together and agreed on a new MLS Collective Bargaining Agreement just recently.

In an ideal world, how would you change the current American soccer landscape from a business perspective? Do you think there are certain weaknesses right now that are detrimental? I remember reading just recently about how Lee Nguyen’s move back to the MLS was stalled cause of financial terms. I assume salaries which we touched upon earlier is an important thing that needs to be sorted. How far is the MLS from turning the corner from being a league that is predominately a place of development before players make the jump overseas?

If I only knew… I do know that MLS has recognized that the web is an incredible vehicle to get their product first hand to their demographic. And I’m very excited to see the difference in excitement between the ’06 World Cup and this summer in South Africa. In my opinion a service like Twitter will be giving people quicker information than we’ve ever had as far as breaking news, and I’m wondering what kind of trickle down effect that will have in general.

Lee Nguyen’s situation is not that uncommon as one would think in regards to coming back to MLS. There’s been a handful of young American players that have decided to forgo MLS and try their luck abroad. There’s been some fantastic stories about MLS- bypassing players who have gone on to find success, with Jay DeMerit probably being the most well known.

The issue Lee is facing in particular is that he can make legit money in lower leagues around the world. But each player has to decide what’s more important – the money, the league, the quality of life for themselves or their families.. All of that has to be taken under consideration when a contract is placed in front of them.

Unless you’ve done well enough to find yourself in the full US National Team consistently while playing abroad, the common path for American players coming back to MLS (regardless of time overseas) has been to return on a lower pay scale than they’re used to. Once the player establishes themselves in their team and does well against league competition, you’ll usually see some type of pay jump. Taylor Twellman is a great example of starting overseas in Germany at 1860 Munich, coming back to MLS on the lower end of the pay scale and finding himself getting paid out a couple season later after leading the league in goalscoring. A more current example would be US National Team player Stu Holden who started at Sunderland, came back to MLS a year later and did extremely well after a couple of season with the Houston Dynamo. The difference for Stu though was that he had a Scottish Passport which gave him the option of signing with Bolton Wanderers (as opposed to the common American who would need to play in 75% of the full National Team matches over the course of two calendar years) at the end of his contract as opposed to re-upping with the league after they came back with a huge offer.

I’m not really sure as to when MLS will turn that corner where players focus on coming rather than hitting the big leagues like England, Spain or Italy. I’d venture to say that we’d have to ask the basketball leagues of Spain or France how long they think they would need to compete with the NBA, because I think that’s a similar issue that MLS faces. But the annual competition in club tournaments like CONCACAF Champions League and SuperLiga is a place to start. If MLS teams can start consistently beating the Cruz Azul’s, Pumas’ or Club America’s in Mexico (which will always be difficult because they virtually have unlimited rosters from youth to professional), that will go a very, very long way as far respect from outsiders about the league.

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