When Alan Rothenberg and his colleagues established the single entity concept back in the early days of the MLS, it was with a mandate to allow a first-class professional soccer league in the United States to survive, develop and flourish.
In recognizing that if competitive balance and parity were prioritized in building the mechanics of the single entity concept, league survival would be far more assured than in previous attempts to run professional soccer in North America.
In addition, there was the suppression of player salaries to consider. Without it, the league would likely be doomed because, as in all other leagues, it is the biggest expense. With league revenues being limited at the outset, this suppression would have been justified. The single entity concept, in essence, allows the MLS to control and so far suppress salaries.
The smart thing about the founders of MLS was that they pre-empted any legal action by a player's union by creating a single entity model that would stand up in court. That's what happens when you have legal people formulating the concept in the first place. In 2002, MLS won the battle against the union which proved the founders were right on track in their formation of the concept.
What this all translates to in regards to the current impasse with the league and union is that with free agency the players are metaphorically barking up the wrong tree unless they are using it as a strategic chip to gain elsewhere. Hopefully this is the case, but I suspect it is not.
After the huge investment made in formulating and defending the concept of single entity, it is highly unlikely that the league will buckle now or in the future. League president Mark Abbott gave an indication that there are other ways to skin a cat which would alleviate some of the strain of not having free agency but for a full elimination, it really makes no sense for the league to do so. Allowing players free agency rights would inevitably create lopsided teams and bidding wars over time, which is the antithesis of the founding principles of the league.
Which leads us back to the salary cap. This is where the union should be focusing their energies on because the single entity concept does not limit what this can be. Without flogging it to death, the current cap of $2.3 million is as absurd as the 4-to-6 per-cent increase proposed by the league. As mentioned earlier, at the outset, the MLS were in a position where there was no real barometer for salary levels and so they were prudently kept low. Fourteen years on the landscape has changed that.
When Don Garber talks about improving the level of play in order for MLS teams to be competitive in the CONCACAF club championships then he has to recognize that each MLS squad has to have 24 quality players in order for this to take place. Having a third of your squad making a pittance is not going to do achieve what they want. If the league have a rebuttal for this then they are naive to the realities of competition. If the argument is that some of the teams are losing too much already then no problem, but don't pitch about the league needing to be better in terms of quality. Instead, either accept it for what it is, or innovate through equalization payments or contraction of weaker franchises and expansion into cities such as Montreal and St Louis.
As far as the union reps are concerned, it appears the preoccupation with free agency is a little misguided or maybe even self serving. After all, union reps tend to be the older more experienced players who have more to gain from free agency than the younger or mid-range players. If the health of the league is the union's priority then it should care more about the minimum salaries of young players and the overall improvement of play in the league by a significant salary cap increase than free agency itself. It is still too early to fight that particular battle head-on.
In regards to the salary cap an initial 'adjustment' should be made across the board to raise the cap to $3.3 million in year one. Then another 'adjustment' in year two to $3.8 million and then a final adjustment in year three to $4.3 million with future increments in the final years of the CBA to be set at 4-6%. Minimum salaries should be $50,000 irrespective of age.
This approach would be much more realistic to the goals of the league and would rectify the current illogical salary cap.