A Major League Question Mark : Soccer: There are few definite answers about future of Rothenberg’s venture.

It was a decidedly tough room. More than 200 international soccer journalists were assembled in a Santa Monica hotel ballroom in April 1993 to hear World Cup boss Alan Rothenberg brief them on the progress of Cup preparations. It was a moment crucial to the credibility of the event.

Before Rothenberg took over the flagging Organizing Committee, there had been a very real chance that the World Cup would be yanked out of the United States. That would have pleased many in the audience.

Standing confidently at the front of the room, Rothenberg was peppered with questions that had as their presumption the imminent failure of World Cup ’94. Skepticism lurked behind every query.

When the organizer of the World Cup promised sold-out stadiums, French reporters stole sidelong looks at Italian reporters and rolled their eyes. When Rothenberg--who, as far as this group was concerned was just another slick attorney --began to speak of his plans for launching a new professional soccer league in the United States after the World Cup, veteran European sportswriters abandoned all protocol and laughed out loud.

As events have transpired, Rothenberg had the next laugh when the World Cup set attendance records. Who laughs last--and at whose expense--remains the subject of much speculation.

THE CREDIBILITY GAP

Major League Soccer has a logo, an official game ball and contracts for uniforms for what the league has said will be 12 teams. There is a joint venture with ABC/ESPN. But since identifying seven league cities in June, there have been postponed announcements, missed deadlines and, mostly, silence from Rothenberg.

No team names. No coaches. No players. One announced investor.

The information vacuum has spawned speculation and rumor in the tight little world of soccer, but even the sport’s highest officials are in the dark.

“Part of the problem is that right now no one knows too much about what’s going on,” said Hank Steinbrecher, secretary general of the U.S. Soccer Federation.

What is known so far:

--MLS has made no announcement yet, but the league will not start next April. The league has failed to meet its original goal of raising $100 million from investors.

--Only 10 cities--not 12--will be in place for the first year, whenever that is.

--Only two of the announced franchise cities met the season-ticket sales goal.

--An announcement identifying investors and additional cities has been postponed twice but will be made next Wednesday in New York.

Richard Groff, commissioner of the rival--and active--American Professional Soccer League, surveys MLS’s sophisticated, foot-noted business plan and the lofty but unfulfilled expectations of its executives and snorts, “It’s a fantasy league that specializes in planning.”

FIFA, soccer’s international governing body, is said to have been angry but is now resigned to the fact that the United States has failed to fulfill one of the requirements it had agreed to as host country of the World Cup.

Some had hoped that MLS and the APSL, specifically their commissioners, would be able to set aside their differences and work together for the good of the sport. In recent weeks MLS and the APSL came close to agreeing to coexist as a single league, eight teams in a division. But progress always stopped at MLS’s insistence that it be regarded as the Division I league and the APSL’s superior.

Last month, MLS agreed to drop plans to move into Colorado for the time being. The APSL operates a team in Denver and MLS had plans to put a team in Mile High Stadium.

The new franchise cities expected to be named by MLS are Chicago, Kansas City, Mo., and Tampa, Fla. Named previously were New York, Boston, the New Jersey Meadowlands, San Jose, Los Angeles, Columbus, Ohio, and Washington, D.C.

MLS’ single-entity concept--the league will own all players and franchises--does allow for operator-investors to run local teams. But so far, only six of the 10 cities have investors.

Although there has been criticism of the league-ownership concept for flying in the face of free trade, MLS officials argue that the central control will allow MLS to avoid the problem of one or two big-spending owners throwing league salaries off kilter. The byword for now is parity.

The biggest problem MLS has to contend with is its apparent failure to begin the league when it said it would. Rothenberg says he won’t be limited by timetables, that he would rather start the league in ’96 and do it right than rush into an April start.

At least one sponsor, however, is having trouble with the delay.

“It’s been very frustrating because we had come to an agreement based on the ’95 season and were poised to go, and then . . . it became difficult to get information,” said Peter Moore, vice president of global product marketing for Reebok.

“And as such, our sales efforts have stalled somewhat and we’ve had to back-burner a lot of issues.”

USSF’s Steinbrecher notes that, however unfair it might be, MLS bears the burden of every U.S. soccer failure that came before.

“Anyone who doesn’t think that, doesn’t have a grip on the reality of the situation,” Steinbrecher said. “That’s the reality. There have been failures before.

“I absolutely understand the arguments for waiting. I really do. But there is an opportunity for us to be on the shelf selling a product. And to me, that’s a concern. From my seat here as general secretary of the federation, I’d like to see things move.”

And that’s not merely another complaint. The USSF awarded MLS its Division I rights and it can take them away if the league fails to live up to its promises.

WHERE’S THE MONEY?

MLS is existing on a $5-million loan it received from the World Cup Organizing Committee. Cash being hard to come by, MLS officials recently made an offer to the U.S. Soccer Federation Foundation, which was established with $40 million of World Cup profit: In lieu of cash repayment of the loan, MLS offered $5 million in league stock. The foundation passed.

Among all the start-up problems, raising money remains the most acute.

“I’m not sure that anybody’s ever put together a league structure quite like this before,” said Kevin Payne, vice president of Soccer USA Partners and a potential MLS investor. “It’s like many investments. Everybody’s sort of looking around, saying, ‘Well, I’ll jump in when you jump in.’ At some point you have to get to the point where everybody’s willing to hold hands and all jump in together. I think that’s what Alan (Rothenberg) is working toward now.”

Four shoe companies have signed four-year deals. Nike, for example, will pay each of its five sponsored teams $150,000, will provide $100,000 in marketing support and will supply uniforms and footwear.

There is big money--perhaps $6 million--expected from Dentsu, a major Japanese marketing-advertising firm, but there is no deal so far.

Kinsley Nyce, owner of a U.S. Interregional Soccer League franchise in Columbus, said the money problems have to do with timing and ideas too big for modest soccer budgets.

“The easy (flaw) is that between now and April ‘95, they want the teams to make just under half a million dollars in local advertising revenue to make the budget work,” he said.

“That is absolutely impossible. I don’t care what your marketing force is. The (problem) all the way around is that we’re dealing with people who ran the World Cup. Now, they ran a very successful World Cup. I give them credit for that. But now it’s changed. You can no longer spend whatever it takes to get the job done, which is what they did for the World Cup. You now have to spend in a range that you can have a return on, and that changes the game.”

MLS’s biggest financial drain might well be paying its commissioner. Its business plan calls for Rothenberg to be paid $1 million a year. Investors countered with an offer in the range of $250,000-$350,000. Sources say the commissioner’s salary will probably be $500,000 to $700,000.

WHERE WILL THE PLAYERS COME FROM?

Assume conservative numbers. Assume 10 MLS teams instead of 12. Rosters of 18. Assume five foreign players. That means 10 teams must find 130 American players.

Where are they?

MLS officials speak of signing U.S. World Cup players who want to play in the United States.

To whom are they referring? American players in Europe are playing professional soccer at the highest level possible. It has taken the hard work of a few Americans to pave the way for the rest and now it’s possible for talented Americans to play in any European country.

These players are not going to mess with their dreams.

Then, of course, there is the money factor. Will Alexi Lalas turn his back on more than $400,000 a year, a car and an apartment so he can return to the United States and play for $50,000-$70,000? As John Harkes, an American playing in England, observed, “The MLS can’t afford us.”

As for the foreign players, the entire league budget for transfer fees is $24.5 million. Transfer fees are not salary, they are fees paid to a player’s club to obtain his rights.

For the best players in the world, transfer fees are astronomical. In 1992, for instance, A.C. Milan spent $20 million to get Gianluigi Lentini.

MLS officials say they don’t expect to get the best players in the world and their budget seems to reflect that.

According to Mark Abbott, MLS senior vice president, a dozen high-quality players will earn more than $100,000. The rest of the league will consist of 30-35 players currently or formerly on the national team, 20-30 from the Olympic team, 20-25 from other U.S. leagues and an unspecified number of college players.

One of the problems identified with the downfall of the last great professional soccer experiment, the North American Soccer League, was its lack of emphasis on developing American players. MLS addresses this by limiting the number of foreign players.

But there is a problem with that. Steinbrecher confirmed that the federation would allow only three non-American players per team. MLS literature indicates that there will be four foreign players on each team and league officials admit that it might be necessary to have five in the early years.

WHO WILL WATCH THEM?

Abbott disputes the contention that the World Cup created soccer fans who won’t wait for MLS to start in 1996.

“I have never understood that argument,” he said. “That’s like saying professional basketball fans lose interest in basketball the day after the NBA finals.”

Yet it was Abbott who wrote the MLS business plan, which spoke at length about capitalizing on the fan interest created by the World Cup.

“It tears my heart out,” said Mike Connell, who formerly played with the Tampa Bay Rowdies in the NASL and is now a businessman involved in promoting MLS in Tampa. “When you look at what the intent of the World Cup was and everything that the World Cup was intended to do, (it) is no longer available to us anymore.

“We can’t say there is great momentum. We can’t say there is great passion. We can’t say the American people have proven that they love the sport. Because, obviously, all that has passed and is forgotten and nobody is going to worry about that.”

Nyce of Columbus said that since the initial rush of ticket sales, there has been little information for the fans and, subsequently, little interest.

“The reality is, there’s nothing going on here,” he said. “They’re going to play in a 96,000-seat stadium (Ohio Stadium). The intelligence level for that is just scary because (playing in huge stadiums is) what Alan (Rothenberg) said he’d never do.”

But Rothenberg and MLS officials insist that fans will watch a first-class league with top-level players. And everyone involved agrees that a postponement might help achieve that goal, even if the short-term criticism is sharp.

Said Peter Moore of Reebok, “I’ll support Alan on this issue--I’d rather it not start off half-assed and start off in ‘96, than to get off to a poor start and once again invite the scorn and ridicule of the general press and media who are going to be against it from the get-go anyway and wishing that it fails.”