If MLS Is Smart, Goal Won’t Be Gimmicks

Here’s a quick quiz for soccer fans.

A month before its April 6 launch, Major League Soccer is:

A) Virtually up and running.

B) Not quite ready but getting there.

C) Stumbling about like a midfielder in a maze.

If you picked C, award yourself a trip to the league opener between the San Jose Clash and Washington D.C. United at Spartan Stadium in San Jose.

Not that you’ll be able to get in. The Clash says it has sold almost all 31,000 seats. That’s the good news.

Now, the not-so-good.

In a move that indicates league owners are not confident in the ability of their players, MLS is exploring the possibility of--please hold all laughter--enlarging the goals.

It’s the most ludicrous notion yet to come out of the league’s headquarters.

Apart from the obvious fact that it would render every MLS statistic meaningless in comparison with the rest of the globe, there is simply no need for such a move.

Yes, putting the ball in the net is difficult, which is why soccer is a low-scoring game.

And that’s precisely what makes it an intriguing sport, chess with feet. Scoring takes both talent and teamwork, vision and spur-of-the-moment improvisation.

But MLS apparently has no faith that its players can do so regularly enough to entice fans to its games. It thinks the target should be bigger.

From Albania to Zimbabwe, in all 182 soccer-playing countries, the goals are the same size: eight feet high by 24 feet wide. It has been that way since 1865.

But that’s not good enough for MLS.

When soccer’s International Board begins a three-day meeting in Rio de Janeiro on Friday, MLS representatives will be there, hoping the board will authorize FIFA, the sport’s international governing body, to experiment with larger goals.

MLS wants to be the guinea pig.

But did MLS even consider the impact of its proposed experiment on the U.S. national and Olympic teams?

How are those players supposed to adjust from larger goals back to the international norm during the Atlanta Games and when World Cup ’98 qualifying starts in the fall?

“To be quite honest with you, that was not really a part of the [MLS] dialogue,” said Doug Logan, the league’s commissioner. “I think that we explored the issue of who we want to be. You only get one shot at your inaugural season.”

Sunil Gulati, the league’s deputy commissioner, ventured an even more flip response.

“Our answer is to make sure we’ve got enough Guatemalans, Trinidadians and Mexicans also playing in the league,” he said.

That attitude was echoed later by Logan, responding to further questions.

“I think that all sports involves some risk, so I’m not going to tell you it’s an issue that is risk free,” he said. “Our owners think that the rewards in comparison to the risk--at least for us as we try to inaugurate this project--are sufficient enough to investigate it further and to take on those risks.”

Or, in plain English, as long as it benefits MLS, it makes no difference what impact it has on the national and Olympic teams.

Steve Sampson, the U.S. national team coach, disagrees.

“I would encourage MLS to develop other ways to increase scoring,” he recently told USA Today.

“A lot of offense is coaching philosophy, attitude, re-educating players who might feel comfortable with a square pass but who hesitate to play the ball forward.

“You need to show creativity and flair on the ball, to take a risk. I think we also need to work on developing players to make them more precise shooters.”

MLS owners, however, believe it would be easier to simply increase the size of the goal. That way, at the end of the season, they can point to the flood of goals as clear evidence of the dynamic and exciting quality of play in the league.

Sorry, the fans won’t buy it.

MLS favors larger goals based, in part, on a study it conducted in conjunction with the USISL, a nationwide third-division league, two years ago. Various rule changes were tried, including different-sized goals.

“Studies that I have seen indicate that the differential in scoring was approximately one goal per game,” Logan said.

Hardly worth the difference, then, is it?

MLS owners also cite the supposedly larger and allegedly more athletic goalkeepers of today.

“FIFA’s been studying this for quite some time,” Gulati said. “They’ve looked at the size of goalkeepers and the changes in the physical ability of goalkeepers.”

But FIFA disputes that. Here is what Joseph “Sepp” Blatter, FIFA’s general secretary, wrote in the November, 1988, issue of FIFA News:

“When the claim is made that the size of the goal is no longer proportional to the ever-growing physique of the goalkeeper . . . it should be remembered that the football pitch and equipment have also undergone changes. The theory that better equipment (shoes and footballs) and the much stronger kicking power of the strikers nowadays balance out any athletic advantage a modern goalkeeper may have is not easily repudiated.”

There’s more. In those days, Blatter was a defender of the game as it was meant to be played.

“Whoever demands new laws to produce more goals is forgetting that football depends not so much on its laws but rather on the philosophy that accompanies the game,” he wrote. “The player who is motivated by fear of losing instead of joy in scoring will not lose this fear when confronted with larger goal mouths.

“What we need is more constructive coaches, more creative players, more courageous referees and more qualified media members, that is, journalists who do not judge a match according to the winner but rather according to the quality of the players.”

Which is how fans will judge MLS. They will demand quality on the field, and whether the final score is 1-0 or 10-0 really makes little difference.

It’s time MLS recognized that and abandoned its pursuit of larger goals before it loses the credibility it has fought to win.