Inching Along

Manchester United returns to North America this summer, bringing with it such equally illustrious teams as AC Milan, AS Roma, Bayern Munich, Celtic, Chelsea, FC Porto and Liverpool.

It’s exactly what Major League Soccer does not need -- star-studded European teams swaggering across the continent in the middle of the MLS season.

Forgive MLS, therefore, for casting a somewhat jaundiced eye on all the hoopla.

The league’s four principal investors -- Phil Anschutz, Lamar Hunt, Robert Kraft and Stan Kroenke -- have pumped hundreds of millions of dollars into the sport, and it is somewhat galling for them to see European clubs stopping by for a quick visit and then hauling bags of loot back across the Atlantic.

Last summer, the ChampionsWorld Series drew 422,564 fans to its eight games. Manchester United alone averaged 67,884 for its four matches.

Charlie Stillitano, the former vice president and general manager of the New York/New Jersey MetroStars and now chief executive of New Jersey-based ChampionsWorld, was left rubbing his hands in glee and immediately began preparing for an encore this summer.

Meanwhile, Don Garber, the 46-year-old commissioner of MLS, which begins its ninth season Saturday, was left trying to explain how the league had allowed its own house to be ransacked before it had even been built.

Were Anschutz and his colleagues angry?

“No, we haven’t taken any heat at all on the Manchester United thing,” Garber said on the eve of the 2003 MLS final. “We had games from April to November. That [ChampionsWorld] was a two-week experience. It was a rock concert. It was not something that our board was concerned about.

“Making money on international game promotion is not the most important thing for this league.”

Perhaps, but the success of the ChampionsWorld Series did highlight two facts: the desire among a significant number of fans for top-quality soccer and the gulf that separates MLS teams from Europe’s elite.

Fans, not unnaturally, began asking why MLS could not provide the same sort of entertainment.

Neutral observers, meanwhile, wondered whether it was the league’s single-entity structure or its limited number of owners that was holding it back. How could MLS be taken seriously when eight of its 10 teams are controlled by only two men -- Anschutz and Hunt?

How could there be “real” competition under such circumstances? Wouldn’t almost every trade become questionable, wouldn’t every game raise an eyebrow?

Was the league’s ownership structure even legal in light of FIFA statutes?

Article 18 of those statutes decrees that any national federation, in this case U.S. Soccer, “shall ensure that neither a natural nor a legal person [including holding companies and subsidiaries] exercises control over more than one club whenever the integrity of any match or competition could be jeopardized.”

That can be read as either a vague, loophole-filled exercise in legal gibberish or as a clear statement that one person cannot own more than one team in the same league.

Currently, Anschutz owns the Galaxy, the San Jose Earthquakes, the Chicago Fire, Washington D.C. United and the MetroStars. Similarly, Hunt owns the Columbus Crew, the Dallas Burn and the Kansas City Wizards.

Kraft owns the New England Revolution and Kroenke owns the Colorado Rapids, having acquired them from Anschutz last year.

But according to U.S. Soccer, which authorized establishment of the league, none of the four men “own” anything. They are merely “investor-operators” in their respective clubs.

“From the very beginning, the MLS structure was set up as an entity with investor-operators, not individual owners,” the federation’s president, Dr. S. Robert Contiguglia, said Monday.

“That single-entity concept has been recognized as a valid structure by the courts, and the MLS league office has installed checks and balances to maintain a competitively balanced field.”

There are three other investors who do not operate a club: league founder Alan Rothenberg, Ken Horowitz, who was investor-operator of the defunct Miami Fusion, and Haruyuki Takahashi of the Japanese advertising agency Dentsu.

Without single-entity, insiders say, MLS would not have lasted this long.

Still, fans wonder what it is that stops Anschutz, Hunt, Kraft and Kroenke from simply going out and buying the world’s best players. Or at least better ones.

Certainly, it’s not a lack of money.

“These are four guys with a B next to their names rather than a hundred million,” said Sunil Gulati, vice president of U.S. Soccer, president of Kraft Soccer and former MLS deputy commissioner.

B as in billionaires.

Anschutz, according to Forbes magazine, has assets worth $5.6 billion, making him the 80th-wealthiest person on the planet.

Kroenke is a pauper by comparison, worth a mere $1.4 billion, according to Forbes.

Hunt and Kraft, likewise, play in the financial big leagues.

What stops them from chasing the David Beckhams, Ronaldos and Thierry Henrys of the world is that players of that caliber simply would not come to MLS -- the biggest and best stadiums are not here, the best and most meaningful competition is not here.

So instead, the four are pouring their money into bricks and mortar -- building the stadiums that will attract the fans that will lead to the television coverage that will provide the income that will allow the league to one day pursue the world’s leading players.

It is a long-term project. Very long term.

But fans, impatient as ever, are left to mull that a $1.735-million salary cap per team does not buy a lot on the world player market. That restriction, combined with the MLS drive for parity among its 10 clubs, leads to some unpopular trades.

But the league office insists that everything is on the up and up.

“There is no higher priority for MLS than ensuring the competitive integrity of our games,” Garber said Monday.

“We employ a number of stringent procedural safeguards that include requiring each team to have a separate executive in charge of competition matters and subjecting all trades to approval of the commissioner’s office.

“Our team staffs are extremely competitive with each other, and are judged on their on-field performance. Anyone who has seen a game played between two teams with a common operator-investor knows that these are among our most fiercely waged contests.”

The MLS general managers tend to agree.

“Since I’ve been in the league, I have seen exceptionally few moments of league manipulation of player movement,” said Peter Wilt of the Chicago Fire. “It’s really been independent. I’ve seen zero manipulation of player movement between teams [with the same investor-operator].”

Wilt credits Ivan Gazidis, MLS deputy commissioner, for that.

“They’ve done a good job since Ivan has taken over of creating transparency within the league,” he said. “The next step is creating more transparency with the public.”

Doug Hamilton, the Galaxy’s general manager, says the league office in New York does not tell him or Coach Sigi Schmid what to do or whom to sign.

“I don’t feel my hands are tied at all,” he said.

“We play the game under certain rules -- what constitutes a foreign player, what doesn’t; what’s a youth international, the salary cap, those things -- but my hands aren’t tied.

“I take issue when teams point the finger at the league and say, ‘We wanted to do something but the league wouldn’t let us.’ There are rules. Our owners have agreed on those rules. It’s really based on a financial model. So take responsibility and build the [best] team that you can build.

“We’re all very competitive. When we go out and spend money wisely and get a guy like Carlos Ruiz, then we benefit. If you spend your money poorly, you get punished.

“The thing that’s frustrating for fans is that it [the salary cap] doesn’t change if the team is having a bad run.”

In other words, MLS teams can’t buy their way to success or out of trouble, as in the rest of the world.

Additional investor-operators are coming in and Garber said MLS hoped to have 16 teams by 2010.

Mexican businessman Jorge Vergara will launch Chivas USA in 2005, quite possibly in Los Angeles or Chicago, instead of San Diego or Houston as was initially believed.

“We believe [Vergara] is going to add some excitement and add some diversity to our ownership group, which we think is necessary,” Garber said. “A change of thinking, if you will.... We have had an almost conservative way about building this business and we’re pretty convinced that Jorge will be a lot of fun as part of our group.”

Rochester, N.Y., is another possibility for expansion next season and the Rhinos, now that they have their own stadium approved, could become the first team to make the jump from the A-League to MLS.

Cleveland real estate developer Bart Wolstein has committed to putting an MLS team in northeastern Ohio, but now says he is unlikely to have a stadium in place before 2006. Edmond, Okla., has put together an ownership group and is refurbishing a stadium. San Antonio is clamoring for an MLS club.

And then there are the Europeans, and in particular, Real Madrid.

Garber said MLS has been in “discussions with Real Madrid” over how the Spanish club can build its own brand in the U.S. while at the same time helping the sport flourish here, possibly by following Vergara’s lead and investing in a team.

Garber and Gazidis returned from Madrid last week after meeting with Real officials to explore the possibility of Real’s providing the opposition in the July 24 MLS All-Star game, just as Vergara’s Chivas de Guadalajara did last year.

Equally intriguing, meanwhile, is a development that ties back to the ChampionsWorld Series.

The world’s richest soccer owner is Roman Abramovich, the Russian oil tycoon who last July bought Chelsea and subsequently spent more than $150 million on new players. Forbes says he is worth a staggering $10.6 billion.

The Russian is said to be interested in acquiring a team in the NFL.

Hunt owns the Kansas City Chiefs. Kraft owns the New England Patriots. Kroenke owns 30% of the St. Louis Rams.

The trio could certainly provide him with an introduction to the NFL, if nothing else, just as Abramovich certainly has the financial clout to help lift MLS onto an entirely new plateau.

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Playing by the Rules

Though eight of Major League Soccer’s 10 teams are owned by two men, the league’s strict rules on roster quotas and a hard salary cap make it difficult for any one team to maintain what it’s built, much less stockpile an advantage in talent. Even the Galaxy, one of the league’s marquee teams, has had to make tough choices. Some casualties of the rules:

Jorge Campos and Chris Armas -- Campos was one of the league’s most colorful players and, as the starting goalkeeper on the Mexican national team, a draw in Southern California. But the Galaxy chose to trade him and Armas to Chicago in 1999 to reacquire two players lost in the expansion draft. By losing Campos, the Galaxy gained the right to sign another international player, who turned out to be Mexican forward Carlos Hermosillo. But Hermosillo was a bust, and Armas developed into a U.S. national team standout.

Clint Mathis -- A former first-round draft pick, Mathis was recognized as a rising talent but had to be released into a dispersal draft along with starting defender Joe Franchino to clear cap room for the Galaxy’s signing of Luis Hernandez, scoring star of the Mexican national team. A third starter, Costa Rican Roy Myers, had to be traded to open an international player slot on the roster. Hernandez, like Hermosillo, failed to perform at the expected level, while Mathis starred for the 2002 U.S. World Cup team.

Robin Fraser -- In 2001, only two years after Fraser had been named the MLS defender of the year, the Galaxy traded him to Colorado, a move forced by salary-cap considerations.

-- Van Nightingale