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| Friday, September 14, 2001 24:15 EST |
Search on for fountain of youth
By Jeff Bradley
[ESPN The Magazine]
NEW YORK -- In their never-ending quest to assert more control over their own rosters, a number of MLS coaches have asked the league to let them find their own Junior International players for the 2001 season...
All right, all right ... I'm going to stop trying to write this like a regular sports news story and revert to a good, old "try to explain MLS rules" column.
I knew this would happen. Here goes.
Last year, MLS introduced a few new bits of terminology into the League Lexicon. No longer would players simply be American or International, there would be two different classifications for Internationals: Senior and Youth.
Youth would be divided into two categories: Junior and Transitional.
There would be a limit of four Senior International players per team. Simple enough.
A Youth International was defined as: "an international player who will be 24 or under." These players do not count against the international player limit.
A Junior would be 22 or younger while a Transitional would be "due to reach the age of 23" during the season's calendar year. He would not count against the team's international player limit until the season in which he was due to reach age 25.
Last season, the league introduced 12 Youth International players. That number will increase by 12 this season, as the number of Senior International players per team will decrease from four to three.
Now, back to the news...
Rather than have the league throw a bunch of young international players into the SuperDraft, as it did last year with players like Trinidad and Tobago native Travis Mulraine and Bolivian Roland Aguilera, some coaches have said they would like to discover their own young international players.
The issue has not yet been addressed, much less ruled on, but it could go either way. On one hand, the league's personnel department would probably love to let the coach's find their own players (there is a max salary of $75,000 for these players), but on the other, it smells a little bit like free agency, which is a big no-no in MLS.
Stay tuned.
Fragments
The MetroStars have a major press event scheduled for Dec. 5, but it now
seems unlikely that anything really new will be announced. On the docket for
the day, the official nnouncement of an expansion team in New York, to kick
off in 2002, and the unveiling of designs and economic studies for two new
soccer stadiums, one in New York (most likely Queens) and one in Northern New
Jersey. The MetroStars have been making preliminary phone calls to cities in
Jersey where they feel the project would be popular, Newark, Kearny,
Harrison, Elizabeth and Jersey City to name a few. The NY expansion team will
play at least one season at the Mitchel Athletic Complex in Uniondale, Long
Island.
Mike Petke's trial with Bayern Munich runs through Friday, and the MetroStars are fully aware of it, even though they say they are not. Does Petke have a chance to stick with the all-powerful German club? Well, on one hand, Bayern can throw around $200,000 contracts like so many pieces of candy, and that would be way more than Petke will earn in MLS. But on the other hand, don't rugged, man-marking defenders grow like weeds in Deutschland? Do they really feel they need to import one from the U.S.?
A little bird told me that former MetroStars defender Rhett Harty was planning a comeback to MLS in 2001, so I tracked down the once-bald-one on his cell phone as he was waiting to get on a standby flight in Phoenix International Airport. "No, no, nothing is in the works at this time," Harty said. "Now, 2002, there might be something there."
Now a technician for a Portland-based company that specializes in pacemakers, Harty said he misses the game in a big way, but will have to think on his decision a little longer. Also on Harty's mind is the MLS Players Association's lawsuit (which bears Harty's name among the original plaintiffs). "I'm not even a member of the association any more, but the outcome means a lot to me personally," Harty said. "We've been trying to tell people all along it's not about money, but about giving the players a few rights."
A ruling is expected in the next two or three weeks and, for what it's worth, the only good thing that could ever come out of the whole ordeal is for the players and MLS to come together and collectively bargain. In a league where some players actually qualify for low-income housing, the least the players should get is some form of limited free agency. You've read it here before, but here it is again...When a player has played four years in the league and comes out of contract, he should be able to move on his own to the team where he fits in best. That could mean a team that will pay him more, or that may mean moving to a team that is closer to home. It's only fair.
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