Major League Soccer is often criticized for being a lower tier league than its contemporaries across the world. Often those criticisms can feel hyperbolic when coming from the types of viewers who struggle to remain attentive unless Barcelona or Real Madrid are on their television. But, on Saturday, even the most discerning soccer enthusiast would have struggled to defend the match contested by the Seattle Sounders and FC Dallas. This is because it was, without hyperbole or bias, the worst soccer game in the history of MLS.
It was expected that this game wasn’t going to be an offensive duel. With Clint Dempsey, Obafemi Martins, and Marco Pappa out for the Sounders due to the international break, and Blas Perez and Moises Hernandez also missing from Dallas’ squad, the game was missing just about all of its firepower heading in. With that said, the display put on by those players remaining was just unconscionable in how bad it was.
Sure, the match ended in a 0-0 draw, but that doesn’t tell the full story. The real story here was that these two teams mustered a combined zero shots on target in the match. Zero shots on target in a 90 minute match! That’s unfathomable! But beyond how hard it is to wrap one’s head around that fact, it also spells out a few truths for MLS going forward which cannot be ignored.
The most obvious and important of those truths is that MLS cannot afford to continue playing during international breaks. While the league isn’t on par with the world’s top domestic leagues, there are plenty of players (especially from North and Central America) who are of a high enough quality to play for their national teams. When those players, many of whom are the most talented in MLS even if they aren’t necessarily the biggest draws as some of the players who come over from Europe are, leave their clubs there is a noticeable impact on the product on the field, much like we saw in Dallas on Saturday.
Conveniently, the noticeable decline in the on-field product brings up the other undeniable truth that faces MLS in the near future, the fact that player salaries need to increase at the bottom of the league’s totem pole. Seattle is a prime example of this league-wide problem, which became even more evident when their better and more highly paid players weren’t a part of the squad for a week.
In the place of the usual Seattle attack were Chad Barrett as the lone striker, with Lamar Neagle, Cristian Roldan, and Andy Rose in the midfield. In 2014, Barrett made $80,000, Neagle made $110,000, and Rose made just $48,500, while Roldan became a member of the league this season. Going by reports that Roldan was offered in the neighborhood of $100,000 per year, we’ll assume that these four players combine to make somewhere around $350,000 per year in base salary. That’s less than one tenth of what Dempsey makes per season.
If MLS wants to continue playing through international breaks, it needs to attract a level of talent to replace its stars when they have to leave their clubs to play in international competition. If it continues to pay those second tier players a fraction of what one big name player makes, we’ll continue to see more games like this during those breaks. That is, if MLS doesn’t wise up and take the breaks themselves.