MLS and International Play

Does Major League Soccer actually care about international soccer? I don’t think so because they handicap their teams in international play because in the MLS you are given a senior squad of 18 and a reserve squad of 10 and you can only have 4 international senior players. Take for instance last week when DC United took on their international rivals in Chivas Guadalajara in the Copa Sudamericana, a team that excels above any other team in MLS looked absolutely gassed. One could say that this was because of the travel to Mexico but I don’t really think so, I believe that it is because the roster limit and the way the MLS rosters are set up that really hampered the form of DC United.
MLS teams have never done very well in international competition, except for the CONCACAF Champions Cup which we have won twice. When it comes to the Champions Cup the competition kind of plays to the MLS teams advantage since it isn’t in our season, its actually a month before and US and Mexican teams don’t even have to qualify like Caribbean and Central American teams. Back to the point though, most leagues that focus on international play don’t have a roster limit or if they do it is to the clubs benefit and allows the team to go out and really compete against other top teams in the competition. Take for instance a league in Europe that I think we could compare the MLS league to in forms of skill, the Greek League, take teams to Europe in the Champions League and in the UEFA Cup and are able to bring their ‘A’ game whether its in the middle of league play or not, because they have enough roster spots, not only 28 and 10 of those 28 are not part of their ‘B’ team.
If you wanna make soccer big in America well you need to bring the talent here and you can’t do that if your not going to be able to compete internationally. 10 years into this league and the league has done nothing but grow and with Beckham here the league will become even more well known but we really need to be focusing on the international game cause if every year we are just looking to see who wins the MLS Cup then interest will be lost. Sure you can say that NBA, NHL, NFL, and MLB all have playoff systems and that works for those leagues but those are all the top knotch leagues with the top knotch talent, MLS isn’t that type of league but that is a frustration for another blog entry.
I end this with saying that for the MLS to eventually go for the World Club Cup championship they have to change some things. Every team needs a A team and a B team with a youth academy. Also International play needs to be more hyped up, it needs to be a big concern for the team at the beginning of each campaign. Last but not least, take the damn salary cap off. Remember the Chelsea, AC Milan, Manchester U, Barcelona teams did not get the glory they have from winning their domestic league every year.