More Messi And Miami Domination, Plus 3 More Wishes For MLS In 2024
The 2024 MLS Season will soon be upon us, with some teams beginning their Concacaf Champions League play in early February and the domestic campaign kicking off before the calendar turns to March.
While folks are still in the New Year’s spirit, let’s look ahead at some realistic wishes for the new season to keep MLS moving forward. Here’s four:
Lionel Messi, Inter Miami Win (Almost) Everything
A dominant season from the Herons would certainly disappoint fans of 28 other MLS clubs, but a dream season for Lionel Messi might also be what is needed to loosen the purse strings within the league’s still stringent and unbalanced salary structure.
While the league deserves credit for increasing roster spending significantly over the last decade, the complicated mechanisms under which MLS teams are allowed to sign players still ensure the majority of money teams pay is focused on the top third of a league roster.
So while a team can spend literally as much as it wants on two or three stars, it’s opponents are prevented from spreading the same amount of money around to 15 or 20 players on an even basis.
Why is such a system still in place? Partly because MLS teams splashing money on big, aging stars in the past hasn’t resulted in much winning. But if last year’s 2023 Leagues Cup run is an indication, Messi — like so many other times in his career — is the exception. And if he and the Herons go on to complete a double- or triple-winning season, it could convince MLS ownership to loosen the purse strings in other ways for clubs who simply can’t attract the Messis of the world.
That wouldn’t mean the complete elimination of spending restrictions per se, just a simpler system that allows teams who want to spend more money to be able to spend it in more different ways. One idea: a a much higher, truer soft salary cap with a luxury tax threshold, in which teams who exceed a payroll limit are fined a percentage of the amount by which they exceed the threshold, with those fines being distributed to teams who remain beneath the threshold.
Apple TV Acquires More Soccer Rights
One of the downsides of Major League Soccer’s 10-year, worldwide streaming rights deal with Apple TV is that it provides very limited potential for cross promotion on other soccer broadcasts.
As Major League Soccer has tried to grow its audience domestically, it has struggled to convince a lot of American soccer viewers that it’s the league worth watching. The English Premier League and Liga MXMX both outdraw MLS in terms of total viewership figures. And the creation of the Leagues Cup — contested between MLS and Liga MX teams — an omission on MLS’ part that it needs to make inroads among American Latinos in particular.
There’s a sense Apple TV’s acquisition of MLS rights was just the start of the tech giant’s foray into sports. But the problem is there aren’t many soccer properties remaining up for sale in terms of U.S. rights in the super near future.
As far as domestic European leagues, only the Serie A in Italy and Ligue 1 in France see their rights package expire after this season.
Yet Apple TV adding those leagues to its portfolio — at least among American audiences — could have considerable appeal in part because more regularly been Americans playing in both leagues. Currently that includes a handful of U.S. national team regulars. Christian Pulisic and Yunus Musah are at AC Milan, Weston McKennie and Tim Weah are at Juventus, and Folarin Balogun is at AS Monaco.
A Star Sighting (And Signing) In New York
The introduction of LAFC to MLS in 2018 and their budding rivalry with the LA Galaxy has been one of the league’s bigger success stories. It has also shown a spotlight on what is lacking in New York City.
While the New York Red Bulls and New York City FC have established their own rivalry with some memorable moments, neither has the citywide resonance in the Big Apple that either LA club has in Southern California.
There are logistical issues. The Red Bulls’ stadium in Harrison, N.J., while one of the best facilities in MLS, remains out of sight, out of mind for New Yorkers who rarely travel where the city subway doesn’t. Meanwhile, NYCFC is bouncing back and forth between Yankee Stadium and Citi Field while working on a stadium project that is still at least a few years out.
But it also doesn’t help that both clubs are owned by parent football consortia with “bigger” teams in other leagues abroad, who have both opted in recent years to skew their rosters toward younger signings, both from within their own academies and the international market, with a focus on Latin America. The competitive results have been pretty good; NYCFC won the 2022 MLS Cup and the Red Bulls have the longest playoff qualification streak in league history. In terms of getting ink from the New York sports press, the outcome has been far less impressive.
To be fair, there was an era in the recent past when both clubs courted stars. And while Thierry Henry and David Villa delivered the goods on the field, they could not make the same inroads as Carlos Vela and Javier “Chicharito” Hernandez in LA. But that doesn’t mean the right star signing couldn’t help the cause.
A Breakout Performance (Or Two) At Copa America
For the second time in eight years, the United States will host an expanded Copa America tournament in the summer of 2024. And it could provide an exceptional shop window for some of MLS’ best talents looking to make a European move, as well as for casual American soccer fans to understand the quality in their own back yards.
Players from MLS are a considerable chunk of several Concacaf and CONMEBOL rosters now. That simply wasn’t the case in the 2016 Copa America.
Among the younger players who could seize the stage? Argentina’s Thiago Almada (Atlanta United), Colombia’s Cucho Hernandez (Columbus Crew), Panama’s Adalberto Carrasquilla (Houston Dynamo) and Uruguay’s Facundo Torres (Orlando City).
Those men are all well-known among MLS diehards, but unknowns to other American fans who mostly follow the European club game. And if they become “knowns” during the summer, they just might sell a few more fans on checking out the MLS game in their own back yard or on Apple TV.
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