By our count, 35 players remain with the same teams that started MLS in 1996.
Loyalty is not a virtue that counts for much these days, but it should.
I just returned from Cannes, France, and the Football Expo salon on the big business that is (European) soccer today.
Among the panelists at the conference on spiraling player salaries was Liverpool manager Gerard Houllier.
Despite the money that ordinary players can make in the Premier League — the equivalent of player salaries for entire MLS teams — Houllier is against a salary cap, an idea that Europeans are just now considering.
He says a cap will only lead to under-the-table payments and the problems that almost killed soccer in his native France in the 1980s.
Houllier is, however, in favor of bonus-laden contracts. Among them is a loyalty clause, calling for bonus payments for each year of service.
Many of “The Originals,” as we’ve dubbed them, could use some bonus money.
The amazing thing about MLS is that there are players in their fifth season with the same team, on their second or third contracts, and they aren’t making even $100,000.
This isn’t intended as a jab at MLS, whose existence appears more fragile with each passing year.
We acknowledge our five-year wonders because they have all contributed to the growth, however modest, of pro soccer in their markets.
Community involvement was a key ingredient in the NASL’s success in the 1970s, and it seems to have been lost somehow in MLS.
Perhaps it is because kids have so many other entertainment opportunities these days, but they have not connected with MLS players like they did with the NASL players, most of them British, in the early days.
More MLS players need to be heroes in their communities, as Brian McBride and Steve Ralston are.