MLS and WUSA want a women’s league ù will they share?

This women’s-pro-soccer-league idea is really catching on. Everybody, it seems, wants in.

There’s, of course, WUSA ù the Women’s United Soccer Association ù Discovery Communications boss John S. Hendricks’ brainchild, which has, at least on paper, everything anyone could ever want from a pro league.

And there’s Major League Soccer, which has indicated it, too, would like to run a Division I outfit for female players, although its real aim may be more about politics than anything else.

But what about the Women’s Soccer Association, a South Texas-based group’s plan for a 12-team league ù with “charter franchises” in markets such as Richmond, Va., Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley and Flagstaff, Ariz. ù that arrived in U.S. Soccer’s offices the day after Hendricks made public his intention?

Or a Florida collective that’s primarily interested in U.S. Soccer’s proposed national training center and is, according to one of its principals, “looking into the viability of a number of different things for the Orlando market”?

All four groups met U.S. Soccer’s April Fool’s Day deadline to submit letters of intent to file an application, due May 1, for sanction as the first fully professional women’s soccer league in America.

Only WUSA and MLS are being taken seriously, and their battle for recognition from U.S. Soccer could deteriorate into a bitter war or facilitate a partnership it seems everybody involved would like to witness.

As things stand, both groups plan to turn in completed applications, detailing every conceivable aspect of their proposed enterprises, to U.S. Soccer by the deadline, then let the procedure take its course. Nothing would be determined until U.S. Soccer’s Annual General Meeting in August.

But USSF officials, and key figures within MLS and Hendricks’ concern, are hopeful the groups will seek ù and find ù common ground.

“The worst-case scenario,” one official said, “they have a pissing match and make U.S. Soccer decide.”

There exists a rift between the groups, carved from Hendricks’ public unveiling of WUSA on Feb. 15. The timing stunned MLS officials, who believed they were still engaged in talks with Hendricks’ crew concerning how best to devise such a league.

Hendricks had employed MLS chief operating officer Mark Abbott to construct three business plans for the venture; he chose the one that specified no direct involvement with MLS.

That left the men’s league a choice. It could stand by as Hendricks’ group ù which has announced $40 million in funding and agreements with every member of the Women’s World Cup championship team and hints at an impressive television package ù nabbed a potentially major portion of the marketplace. Or it could try to protect its turf.

No choice, really.

MLS’s March 30 announcement that it would submit a rival bid is meant to foster a joint effort with WUSA’s leaders. Hendricks doesn’t appear interested, and why should he be? His previous involvement with American soccer officials, with the proposed National Soccer Alliance women’s league following the 1996 Olympics, was wholly unsatisfying, and the package he’s put together looks too good to fail.

So, it would appear that MLS needs Hendricks more than he needs MLS.

That’s not necessarily true. The political process could hurt Hendricks, a soccer outsider who has come off as either naive or arrogant ù take your choice ù during WUSA’s incubation and infancy.


Beauty contest could turn ugly


This is how the process works: Prospective groups must file an application with U.S. Soccer by the beginning of May. A four-person subcommittee of U.S. Soccer’s board of directors headed by Burton Haimes ù chairman of the Women’s Professional League Development Committee ù will scour the proposals, meet with the contending groups and make recommendations to the board of directors, which also will hear proposals from the contenders.

More than one group could be sanctioned if more than one meets or surpasses the women’s Division I standards U.S. Soccer adopted in July 1997. Both WUSA and MLS have expressed confidence they will qualify.

U.S. Soccer might determine that the market would be best served by one Division I league. A market study by PricewaterhouseCoopers, to determine this, was expected to commence the first week of April, Haimes said. The results should be in before the end of the month.

The likeliest scenario is that only one league will be permitted to go forward as a “Division I” outfit. And then we’ve got a beauty contest that could turn very ugly.

“We have to consider that’s a possibility,” one key figure acknowledged. “It would be tragic.”

MLS, as long as its plan is on par with WUSA’s, would have an advantage in such a setting. The matter would be decided at the AGM, where U.S. Soccer’s professional division ù dominated by MLS ù holds a quarter of the vote.

“I’m hoping these groups come together and find common ground,” said former U.S. women’s coach Tony DiCicco, one of WUSA’s chief advisers. “They should come together and find if there is any, and I believe there is.”

Whether Hendricks or his fellow investors, far removed from the tangled web of American soccer politics, realize the threat posed by MLS is anyone’s guess.


Opportunity of a lifetime


DiCicco, the ranking soccer figure in Hendricks’ group, apparently does understand what’s at stake.

“For U.S. Soccer and for the soccer community to turn their backs on the potential of this investor group would be the biggest folly in the history of soccer in this country, in my opinion,” he said. “They have the resources and ability to open avenues to media we have been dreaming about our whole lives.”

There are other questions: Does it make sense for MLS, still struggling to make men’s soccer a success in America, to take on additional risk and responsibility? Would soccer better prosper through integration? Can’t everybody just get along?

Very little detail of MLS’s plan is known. There would be eight to 10 teams, most likely in MLS cities. That’s about it.

WUSA, meanwhile, has offered cursory glimpses into its financing ù unveiling an impressive group of investors from the cable-television industry ù and collected non-binding commitments from top players from around the globe. A $3 million TV deal with a “major” network ù ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, ESPN or Turner ù will be announced once the media’s March Madness fever has subsided.

As for the other proposed leagues, forget about it. The WSA ù the one from Texas ù has already decided not to go forward, although it hasn’t informed U.S. Soccer of that decision.

“We were ready to roll,” said WSA media director Dylan Sides. “I was just waiting for the commissioner [Ron Bronson Jr.] to let me know, and he said we weren’t going to do it, and I said, æAwwwww.'”

Money got in the way.

The Florida group, headed by Charles B. Lewis, seems more confused than anything. Somehow they’ve connected U.S. Soccer’s search for a permanent national training facility ù a subject with which they hold great interest ù with the procedure to start a women’s league.

Says Nancy Kaftner, a financial adviser on the project: “We’re very seriously considering this.”

by Soccer America senior editor Scott French