What do Landon Donovan, Omar Gonzalez, Giovani Dos Santos, Romain Alessandrini, Jonathan Dos Santos and Cristian Pavon, all have in common?
Every single one of them was under 30 when they signed their first Designated Player contract with the Los Angeles Galaxy.
Let’s get something out of the way right off the bat: we who watch Major League Soccer have a pretty good idea of its true level. We understand fully that in the context of English football, Bradley Wright-Phillips was largely pants whenever he was asked to play above League One. It is not lost on us that while Kyle Beckerman in his prime was one of the most dependable midfielders MLS had ever seen, next to Xavi he’d have looked like something out of a deleted scene from Fraggle Rock. Whatever Steven Gerrard had to say about coming to the league, we all know that what he was really thinking was “Yes please, I’d love millions of dollars to play in relative anonymity in Southern California for a year or two”.
We’re also well aware that when Don Garber gets on the mic and casts out terms like “top league in the world” or “league of choice” on a sea of puffery, those words are coming directly from the same orifice that produced the concept of “Discovery Claims” and the method for determining Jermaine Jones’ MLS team.
When Alexi Lalas declares that a guy who scored 15 league goals in his final 3 years at Real Sociedad is among the top 20 players in the world because he scored 34 goals in MLS, we’re all face-palming as hard as the next person.
One of the more tiring aspects of following MLS is dealing with a horde of detractors who seem to have it in their heads that we think the league is nipping at the heels of the English Premiership. On the contrary, you’ll be hard pressed to find grown adults who support Major League Soccer because they believe it to be the creme-de-la-creme of the sport.
Of the detractors, never does this pitchfork-wielding, torch-waving, Elite-UEFA-Club-Jersey-sporting rabble spill onto social media faster than when the league signs somebody with a “3” at the start of his age. So it was when LA Galaxy finally ended the transfer saga that brought Javier “Chicharito” Hernandez to the league.
Worse still, being the highest scorer in Mexican National Team history, his signing was already garnering near-Beckham levels of hysteria in this part of the world, meaning that the throng of naysayers was larger than ever, swirling explosively into the already-polarizing debates of whether he was too good for MLS, whether he was still good enough, whether this was about the money, whether he was worth the money, whether this was a slap in the face of Mexican or Chivas fans…
Needless to say, this was causing quite a stir. Then it happened. Chicharito filmed himself on his popular “Naked Humans” YouTube vlog, breaking the news of his move to LA to his parents… and described it as the beginning of his “retirement”.
If the other debates were frenzied, this was like a scurry of methed-up squirrels in a lottery ball machine.
“Ah-ha-ha-haaaaaa….” they proclaimed, “See? It is a retirement league!!!!!”.
Now we can debate whether anything was lost in translation (Hernandez was speaking in Spanish in the video), whether he simply meant his retirement “from Europe”, whether it speaks to his regard for the league. It all basically means nothing until he takes the field. If he performs well, the fans will largely have forgotten that this was even a thing come October. If he tries and fails, he’ll likely be condemned for underestimating the rigors of the league. If he half-arses it and treats it like an easy paycheck (FTR, having watched the guy most of his career, that doesn’t seen to be in his DNA), MLS and the Galaxy will look like fools for signing another name that sold shirts and tickets but didn’t care about the team.
Of course the condescending tone of the “retirement league” cries being fed into the hot-take powder keg that is Twitter, resulted in a many an MLS supporter rushing to the league’s defense. Such defenses even led to accusations of over-sensitivity. That calling it a retirement league needn’t be a negative. I agree with this last point, though I also hasten to add: don’t talk bollocks; the retirement league accusations were clearly presented in a harsh negative tone, not one of objective critique, so of course people were going to defend it, you patronizing tossers.
Properly critiquing the league though, it isn’t actually one populated with soccer pensioners. The average age is just a smidge lower than the average EPL starting line-up (around 25-26ish). With higher-profile players like Sebastian Giovinco, Carlos Vela and Jonathan Dos Santos having graced the league in recent seasons, still comfortably in their primes and others like Pavon, Miguel Almiron (now of Newcastle) and Diego Rossi presumably looking for a springboard to bigger leagues, the age and caliber of MLS recruits is improving and diversifying.
As for the likes of Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Wayne Rooney, both objectively showed themselves to still be a cut above in this league, so why wouldn’t you want them here? It would be fantastic to have them at an earlier age but as I covered above, we know the level of MLS. Players with this level of talent, accomplishment and drive aren’t generally moving anywhere in their prime that takes them away from the greatest challenges and prizes the game has to offer. A Zlatan that considers MLS at 26 years old, simply wouldn’t be Zlatan.
So what’s the next best thing? If you want them with a full tank, you need to scout them and bring them before the door to Europe’s elite is already open – a tough ask but occasionally doable – or if you want the profile and a bit of the magic, you get them as they’re entering the final phase of their career.
There’s absolutely no shame in that and it should be noted that not every part of the world has the pull to do that – at least not without paying even higher over the odds than MLS already does.
It’s also worth nothing that back in the mid-nineties, when the EPL first got its hands on the lucrative Sky TV money that made the league into what it is today, there were just 13 players in the league from outside the United Kingdom. Bolstered by wealth but hampered by the recent European suspension, the league started looking to bigger names from abroad. Initially, they tended to skew a little older. Critics in Italy, Spain and Germany were calling the Premiership… a retirement league.
And as poignant a line as that might be to end on, I don’t want to go “full Garber” and leave any implication that MLS is anywhere near what the EPL is. It quite frankly, probably never will be. Much bigger soccer nations struggle to keep pace with them.
However, the fact remains that a feature of growing leagues is signing talents either side of their prime. Over time the talents you sign and the proximity to that peak improves. While MLS remains a league where an EFL League One player can potentially fit in and play a key role, the talent it attracts is unquestionably moving in the right direction.
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