MLS Bites Off Its Nose to Spite Its Face

By: Daryl | November 23rd, 2007

Propaganda quiet It’s fair to say that MLS relies on the internet for it’s media coverage more than most sports leagues. If you want to find MLS stories in an American newspaper you need a magnifying glass and a lot of patience, and for your efforts you’ll possibly locate an inch or two about latest scores or maybe something pointless about David Beckham. It’s not exactly wall to wall coverage. But out here on the internets there are countless sites dedicated to either individual MLS teams, the league as a whole or US soccer in general. So why has MLS treated one of the more dependable internet outlets with so much contempt that the site has given up on covering the league full time?

USSoccerPlayers is an outlet owned and paid for by the US National Soccer Team Players Association. It’s brief is basically to cover US national team players, which obviously means plenty of MLS coverage. While the site contains coverage of the Premiership and Bundesliga, it’s only as it relates to US national team players. With MLS the site had been doing full on coverage, presumably as it’s the home of US players. It’s not a fan run site, it’s a player association owned site with a budget and an editorial team.

But in this recent entry on the site the editors make it clear that they’re so sick of the treatment they’ve received from MLS that they will no longer be following the league in depth, just following the US national team players involved instead.

The crux of their complaint is as follows:

On one occasion this year, we had it confirmed that we were a minor outlet, at the level of glorified fan sites and shouldn’t expect anything past the basic in terms of access and credentials. On another, we were denied a credential for reasons that only discounted the years of work we’ve done covering Major League Soccer.

They go on to complain that MLS both fails to provide quality press materials or access to players for interview, instead pushing a rote PR shtick on press and public alike. The implication is that perhaps MLS disliked USSoccerPlayers because it was ocassionally critical of the league as opposed to toeing the party line that everything’s fantastic.

The result is the kind of coverage where writers chase press release material and the majority of articles are responsive rather than the kind of profile or investigative work you read or see with the other sports.

There is better coverage than asking personnel and players the same vapid questions or confirming your allegiance to the project of soccer in America by not straying past ‘how great is it that…’

We are a player-owned outlet, and the players themselves have always been in agreement that there’s no value to yet another attempt at overt public relations.

For me, one of the great things about MLS is that it’s a work in progress. Every sane footy fan knows it’s far from perfect, which provides plenty of fodder for lively debate. It’s also now strong enough to stand a little honest criticism. USSoccerPlayers claim to have been spending $45,000 per season, covering MLS. In a league that needs all the publicity it can get, that sounds like an awful lot to be chasing away.

By deliberately starving a well run organization into silence just because they won’t agree with every word is a little dangerous. The Beckham media circus won’t last forever, so MLS needs more coverage that’s about the actual football as opposed to Tom Cruise coming to see his new BFF play soccerball, so they could do a lot worse than encouraging honest debate about the league itself.