MLS’s New Phil Anshutz Trophy! It’s Not About the Galaxy!

By: Laurie | October 30th, 2008

MLS has a new trophy for the MLS Cup winners. The latest redesign is the new 24 inch, 43 lb. Philip F. Anschutz Trophy, named after the LA Galaxy owner.

But it’s kind of telling that the articles on the new trophy feel a need to point out that LA Galaxy owner Anschutz is “also part-owner of the Houston Dynamo.” Because when you’re going for an isn’t he fabulous retrospective, it’s a lot more fun to point out that you’re 50% owner of the reigning MLS Cup winners than that your 100%-owned “jewel” team just missed the playoffs for the third year in a row.

So it’s probably a good thing AEG (Anschutz Entertainment Group) are also 50% owners of the Dynamo. It makes people remember that there is a genuine reason for Anshutz to have this award named after him. Because he has done a whole lot more for soccer in America than just bring Beckham to the US.

“We really believed that Phil Anschutz deserved a lasting legacy,” MLSnet.com quoted Garber as saying.

“Phil Anschutz believes in the sport down to its core,” he said. “He attends games almost every weekend with his family. He believes in the American player. He believes that this country has to have a top-flight league that celebrates what he thinks is the best sport in the world.”

He said the Denverite rescued the league financially a few years ago. “In our darkest hour, we went through contraction,” Garber said, according to the MLSnet.com report. “We were really questioning what the future of MLS would be. Phil Anschutz stood up and said, ‘Even if I have to carry this league on my shoulders, I won’t allow Major League Soccer not to continue or grow.’”

I am not the biggest Anschutz fan in the world, but even I have to admit that soccer wouldn’t be where it is in the US today if he hadn’t been a part of it. At one point he owned six teams. And before the league started to become profitable, AEG took some big financial hits to keep it going.

AEG now owns only the Galaxy and half of the Dynamo. This is largely because MLS has become more financially attractive to other owners in the past two years, so one owner doesn’t need to carry the league. And that financial attractiveness is largely because of decisions pushed through by AEG.

One can argue that the whole Beckham-to-LA experiment has been grossly mismanaged. (Alexi Lalas and Ruud Gullit, anyone?) But at the same time, even critics have to admit that it was AEG’s ability to think about creative solutions to the league’s financial issues that made the Designated Player experiment possible. This, in turn, made MLS attractive to foreign talent for the first time. If MLS can figure out how to get some good operating decisions to go with that creativity, the league can one day be a force. I truly believe that.

And so, Phil Anshutz, stand up and take a bow and admire the trophy that’s been named after you.

(Just don’t try to heft it yourself. You might get a hernia.)