Major League Soccer Commissioner Don Garber attended a forum at the W Hotel in Manhattan hosted by the LPGA on Wednesday entitled "Phenoms to Professionals: Successful Transitions." The forum was the first of its kind, bringing together commissioners and other executives from the sporting world to take a closer look at the ever-increasing trend of young athletes opting to join the professional ranks.
MLS is no stranger to dealing with this issue, with the most notable such player, D.C. United's Freddy Adu, being only the most recent and most visible in a long line of rising American soccer stars that have entered the MLS ranks while still in their formative years.
"We have two great stories, though, that we're very proud of," Garber said. "One player is still in Major League Soccer, one is playing over in Europe. Both came into the league at 17 years old. One's name is DaMarcus Beasley ... is playing in Holland right now ... and is a great, great star player for our U.S. national team and will only get better.
"We have a young kid named Eddie Johnson who has just turned 21. He plays for our team in Dallas. He's just been signed to a million-dollar contract ... and he is one of the stars in our league."
The panel, which included LPGA Commissioner Carolyn Bivens, NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman, NBA Deputy Commissioner and Chief Operating Officer Russell Granik and Sony Ericsson WTA Chairman and CEO Larry Scott, was asked to comment on various challenges that professional leagues and athletes face when young players turn pro. Issues on the agenda included managing media hype and corporate influence, age restrictions for the highest levels of competition, family pressure and financial issues.
Garber used the Adu situation as an example of how the various challenges are tackled.
"Our role there was to try to find him a controlled environment, to put him in a place where we know he would be protected and believe it or not, restrict the number of interviews that he would do," said Garber. "There's a movement on our part, and I would probably speak for other leagues as well, to try to put these players in an environment where they're controlled and protected, particularly when they're 15, 16 years old."
Garber pointed out that the international structure of club soccer, as regulated by the sport's governing body FIFA, makes it a somewhat different animal as compared to the other sports that were represented. While MLS has only been around for 10 years, world soccer has for decades been inundated with young players that are signed at very early ages to professional contracts. Often youth players are signed as developmental project, a situation that MLS now sees more and more often.
"We operate in an environment where we're not competing against ourselves to sign Freddy, we're competing against Real Madrid and AC Milan and Manchester United," said Garber. "In that environment players are getting signed at 14 and 15, and that's what we've got to face with every young player that comes to us."
The MLS Commissioner was also quick to point out that it's not only the clubs that benefit from the rapid development that comes from playing in a professional environment from an early age.
He pointed to the ascent of the U.S. men's national team as proof that the league's policy of helping to cultivate young talent makes the program more competitive against the world's best teams.
"The level of quality of play in this country has been increasing primarily drive by young players who have come into a professional environment," said Garber. "Without that professional environment, U.S. soccer [being considered] as a credible sport in the global landscape just would not be able to stand toe-to-toe."
A major focus of the panel was to examine the various pressures that are often heaped on young stars such as Adu, the NBA's Lebron James and women's tennis star Maria Sharapova. High expectations for the young players stemming from intense media coverage often takes a toll and Garber explained how Adu's situation has been dealt with at the club and league levels to try to minimize the negative effects of all those influences.
"It's less about us and it's a lot more about these outside influences," Garber said. "You could think of so many sports that have been elevated by a star athlete and its corporate partner that has promoted that particular player. We have Nike and adidas chasing after these young kids and have complicated our world. It's not just the foreign clubs that are influencing their decisions; it's the shoe companies that are influencing their decisions. If the next kid out there can be someone like Freddy, that's a good thing for our sport. If adidas promotes him, so now you have Nike and adidas competing to run those ads, that's a good thing for our sport. But we have a responsibility to try to get these companies to do the right thing."
When questioned about the criticism that some have directed towards the league and D.C. United for how the Adu situation was presented and how it has panned out over his first two seasons, Garber was clear that the league's expectation never was to have the Ghana-born teen instantly take over the spotlight. Rather, Adu should be looked at more as a long-term project which will hopefully increase in value over time.
"(Adu), interestingly, has a coach, a guy named Peter Nowak, star international player, also played in Major League Soccer, who signed as a European at 15 years old and played in the (German) Bundesliga," said Garber. "(Nowak) is a tough Eastern European guy who is training Freddy very, very well as a professional soccer player ... (Nowak) is trying to have Freddy be in an environment where he can be as good as he can be.
"(Adu) played far more than many of the pundits have said that he played, but Freddy didn't play as much as he wanted to play," Garber continued. "By the way, I coach a youth soccer team. There's not a kid on that team that thinks he's playing enough. That's the nature of young athletes. In the eyes of our national team coach, in the eyes of all the soccer people that are around our league, Freddy is developing very, very well, and that's the most important thing that Freddy should be thinking of and that's the most important thing that we who are responsible for his career development should be thinking of."
A member of the audience brought the forum to a close by asking why the various leagues impose age restrictions or subject players to certain rules that require a young player to spend more time either in the junior ranks or in minor leagues to hone their skills.
"If they're good enough, why just not let them play?" asked the reporter.
Garber's short, emphatic answer summed up how MLS differs from many other leagues.
"We did," was all he said.
Jonathan Nierman is a contributor to MLSnet.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Soccer or its clubs.
