MLS commissioner Don Garber will never forget his first day in the job in 1999. He had given up a secure position with the NFL (American gridiron football) as senior vice-president/managing director of NFL International to lead a 32-year-old league that had lost USD 34 million the year before.
“I was attacked at the opening press conference,” he recalls. “Again, soccer stumbles and hires a gridiron football guy when they should be hiring a soccer guy. I remember walking out of the press conference, turning to my wife and saying, ‘Boy, I hope I made the right decision here’.”
Almost a decade later, Garber has no regrets as the league is now on a steady course. The first major changes were to get rid of the unpopular shootouts (to decide drawn matches) and the countdown clock (instead of allowing the referee to keep time). “This was all part of the beautiful soccer game but here the league was playing by rules saying that Americans would never understand the game like the rest of the world and the rules needed to be adapted for the American audience,” says Garber. “If that had been the case, we should never have been in the business in the first place.” He also has weathered some difficult times. After the 2001 season, the league discarded two underperforming clubs-the Miami Fusion and Tampa Bay Mutiny- dropping from 12 to 10 teams. “It was the most difficult decision that I made since I’ve been commissioner,” admits Garber. “That, along with the San Jose move (to Houston). When you’re a young league in an emerging sport making moves that are traumatic, it’s… difficult. Without those decisions, the league wouldn’t be where it is today.” No one is thinking of downsizing these days. Expansion is the key word, with the possibility of as many as 18 or 20 teams in the not-too-distant future.

Major League Soccer has evolved remarkably in the last 12 years. The Hispanic market in particular is driving interest in the US league.
Major League Soccer has a message for South American and European players who think they will have an easy rime of it in the United States: “Don’t come over if you’re thinking of taking an extended summer holiday”.
Although the 12-year-old league could never be confused with the English Premier League, Spain’s La Liga or Italy’s Serie A, MLS has begun to forge its own path in the world of football. It is a physical league and players need to be in peak shape to play during the long, hot and sometimes humid summers. But that does not mean that there is a shortage of talented players.
This season, for the first time in eight years, there was significant pre-season buzz with the signing of several high-profile players due to a new designated player rule – nicknamed the “Beckham Rule” -that allows each team to sign one player who may earn more than the maximum salary of USD 400,000.
Yet the league is far from a David Beckham league. Yes, the Los Angeles Galaxy midfielder is the highest-paid player (USD 6.5 million), but he also helped to open the door for Argentina’s Marcelo Gallardo (D.C. United) and Claudio Lopez (Kansas City Wizards), Mexico’s Cuauhtemoc Blanco (Chicago Fire), Brazil’s Denilson (FC Dallas) and Colombia’s Juan Pablo Angel (New York Red Bulls).
“PHYSICAL AND QUICK”
Angel, who scored 19 goals in 24 games in 2007, feels the league is underrated. “It was far better than I thought it was,” he said. “There were a lot of misconceptions about the league. People who don’t know much about MLS probably don’t give it the credit it deserves. It’s physical. It’s quick. Its tough. It’s not a league that you can get by in just by having a little bit of quality. You have got to be in good shape in order to perform … People think it’s a league where anyone can play and that’s not the case.”
It has been far from a smooth ride though. The league has had to overcome attendance woes, losing two teams in 2001 and many sceptics. “If, in 1995, we had asked ‘in 10 or 15 years from now, what would you like?”, I guess people would have said a dozen, 15, 18 teams. We would like to be playing in soccer-specific venues, we would like a national television contract and we would like a product that is getting better’,” said U.S. Soccer president Sunil Gulati, the league’s first deputy commissioner. “I think all of those have happened. It has been a pretty remarkable journey for a league that is only 12 years old.”
MLS commissioner Don Garber believes that the league’s recent momentum has been driven by five factors: the expansion of its ownership group the league has owners for 16 teams (Philip Anschutz once propped up the league by owning five teams), the addition of teams (from 10 to 14), the building of football-specific stadiums, the focus on a game-first initiative and the formation of Soccer United Marketing, which has been a money-maker.
The most important part is the football-specific stadiums. Seven teams play in six of those stadiums — Columbus Crew, Galaxy and Chivas USA (who share a stadium), FC Dallas, Chicago Fire, Toronto FC and the Colorado Rapids. Real Salt Lake’s facility is scheduled to open in the autumn and the Red Bulls’ stadium is expected to be ready next year.
“When we all look back on the success of soccer in this country,” says Garber, “whether that success is measured by the number of teams we have or the television ratings, the buzz about the sport around the water cooler or the emergence of our national team, much of the success will be attributed to the fact that our ownership has built permanent facilities to house our teams in our local communities, making a statement to the entire soccer world that we’re here to stay.”
LESSONS LEARNED
The league also learned some lessons from the old North American Soccer League (1967-1984), which introduced football to the American mainstream with Pele, Franz Beckenbauer and Johan Cruyff helping to start a youth football boom.
“This country is different, in so many ways, to the days of the NASL,” Garber says. “They didn’t have soccer stadiums. The national team wasn’t fully developed. We didn’t have the infrastructure around the sport through the federation, and probably just as importantly, the explosion of the Hispanic market did not take place until 10 years ago. It’s the Hispanic market that is driving the interest in our league. We don’t need to teach Latinos that the game is great. We need to convince them that our league is worthy of their respect and their support.”
Defending champions Houston Dynamo are many observers’ choice to win die title again. D.C. United, Chivas USA and the New England Revolution are also considered to be contenders.
The regular season will run from 29 March until 26 October. Unlike the rest of the world, the MLS title is decided through the playoffs. Eight teams reach the post-season, with the champions crowned at the MLS Cup at The Home Depot Center in Carson, California on 23 November.
Garber is optimistic about the league’s future. Toronto were admitted into MLS in 2007, San Jose welcomed back in 2008. Teams in Seattle and Philadelphia will be added in 2009 and 2010 respectively.
The league has a long line of prospective expansion cities, including St. Louis, Montreal (Canada), Atlanta, Portland,
Las Vegas and a second team in the New York City market. Nevertheless, Garber realises that there is a lot of work ahead. “We have to be sure we stay focused on a very careful strategic plan and not think that we have cracked the code for soccer, making it one of the top major leagues in America,” he admits. “It’s clearly among the major leagues, but it’s got a way to go. As long as we understand that and don’t try to do too much too fast, there’s no place but up for this sport and this league.”

Angelos Charisteas headed Greece to the European Championship title in 2004. Since then, however, luck has deserted the striker. Now the 28-year-old has high hopes for a successful EURO 2008 in Austria and Switzerland.
Angelos Bassinas swings a corner into the six-yard box from the right-hand side and Angelos Charisteas leaps above two defenders to nod the ball into the net, leaving stranded goalkeeper Ricardo flailing helplessly.
Goal for Greece! “The goal itself was unexceptional,” recalls Charisteas today. However, its ramifications were huge – it was a goal that would go down in history. That header by the then 24-year-old striker in the 57th minute of the European Championship final between hosts Portugal and Greece in Lisbon’s Stadium of Light on 4 July 2004 proved to be the winning goal for the Greek outsiders, coached by Otto Rehhagel, who were duly crowned European champions, thus provoking an outpouring of national joy throughout Greece. Charisteas was elevated to the status of a national hero. Two million people took to the streets of Athens to celebrate the team’s homecoming, while the scorer of the historic goal was presented with 15 medals and trophies in the days and weeks following the triumph. During his subsequent holiday on Crete, he was approached by complete strangers crying tears of joy. The stadium and nursery school in his hometown of Strimoniko in northern Greece, near the border to Macedonia, were named after him, and to this day he remains an instantly recognisable figure in his homeland. How often has he seen this goal? “No idea,” says Charisteas. “I’ve lost count.” Granted, it was a long time ago. Almost four years have passed — four years which have seen the hero of Lisbon topple off his own Mount Olympus.
AJAX – THE WRONG CHOICE
The downturn in Angelos Charisteas’s footballing career began in the winter break of season 2004-2005, when he swapped the jersey of Werder Bremen, where he recorded 66 matches and 18 goals, for that of Ajax in a transfer worth five million euros. The German-Croat striking partnership of Miroslav Klose and Ivan Klasnic was curtailing his chances of a regular first-team berth with the North German aces. “I was absolutely determined to play regularly,” he says, looking back, before adding under his breath, “In retrospect, I shouldn’t have given up so quickly.”
For, as it soon transpired, the move to the city of tulips and canals was doomed from the outset. Coach Ronald Koeman, who, says Charisteas, “definitely wanted me,” was dismissed soon after the Greek’s arrival and successor Danny Blind had different ideas. “Blind dropped me when he took over,” recalls Charisteas, “and didn’t bring me back into the team until the play-offs.” Despite this, the striker managed 31 appearances and an impressive 12 goals during that season, but now says “The move to Ajax was the wrong decision. It stalled my career.”
A year after arriving, Charisteas moved on, this time to Feyenoord, Ajax’s greatest rivals. This is the equivalent of moving from Celtic to Rangers, Liverpool to Everton, or Real Madrid to Barcelona. “Transfers between these two clubs are not commonplace,” Charisteas explains. In the Netherlands, he was soon branded “the fallen angel”, a play on his first name “Angelos”.
Charisteas did not let this perturb him and responded to the criticism of the Fejrenoord fans by delivering a series of good performances and goals. He played 28 matches in all for the Rotterdam club in the Eredivisie, scoring nine goals. However, the writing was on the wall for the Greek once again when Feyenoord signed Roy Makaay from Bundesliga giants Bayern Munich at the start of the 2007-08 season. The Dutch striker had become surplus to requirements when his club opted in favour of a striking duo of Luca Toni and Miroslav Klose.
Newly-crowned German cup winners Nuremberg ended the uncertainty over the Greek’s future by snapping him up on a four-year contract, which Charisteas was quick to sign. He thus returned to the Bundesliga for a fee of 2.3 million euros. “I’ve always felt comfortable in Germany,” he says, “and I knew that I’d go back there one day.
A REGULAR IN REHHAGEL’S TEAM
Yet his hopes for a bright new future in Nuremberg were quickly dashed. Having suffered the setback of a long-term ankle injury, he could not prevent his new team, proud cup winners and sixth in the league the previous term, from plummeting down the league table. The club from Germany’s Franconia region were battling against the drop from the very first game on, when they suffered a shock home defeat to newly promoted Karlsruhe. Charisteas did not get off the mark for the club until the 10 th match of the season against Eintracht Frankfurt, which he followed with three more before the winter break. He also contributed two goals during Nuremberg’s respectable run to the last 32 of the UEFA Cup.
Things seemed to be on the up again for Charisteas and “The Club” as Nuremberg are affectionately known in Germany. Then came the arrival of Jan Koller. The club’s management had resolved to take action during the winter break to improve its chances of beating the drop and lured the towering Czech international centre forward to Nuremberg from Monaco for a fee of around a million euros. From the first game of the new year onwards, Koller took up the central striking position in Nuremberg’s 4-3-3 formation, and Charisteas was moved out to right-midfield – a position in which he clearly never felt comfortable. “I should have made it clear to the coach immediately that this was not my position,” explains Charisteas. “I’m a striker, not a midfielder.” The arrival of a new coach — Hans Meyer was replaced by Thomas von Heesen — brought no change to the situation. At the time of writing, Nuremberg were heading for their seventh relegation from the Bundesliga, and Charisteas, the club’s record signing, was making only fleeting appearances on the pitch.
Bremen, Amsterdam, Rotterdam and now Nuremberg – the hero of Lisbon has not been blessed with good fortune in any of the shirts he’s worn since EURO 2004. Only time will tell what turn his career will take next. Does he think his goal of a lifetime has done him more harm than good? “Not at all,” he answers. “EURO 2004 turned Angelos Charisteas the footballer into a household name.” And let us not forget that Charisteas remains a regular in the Greek national team. The 28-year-old has been a fixture in Otto Rehhagel’s team during the past four years, scoring three goals as a right-sided attacker during the qualification matches for the European Championship, which will kick-off on 7 June. Charisteas is quite clear about his aims for the tournament in Austria and Switzerland. “First and foremost, I want to be fit for the start of the tournament,” he says. “And then I want to score the winning goal again.”
The goal that paves the way for a Greek victory, as on 4 July 2004.