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New York City FC Fans Should Be Enraged With MLS Commissioner Don Garber Over Frank Lampard Comments

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Noah K. Murray-USA TODAY Sports

Noah K. Murray-USA TODAY Sports

If Major League Soccer ever plans to be taken seriously by the soccer world, it’s time for commissioner Don Garber to stop acting like a wimp and put his foot down.

Over 11,000 season ticket holders for expansion club New York City FC are rightly up in arms with the recent announcement that their designated player Frank Lampard will have his Manchester City loan deal extended until the end of the Premier League season.

But in speaking out on Saturday, Garber did little to ease the concerns of new NYFC supporters that their club is being treated as a farm team for the Premier League club and their ownership group. Both clubs are owned by Sheikh Mansour through his parent company, the City Football Group (CFG), and it appears Garber is prepared to let the wealthy owners do whatever they like. 

“They [CFG] were faced with a difficult decision,” Garber told Sports Illustrated on Saturday. “I’m going to be supportive of all our ownership groups, making them aware of my point of view. But we need to work hard now to move forward and recognize that Frank will be joining this team in July along with the other designated players.”

Read between the lines, American soccer comrades. There is one inconvenient truth here that Garber forgot to mention and one point many have missed in the unfolding debate. MLS operates on a unique single entity ownership model, meaning players’ contracts are owned by the league itself and not individual teams.

If the league wants to put a stop to a deal or encourage a designated player to sign with a certain team, it has that power. So how about a little more forcefulness here, Mr. Garber?

Lampard was expected to end his loan spell with City on Dec. 31 and join his new team for training camp in February ahead of their Mar. 15 opener at Yankee Stadium against the New England Revolution. That was until the former Chelsea midfielder upped his game and has become an integral part of Citizens’ manager Manuel Pellegrini’s plans for the new year.

It’s doubtful the ownership group ever gave the loan extension a second thought and proceeded with the rubber stamp.

This is where MLS and Garber should have stepped in and intervened. If Garber really had the league’s best interests in mind, he would have ruffled the feathers of NYFC’s new mega-wealthy ownership group and put a stop to the deal. Instead his weak, turncoat response was to pay them lip service and “make them aware of his point of view.”

Sure Garber’s decision not to act may have been because of financial necessity and the fact the league recently announced combined losses of $110 million last season. But his latest move makes MLS look even more like a bush league teetering on the brink of ruin.

Garber and MLS also risk setting a precedent on their handling of the Lampard deal by sending the message to future owners that it is just fine to operate their clubs as farm teams for elite teams in Britain and Europe. So send us your washed-up players and do what you like with them, because their contracts to play in the league are really invalid.

Despite his recent resurgence, Lampard is clearly past his peak. The longer he stays in the more physical and demanding Premier League, he increases the chances of becoming seriously injured and arriving in New York as damaged goods, if at all. Lampard is 36 years old, and the prospect of playing 15 consecutive months without a break has burnout and career-ending injury written all over it.

I once had the privilege of an exclusive interview with the mighty Pele in the months ahead of David Beckham’s arrival to MLS. His advice to Beckham about playing soccer in North America was not to take it lightly and come in the best possible shape.

While Beckham seemed to take this advice seriously and extended his career many years after his arrival in MLS, it appears that Lampard and the NYFC ownership group haven’t. They are treating MLS, Garber and their American/English soccer cross-marketing experiment as a joke.

Peter Mallett is a blogger for www.RantSports.com. Follow him on Twitter @RedCardTheRef1 like him on Facebook or add him to your network on Google.

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