Why Pat Noonan Cannot Return to MLS

The Columbus Crew is attempting to sign former New England Revolution striker Pat Noonan, who has 12 caps with the U.S. men's national team. The way Major League Soccer does its business, however, is preventing this deal from happening.

When Noonan's contract expired after the 2007 MLS season, the Revolution offered Noonan a new deal at a lower salary and told him to take it or leave it. He left it, signing instead with Aalesunds FK in Norway.

The way MLS player contracts are set up, however, Noonan is not a free agent within the league. All player contracts are with the league, not the club, and players are allocated to certain clubs. Because it made Noonan that lowball contract offer, New England still has the allocation rights to Noonan within MLS.

The Crew has said it is willing to pay Noonan more than what he made with the Revs, pay the transfer fee to Aalesunds and compensate the Revs according to MLS rules. The response from MLS and the Revs? "Get bent."

While one agent claims that the Revs are attempting to punish Noonan for leaving -- which makes sense, given that this club has raised pettiness to an art form in recent years -- it's the structure of MLS that's really blocking the deal. As Crew head coach Sigi Schmid told the Columbus Dispatch:

"A player that can turn down an offer from the league, go overseas on their own volition and then we as a league have to buy them back. That's bad business and MLS doesn't want to be in the habit of doing bad business."

And blocking a club from signing a well-known MLS player who has no further ties with his old club is somehow good business? The Crew are willing to cover the transfer fee themselves, but MLS won't let them. Is there any other soccer league on the planet that lets that happen?

Noonan isn't the only U.S. national team player who's being blocked by MLS' arcane allocation rules from joining an MLS club that wants him. Former Fulham captain Brian McBride expressed an interest in returning to his hometown of Chicago to finish his career with the Fire, but for whatever reason, McBride's allocation rights within the league belong to Toronto FC, which was barely even a concept in anyone's brain when McBride left MLS for Craven Cottage in 2004. The rules state, though, that no player is a free agent in MLS, so the Fire must compensate TFC to get McBride.

The more situations like this keep popping up, the more obvious it becomes that MLS' single-entity structure has outlived its usefulness. Yes, this structure helped MLS survive its early years by keeping player salaries low, but when it blocks two veteran U.S. nationals from rejoining the league on their terms -- especially when one of MLS' founding tenets was player development for the U.S. national team -- it's clearly become a detriment to the sport in this country. MLS can maintain the parity it wants by keeping its salary cap intact, but it should allow players to sign deals with individual clubs, rather than sign with the league and be "allocated."

Unfortunately, we're stuck with this arcane system until the current collective bargaining agreement expires in 2009, and we may be stuck with it even longer unless the MLS Players Union steps up and demands a better free agency system in the next CBA. We can only hope enough MLS club owners will agree that a better system is necessary.

(H/T: The Offside)