We don’t do many interviews here at twofootedtackle.com, so Chris Nee was excited to make an exception to talk to Alexi Lalas. This is part two of a two-part interview with the former USA international, and covers the league’s Home Grown Player Rule, the future of the draft system, the philosophy of US football, the prospects of the United States men’s national team and, perhaps inevitably given this site’s recent obsession, the New York Cosmos.
You can read Part 1 here.
TFT: What do you think will be the eventual effect of the relaxation of the Home Grown Player Rule?
Alexi Lalas: When it started to relax over the past few years it put the onus on the clubs but it also gave them a tremendous amount of flexibility and opportunity; you’re not only possibly creating your next big star that’s going to sell tickets and drive sponsorship and ultimately win games for you, you’re also possibly creating a major asset that is going to be of value on the international market. The balance of power when it comes to professional soccer and youth soccer has been completely off for a long time and this, I think, is just another indication of that balance coming back to where it should be, where the professional game is at the top of the pyramid and everything else kind of flows from it.
But it’s not easy because of decades of what youth soccer has meant and that’s not to say that youth soccer hasn’t played a huge part in the development of the sport, but that the professional game has now started to take ownership of it. I think you’re going to see some real developments and real quality coming out of it, and from a business standpoint it’s a no-brainer. You’ve got to be involved and you’ve got to be progressive in the way that you go about setting up your developmental system.
TFT: What do you think it means for the future of the MLS SuperDraft?
AL: I think it’ll change a little bit but college soccer will always have a place. I also think that as much as we talk about trying to give young players a better professional environment at an earlier age, I think that there is some value, as a soccer player and as a person to having the college experience, because while we might be at times producing some better soccer players in the short-term, in the long-term their ability to cope with being a professional athlete and after that 90 minutes is done is crucial to their ability to succeed.
I think college equips them with the ability to do that. So that’s a long way of saying that I still think that the SuperDraft will be part of identifying talent and a tool that is used to get talent but certainly there are going to be many, many other ways of doing it. And I think it will also maybe force the collegiate game to look at itself and find ways to do things differently within the rules and the constraints, to be quite honest, of the NCAA, which does not make it easy.
TFT: Of the current crop of Home Grown Players, who do you think will make the biggest impact?
AL: I think Andy Najar is special, there’s not really any other way to say it. I think it’s just as exciting though when you look at some other players that have maybe been brought through from a very young age and look at something like the LA Galaxy academy as something that’s been a part of their lives for a long time and seeing how that develops; a Tristan Bowen, who’s come out of the Galaxy camp and is now over with Chivas. It’s one thing to have a player for a couple of years who becomes, in name, a Home Grown Player, but it’s another thing to actually cultivate and develop a player from a young age within a system and within a philosophy of that club, and to see that player progress and ultimately pay off down the line.
There are not a lot of players that are able to do that - we all recognise it’s a very small percentage - but I think that as we go along and there’s more time and resources devoted to it, we’re going to see many, many more players that are home grown in that they were started at a young age and they know what it means to be a member of the family and community that is a particular club.
TFT: What is MLS missing that takes it to the next level over the next five or ten years?
AL: You know, I think that we’re going to see a continued loosening of the rules in terms of how teams are formed. I think there’s going to be more opportunity for teams that want to do things on a bigger scale to do that, without losing the fundamental structure of our league which, while we can debate it until the cows come home, we also have to recognise is the reason why we’re still here 15 years on. But, having said that, in order for us to compete internationally there has to be additional money used to go out and buy quality talent - it just has to happen. The disparity between what an MLS salary cap means and what unfortunately we’re so often compared to is so great that it has to, at some point, be addressed. And it will be - it’s real easy to just say it needs more money, but sometimes the easiest answer is the one true answer: it does need more money. We need to spend more money on our product and give the opportunities to the clubs that want to do it.
TFT: If changes to the Home Grown Player Rule represent a potential shift in the way that MLS deals with young players, what changes for the USMNT? Is it beneficial that those players have a longer upbringing within the US Soccer system?
AL: It depends what the US soccer philosophy is right now. There’s lots of debate as to what it is and who’s driving it, and I don’t have the answers because as far as I’m concerned it is yet to be articulated in a clear and concise way that “this is who we wanna be, this is how we wanna play, this is our philosophy, this is our formation”, all of that kind of stuff, we’re yet to really do that. And part of the reason is that because of our size we’ve been so keen to welcome everybody in and include everyone in an effort not to let people fall through the cracks, that unfortunately what we’ve done is fail to really say this is what we want to be and accept the fact that in doing that it’s going to be good but we’ll lose some quality along the way. So I think that the home grown situation and the academies are great for the clubs, and I also think it’s good for the US national team if players are in a professional environment from a young age that has articulated what it wants to be.
That’s so important because we talk all the time about winning and stuff like that, but for me…you know, recently the U-20s failed to qualify for the World Cup, and I couldn’t care less, honestly. All I care about is that the coaches of those youth teams are developing players that will make the US men’s national team better and ultimately win us a World Cup. In a club situation, I also care that they’re developing talent that is going to make its way into the full team, either as a fully-fledged star helping the team on the field, or as a valuable asset that can be sold on later on. Too often we don’t see, I think, enough thought and enough clear articulation as regards “this is what it needs to be”. If that’s happening both with the US national team and in the individual clubs that players are associated with, I think we have a really, really good thing going even if at times it might not be the same type of philosophy.
That’s OK as long as they’re in one that says “this is how we wanna play”, because individually they might benefit. The US national team doesn’t necessarily benefit but at least there’s an understanding of what each club wants.
TFT: When does the US reach a World Cup semi-final?
AL: Oh, they can do it at the next World Cup, I mean it’s not secret that even the best teams in the world have a little bit of luck going through a World Cup scenario. I think right now we are in a position where our next generation of players has to have a feel for the game that we haven’t seen yet as an American team; not just the individual players, but a feel, a philosophy, an understanding in every player that’s there that “this is how I’m successful, and this is how the team is successful”. So I think that the semi-finals are in reach in three years, with a little bit of luck, with four years of making sure that when it comes to time to qualify, we do so under the same understanding and philosophy from the technical director, through the head of youth teams to every single coach, that “this is who we are and this is how we want to play”.
I’m not sure that we’re there yet but if we do get there, and we do have an understanding, I don’t think there’s any reason that the US can’t go to the semi-finals. We wasted a golden opportunity and a golden pathway in this last World Cup and that disappointing because you know that those things don’t come around too often, which means that in the future we’re probably going to have to go through someone much bigger than, say, Ghana or Uruguay in order to get to the last four. But so be it, we’ll take on the big boys and we tend to play much better when we’re playing the underdog role anyway.
TFT: In New York, a very famous football club from the NASL days is re-emerging. How do you feel about the Cosmos coming back on to the radar?
AL: I think it’ll be wonderful for the league and for soccer to have that brand in particular in the New York market. Now, that’s me just talking from 3,000 miles away. I’ve worked in the New York area for what was then the Metrostars and is now the New York Red Bulls, and the reality on the ground is that it’s difficult to be relevant in the New York market. I also know that from a league standpoint it doesn’t matter if you have a really powerful brand and you make a lot of noise, you’ve got to have a stadium situation, you’ve got to have local support and local ownership and you’ve got to have real deep pockets, and one of the things that has enabled us to survive in MLS for as long as we have is having ownership groups that have very, very deep pockets.
I know that [league commissioner] Don Garber and the folks in New York are dealing with this every single day and while on the surface I’m sure they’re excited to have this as a possibility, they’re going to drill down and make sure that they’re not going to just do it - it’s going to have to have some real meat behind whatever proposal there is and whatever plan there is for New York if it does involve the Cosmos. And it also wouldn’t surprise me if it wasn’t necessarily the Cosmos that ended up as the second team in New York.
TFT: What will be the benefits to the Cosmos of having Cobi Jones on board?
AL: I think what they’ve tried to do is recognise and capitalise on the fact that the Cosmos are not just a local brand in terms of the New York metropolitan area, but a national brand, and they still resonate within the consciousness of the sporting public out there. And so, with that understanding, they want to make sure that if the Cosmos do come to pass in an MLS form that they are able to be not just a team for New York but I think they’ll try to position themselves as being a team for the United States. That’s smart, it’s good forethought and good planning. Now, having a guy like Cobi Jones, who’s an American soccer icon, doesn’t hurt and having the other big names being involved is always good. I’m an entertainer and I’m showman, so I dig it all, I love the fact that they’re doing this and they’re creating a stir and excitement and, at times, controversy.
I love all that, I think that’s what you do when you’re trying to sell any product to the public: you make them interested. Right now people are very, very interested in the Cosmos not just for the brand that it is but also for the personalities and the characters that they have associated with it right now.
Tags: Cobi Jones, MLS SuperDraft, New York Cosmos, US Soccer, Youth Football
[...] You can read Part 2 here. [...]