By Andrew Warshaw, Chief Correspondent
January 4 – The head of Major League Soccer has responded to criticism of the league from FIFA president Sepp Blatter by saying the best way of winning Blatter over is to for him to actually attend a game and see the progress that has been made.
In a recent interview, Blatter suggested football was not as advanced in the US as it should be, a generation after hosting the 1994 World Cup
Blatter told Al Jazeera that the Americans had “no very strong professional league” and that administrators were still struggling to raise football’s profile above grass-roots high school level compared to established sports like baseball,
basketball and American football.
His comments predictably raised eyebrows among US officials, not least MLS Commissioner Don Garber (pictured) who countered: “We still have a lot of work to do – we understand and accept that. But arguably there’s probably not another sports league in the world that has achieved as much as we have in the last 20 years.”
Garber, who has been MLS commissioner since 1999, having joined from the NFL, has transformed the league which has expanded to 19 teams from just 10 in 2004. More than half the teams play in their own soccer-specific stadiums and average attendance last year of 18,807 was a record.
“I know that the president believes in American soccer and believes in the league,” Garber said. “Sometimes I think these things happen when you’re not here for a while. When you’re not here or travel much to the US, it’s hard to fully understand what the sports market is like here. When you’re not living and breathing the North American sport market, it is easy to believe ML is being lost in some of the noise.”
Garber said he would look to correct that by allowing Blatter to see for himself. “I’m sure if he does, he’ll see how far we’ve advanced, and I think he’d be very, very excited about that. I look forward to having the president and other FIFA executives attend an MLS game. I think they’ll be pleasantly surprised to see the passion that exists in our fan base and the high level of soccer and see how far the league has come.”
Garber said it was unfair to compare its progress of soccer with sports that have been
around for decades.
“We’ve not gone through a generational turn where a family can grow up together as a fan of an MLS team,” he said. “There are still people becoming fans, and have not yet been able to experience it for a generation. And I believe as we continue to develop, as we continue to grow older, we’ll show even greater growth than we have over the last 17 years.”
“To be fair, for those who don’t live here in North America or spend a lot of time in the United States, it’s hard to
comprehend how powerful the other major sports leagues are.”
“If you live in Europe or South America there’s only one [major] sport, the sport of football. We have sports in the US that are as powerful here as football is in its respective countries, and we have at least four that have been around for over 100 years. And all have had the benefit of building a fan base over many generations.”
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