Despite growth, MLS is still struggling to give fans the two things they want from the league
Major League Soccer kicks off its 20th season next weekend, and while the league has undoubtedly made great strides over the course of two decades, it nevertheless continues to struggle to transcend its reputation as a retirement league for aging international stars.
Consider the following names currently on active MLS rosters: Andrea Pirlo, David Villa, Frank Lampard, Didier Drogba, Steven Gerrard, Robbie Keane, Bradley Wright-Phillips, Liam Ridgewell, Kaka - you could nearly field an entire starting side made up exclusively of players age 30 and older, all of whom enjoyed prolific careers in Europe and now ride out their soccer days collecting cushy Designated Player contracts stateside.
David Beckham's arrival in 2007 from Real Madrid is often interpreted as the maiden voyage of aging internationals coming to finish out their careers in the states, but so long as MLS has existed, so too has its reputation as a retirement league. Go all the way back to 1996, the league's inaugural season, when Carlos Valderrama was the most well-known player in the league (only partially because of his hair).Valderrama was 35 when he joined the Tampa Bay Mutiny, and had already traversed leagues in Colombia, Spain and France.
On Monday in New York City, MLS Commissioner Don Garber addressed this issue following an announcement of a partnership between MLS and TAG Heuer.
"People pay attention to the guys that are 34, 35, but they don't pay attention to the dozens that are signed in their twenties," Garber said. "It's just the way people focus their attention. There was all this talk [last season] about the age of players that were coming in in the January [transfer] window, but the average age was 26, the youngest in three years."