Latin American Flair Will Boost MLS Popularity

Major League Soccer has a selling job to do, not merely with its players, or even its teams , but with the sport itself. It has to convince substantial numbers of Americans that soccer is attractive, interesting, and exciting enough to take a place alongside baseball, football, and basketball. It's a tricky assignment, because soccer is a notoriously fickle activity that comes in many forms, from sparkling to downright boring. This is a crucial fact that MLS has not handled particularly well. In its debut year, 1996, the league imported a number of skillful and colorful Latin Americans — Bolivia's Marco Etcheverry, Colombia's Carlos Valderrama, El Salvador's Mauricio Cienfuegos, and Mexico's Jorge Campos. But these were players signed not by coaches, but by the league's deputy commissioner, Sunil Gulati.

Within two years, coaches had taken over the business of signing players. As most of the coaches were European by birth, or Euro-oriented in their soccer tastes, the foreign signings tended to come from Europe. They also tended to sign more prosaic players. Flamboyant Latin Americans, who bring an attacking flair, were now rarely signed as the coaches went about building the reputation of MLS as a physical league.

None of this made much sense. It meant that far too many MLS games were nothing more than dull athletic contests with plenty of running, but not many goals. Official attendance figures stagnated around the 15,000-per-game mark.

Despite that figure, not a wildly encouraging one, there has been plenty of good news for MLS. New soccer-specific stadiums are being built (the league now has six), new ownership groups are appearing, and sponsor interest is increasing. Persistent discussion of expansion plans also remains. Until recently, the quality of the soccer on the field did not get much attention. But events over the past two seasons forced a change. The 2005 and 2006 MLS Cup finals — the nationally televised gala and showcase events — were both low-scoring, utterly boring games.

A move toward livelier soccer was desperately needed. That could only come by importing better foreign players. So, the designated player rule was born: Each club was allowed to bring in one player whose wages would not count against the salary cap. Enter David Beckham. Things were on the move. The arrival of Beckham had been predicted — indeed, the designated player rule had been dubbed the Beckham Rule before the player even signed last January.

There followed a quiescent period when MLS seemed almost stunned into inaction by the daring of its own move. What happened next was surprising: a sudden wave, almost a mini flood, of signings—of skillful, attack-minded Latin Americans.

The lack of such players had always been an anomaly — worse, almost a blunder — in a league with a potentially huge base of Latin-American fans. But the excuse of the coaches was always that good Latin Americans were not available, as they all went to Europe, or they were too expensive. It was an argument that suddenly evaporated, because out of 12 significant Latin American signings, only three are designated players: Mexico's Cuauhtémoc Blanco at Chicago, Colombia's Juan Pablo Angel at New York, and the Brazilian Denilson at Dallas. The rest were signed under the standard MLS regulations, subject to salary cap restrictions. It is no exaggeration to say that all 12 players have had an immediate impact. Blanco's scintillating performances have inspired a faltering Fire team into a playoff position, while Angel's 14 goals in 18 games have him in second position in the league's scoring race. Ahead of him, with 18 goals, is the Brazilian Luciano Emilio of D.C. United.

Down in Dallas, Steve Morrow from Northern Ireland is the coach, and he has a total of 10 Latin Americans on his roster. Among them is the midfield pair of Colombia's Juan Toja and Pablo Ricchetti from Argentina. The 22-year-old Toja has been a revelation with his slick ball artistry; he was quickly selected to the league's All-Star Team and scored a goal in a win over Scotland's Glasgow Celtic in July.

Real Salt Lake failed to make the playoffs in two feeble seasons under coach John Ellinger, during which the team used just one Latin player — for four games. After another poor start to this season, Ellinger was replaced by Jason Kreis, who quickly signed three Argentines. The move paid off in dramatic fashion: Just 40 seconds into the Argentines' first game, two of them combined to score. Real's poor record (it has only four wins, two of them coming in the three games played since the arrival of the Argentines) probably means another season out of the playoffs. But the team is now playing exciting soccer.

Also, the team is no longer the worst team in the league: That title now belongs to the Galaxy, Beckham's team. Considering that Los Angeles has a huge Mexican-American population to draw on, it's incredible that the Galaxy have only one Hispanic player – and he is Honduran, not Mexican.

The Latin American revolution has yet to make much impression in the northeast. The Red Bulls have Angel, and that's all. The New England Revolution, under its Scottish coach Steve Nicol, has no Latin Americans. Another Scottish coach, Mo Johnston in Toronto, has also eschewed Latin American players, though Miguel Canizalez from El Salvador occasionally gets on the field.

The long overdue signing of Latin American players by MLS will make the job of selling the sport that much easier. It will also greatly help to attract the huge group of Latin-American fans — ironically, the one group that does not need convincing on the merits of soccer. But this is a group that has, until now, been skeptical of a league that has featured so few Latino players, and so little Latino style.