Will Christian Pulisic’s huge sale to Chelsea be a catalyst for change in the US? The answer is complicated.
By Sanjay Sujanthakumar
Christian Pulisic’s $73 million transfer to Chelsea is official.
The fee is more than triple the previous record paid for an American (John Brooks to Wolfsburg). It’s the third highest ever paid by Chelsea and the third-highest fee ever for a player 20 or younger. The magnitude of the move cannot be understated, not only because of the significance of the sale for Pulisic, Chelsea, the Premier League, the US Men’s National Team, the perception of the American player in Europe, etc. The inevitable, pricey purchase of Pulisic by a club bigger than Borussia Dortmund highlights in bright Dortmund yellow American soccer’s anticipation and hope for a solution to the issue of training compensation and solidarity, despite the fact that Pulisic’s youth club, the PA Classics, doesn’t seem disposed to cashing in. A decision by FIFA’s Dispute Resolution Chamber is, conveniently and coincidentally, apparently imminent.
Update: Source tells me that ruling in @CrossfirePrmr case is expected any day. #FIFA #USSF #COYS #MLS #Solidarity https://t.co/PBJnIcWbmf
— Miki Turner (@turneresq) January 2, 2019
DeAndre Yedlin’s $3.71 million transfer to Tottenham in 2014 reignited the quest of American youth clubs who have developed professional players- led by Yedlin’s, Crossfire Premier- to receive the training compensation and solidarity payments they’re owed in accordance with FIFA’s Regulations on the Status and Transfer of Players (RSTP).
When a player signs their first professional contract, that pro club is supposed to pay the clubs who developed the player between the ages of 12 and 23, essentially reimbursing them. Also, when a player is transferred before their contract expires to a club in another country, five percent of that fee is sliced from that sale and set aside to reward the clubs that developed the player up to age 23.
In America, the USSF has prevented this from happening. Its justification started with a Consent Decree from the Fraser v MLS antitrust lawsuit. But according to The Athletic’s Miki Turner, in 2015 meetings with Crossfire, MLS, and the MLS Players Union, “USSF and MLS essentially conceded that the consent decree did not provide a legal basis to prevent such payments.”
Child labor law and fear of costly litigation from MLS (notably, the Players’ Union) are more recent and understandable factors to explain the federation’s reluctance to wade into this matter. MLSPU Executive Director Bob Foose told Sports Illustrated in 2016, “Training compensation and solidarity payments unjustly inhibit the labor market for players. They increase costs to the acquiring club, which is passed on to the player, reducing compensation or, in many cases, eliminating a player’s opportunity altogether.” Rob Moore, the founder of On Target Football Consultants who advised Pulisic on a European professional path, told The Ringer last year, “The absolute dagger will start coming in the American context if America ever adopts a system where training-and-development compensation has to be paid.”
But it’s been twelve years since the Development Academy was established, and with the amount of elite players increasing – and leaving for free – MLS, where academy players don’t always pay to play in world-class facilities, has shifted its stance.
Don Garber explicitly acknowledged this in his State of the League Address. “We are not, as a country, participants in solidarity and training competition, I think that probably has to change. We have to find a way that if (players leave for Europe), how do we at least get compensated for it? I don’t know how we can justify making the kind of investments we’ve been making. Lots and lots of restrictions against that. … I think the (homegrown players) we’re developing (have) become some of the most important assets (and) we need to start figuring out ways that we’re either protecting (those assets) or we’re finding ways to get compensated for if we can’t protect them or sign them.”
For MLS academies, this exodus simply isn’t sustainable.
FC Dallas learned its lesson after losing Weston McKennie to Schalke, later reaching what former academy director and now head coach Luchi Gonzalez described to longtime American soccer scribe Brian Sciaretta as a “player-pathway partnership” with Bayern Munich, which enticed two of its top prospects, Thomas Roberts and Chris Richards, to sign with FCD. “As a first team coach, I ideally want and would love that every player in our youth system and academy would want to play for me and my staff at the first team level here. But if the player here has the attention overseas and club here has the opportunity to get a return on investment or to support a player in their best interests because they have a value that can help monetize our academy or help monetize our first team, then I am 100% behind that. If that means losing a player and they won’t be able to perform in our stadium but we gain value out of it, then I think it is a win-win.”
Tyler Adams is an odd exception, as he will remain under the Red Bull umbrella, joining RB Leipzig with New York reportedly receiving $3 million and a third of any future fee paid to its East German sister club. But then there’s Real Salt Lake, who are hemorrhaging promising youngsters to Europe – Richie Ledezma (PSV Eindhoven), Sebastian Soto (Hannover), Taylor Booth (Bayern Munich) – for nothing, influencing the league’s rethink. Nothing has ever moved MLS more than lost money.
If MLS successfully pushes for any type of training compensation and solidarity payment system – a uniquely American one could be the answer – its impact on the economics of youth soccer in this country, beyond its own academies, could be enormous. In terms of claims from youth clubs for players who have signed abroad in the past, Crossfire Attorney Lance Reich told Turner, “We could have $20, $30 million worth of claims. We’re going to have a Madoff moment in American soccer. Everyone is going to wake up and say, ‘Oh my god – how did it get this way.”
The effect would be especially beneficial for youth clubs outside the MLS sphere, such as Crossfire in Redmond, Washington and Pulisic’s PA Classics. According to ESPN, Crossfire is seeking around $100,000 for Yedlin. Yedlin was registered with Crossfire for about a year more than Pulisic was with the Classics, but he was sold for about $70,000,000 less than the Hershey, PA native. How much could Crossfire hypothetically collect from Pulisic’s leap to West London?
https://twitter.com/BrianCostin/status/1080485587067523073
The number is unconfirmed, but regardless, it’d be a jaw-dropping jackpot. And hopefully its possibility could convince youth clubs and leagues content with the current financial arrangement of their industry to prioritize producing quality.
Tottenham’s stance about the Yedlin transfer has now shifted, too, and according to ESPN’s Jeff Carlisle one of its arguments is that Crossfire’s “business model – that of a non-profit in which team fees of other players helped subsidize those who couldn’t afford to pay like Yedlin – doesn’t involve investing its own resources and taking a financial risk in order to produce players. This is despite the fact that Crossfire has other sources of revenue including sponsorships and charitable donations.”
Discussing the Pulisic situation, PA Classics Director of Coaching and Academy Director Steve Klein essentially agreed, admitting to ESPN his club is – for the most part – pay to play. Modest about the role of the Classics in developing the first potential American soccer superstar, Klein also suggested that while the money is “significant,” it wouldn’t be as transformative for the club as it sounds. And that’s the problem to begin with. If pay-to-play is to be reversed to any extent – it will never entirely evaporate – training compensation and solidarity payments can be the catalyst.
Yet FIFA won’t force the USSF to dive into the deep end, and with MLS warming to training compensation and solidarity, the federation’s seemingly continued caution is a testament to how legally complex this could be. For example, when Crossfire made its claim with Tottenham, one of the teams the North London club contacted about payment was the University of Akron. While college soccer is drying up as a source of current and future pros, Yedlin wouldn’t be the only player who was once an NCAA athlete and a subject of a solidarity dispute. If paying college athletes often sounds like a can of worms we shouldn’t open, professional clubs paying colleges is an altogether different and perhaps more explosive conversation.
Ultimately, however, there is clear consensus that training compensation and solidarity allows for necessary reinvestment. It’s not selfish, it’s not self-aggrandizing, it’s a chance to drive down costs to play and stimulate the identification and development of world-class players by all clubs. The 2018 World Cup cycle will be remembered for failure, but the emergence of Christian Pulisic proved to American soccer that that player actually exists here. His inevitable, expensive sale to the Premier League is an urgent reminder that we can’t waste more time, and therefore, money.
Sanjay Sujanthakumar is a contributing writer at The Yanks are Coming. He also coaches college club soccer at the University of Southern California. Follow him on Twitter @tha_Real_Kumar.