Big Story
We’ve rather evaded the ongoing labour talks between MLS and the players’ union, mainly because we don’t have any insider info or original insight to offer on the dispute. But we’re just days away from a lockout, so we are at least keeping a close eye on the proceedings. Two different news reports today paint different pictures of how close we are to the first work disruption in MLS history.

At Soccer America, Ridge Mahoney cautiously says that the latest news “might be interpreted as encouraging.” Mahoney tells us the two sides are at least sitting at the table together for lengthy periods of time.

Representatives of the two sides met for eight hours yesterday at league headquarters, and discussions are scheduled to resume Wednesday.

On hand for MLS were Commissioner Don Garber, President Mark Abbott, Executive Vice President Todd Durbin, and others, including members of the league’s legal firm, Proskauer & Rose. Jon Newman, General Counsel to the MLSPU, was among those on the players’ side of the table.

Progress, or lack of same, has been hard to track, yet eight hours is a long time for two opposing sides, regardless of the issues, to tolerate each other.

In the San Diego Tribune, Mark Zeigler is rather less optimistic:

Neither side is talking much, respecting to a mutual media gag order, but snippets of sentiment have leaked out over the past few months as talks have grown more contentious. It’s not looking good. Several players and agents privately say they consider a Feb. 1 lockout inevitable.

On the table are issues such as free agency, the salary cap, roster size, minimum pay, guaranteed contracts, moving expenses, per diem, 401(k)s. The core issue, though, might be something far more fundamental: the true financial viability of the league.

So leave it to Freddie Ljungberg to proclaim on his blog yesterday that “Based on the latest news I’ve heard from both sides,  there wont be a lock out or strike on Feb 1.” True or not, perhaps more interesting were his comments about just how surprising all this was to Freddie:

Its been a difficult time. The potential strike that is happening in US soccer has made every player worry about their career’s and where they will be playing next season…. It’s been a big surprise how long the negotiations have been going on and no agreement has been reached.

All that the players are asking for is FIFA RIGHTS!! Every football player in the world that I know of plays under those rules, big or small leagues. So when I thought an agreement would be signed in a second…How wrong was I…..

How wrong indeed, Freddie.

Worldwide News

• On Portland’s stadium redevelopment for MLS, Fake Sigi points to a Field of Schemes piece on some less than transparent aspects of the council’s funding for it, concluding “What’s clear is that there’s plenty of opposition to getting this deal done, and while by all accounts the stadium deal will get pushed through, it’s not at all obvious the community is happy with the arrangement. Nothing against Portland and their fans, but MLS expansion in the Pacific Northwest beyond Seattle hasn’t been a shining example of public relations.”
• European Football Weekends looks at what they call Britain’s #1 ultras group, Celtic’s Green Brigade. One of their leaders describes their non-existent relations with the club: “We don’t have any relationship with Celtic, or at least not a positive one. They are happy to use the chants we start over the tannoy and our tifo pictures on their adverts for ticketing but beyond that there is no relationship to speak of, and we regularly have problems with them in terms of getting access with materials, with aggro from club stewards and officials etc. Recently our members taking the group banner into matches have been pointed out by Celtic stewards to the police who have demanded details and searches, using spurious legislation against us.”
• One third of World Cup tickets remain unsold; not a surprise, perhaps, but a real shame.

The Sweeper appears every weekday, and once at the weekend. For more rambling and links throughout the day every day, follow your editor Tom Dunmore @pitchinvasion on Twitter.

Big Story
There’s been an awful lot of questionable rhetoric already spat out by the leading figures of both sides of the dispute between MLS and the players over their new labour agreement, and finally we have a journalist with the patience and ability to parse through it well: Kyle McCarthy has a must-read look at the claims made about MLS’s compliance (or not) with FIFA’s regulations on player contracts. McCarthy concludes that:

As these negotiations continue to unfold, the rhetoric will increase and intensify as both sides try to sway the purportedly neutral public to its cause. Garber’s statement – and Foose’s ridiculous contention about the World Cup chances, for that matter – merely represents the first in a series of arguments that will push that barrier to the limit. The key to weeding through the morass in search of firm ground ultimately rests in the ability to discern when the habitual stretching of the truth goes too far.

To be honest, looking through some of the technical language cited, it becomes obvious no side is going to easily win over public opinion, and the only ones looking to come out of this well are the lawyers: and many journalists need to have the patience of a McCarthy to offer a fair take.

Worldwide News

• Toronto FC’s hopes to finally have a permanent grass field worth playing on at BMO Field took a hit with news that the Canadian Football League’s gridiron team the Toronto Argonauts are looking to move to the city-owned stadium: TFC fans and bloggers are rightly up in arms, with Ben Knight commenting that the problem is (as ever with soccer in North America, even in a soccer friendly city like Toronto) getting local politicians to care. Knight, though, points out fans should not panic as the obstacles in the way of the move range from money (the Argos have none) to the considerable challenges the dimension and plans for BMO would create to host the CFL.
• Can sport really be used to kickstart a nation’s economy?  The BBC takes a long and fairly rosy-eyed view of Ghana’s hopes “to secure competition events and increase tourist inflows and business revenues to our cities and the country.”  Yet as ever, definitive proof of the long-term economic boosts these tournaments bring remains elusive.
• The Bundesliga is getting a lot of good publicity in the English-language press at the moment, with this long and excellent breakdown of why the league is the world’s most popular and fan-friendly in its stadia, and a shorter piece by Four Four Two on the rule that is the backbone of this: 50+1. Meanwhile, the Guardian’s weekly Bundesliga round-up has the usual excellent work by Raphael Honigstein, this week focusing on the new president of Bayern Munich and the behemoth he helped build.
• Oh, and there’s lots of stuff about Ireland, and Fifa, and the World Cup, but perhaps the best — just because of its sheer spite towards FIFA’s unaccountable elite — is Grahame Jones’ takedown of the FIFA executive committee in the LA Times: “A sport that enthralls the planet is being overseen by rogues and villains, each one more unsavory than the next and each one pocketing more undeserved wealth than anyone can imagine.mThe ineptness of the executive committee members — or more likely their indifference to public opinion — knows no bounds.”

The Sweeper appears daily. For more rambling and links throughout the day every day, follow your editor Tom Dunmore @pitchinvasion on Twitter.