On Thursday, July 24, New York City F.C, a new MLS franchise, announced that Frank Lampard was signing for the new club. On their website, they posted an article entitled, “Welcome to New York City: Frank Lampard” writing that they were “thrilled to announce the signing of England National Team and Chelsea FC legend Frank Lampard.” A historic signing, Lampard was one of the biggest names and most talented players to sign for an MLS squad since David Beckham. As you would expect with a signing this immense, the new NYCFC launched a media campaign with Lampard as their poster child, putting him on ads and billboards all over New York. This resulted in resounding support and excitement for the new squad, as they sold nearly 12,000 season tickets in less than six months, without ever playing a game.
After “signing” Lampard in July, it was announced he was “being loaned” to Manchester City until preseason started in January to maintain fitness. However, Lampard’s surprisingly good play for Manchester City resulted in Manchester City trying to extend the loan. This is where the original story begins to unravel. If NYCFC actually owned the contract, they could force Lampard to return in January. As it turned out, Lampard never actually signed a contract for NYCFC, instead making a “non-contractual ‘commitment’ to join the expansion club in January.” Lampard’s contract was actually with the City Football Group, the umbrella company owning both Manchester City and NYCFC.
If Lampard actually honored his commitment to NYCFC, none of this would have matter. However, Lampard’s good play caused Manchester City – essentially NYCFC’s parent club – to decide it needs the Englishman for the rest for the Premier League season. Since he had never signed a contract with NYCFC, Manchester City could do this without approval from New York. It was only about a week ago on January 9 that Lampard finally signed a contract with NYCFC to start July 1, 2015 – 11 months after his original farce of a contract was supposed to start.
This brings up a number of issues. First off, it delegitimizes NYCFC. If Manchester City treats NYCFC as a minor league team, NYCFC will never get the backing they need to survive in a city like New York. New Yorkers will refuse to support a team that is clearly being treated as a feeder and a mechanism to gain Manchester City fans. In the future, if a player is doing well fro NYCFC, what is to say that Manchester City doesn’t just snatch them away? Whether this is a valid concern or not, it is a question that will loom large in potential supporters heads, which could be dire for the new franchise.
Arguably more important than the success of one club, in allowing this questionable move the MLS is willingly consenting to being treated like a second-rate league. No one is arguing that the MLS is on the level of the Premier League, but if it includes teams that are being treated as unimportant by the teams that own them, it will be harder to gain legitimacy. This was seen with Chivas USA, an MLS franchise owned by Mexican club C.D. Guaralaja that folded this off-season due to poor support and embarrassingly bad ownership. After getting rid of one toxic franchise with an apathetic ownership group with ulterior motives, the league is getting worryingly close to adding another club with similar issues.
While these two worries are large enough on their own, the larger problem this debacle points to is the lack of transparency in the league. In order to ensure competitive balance and make sure all clubs stay viable, the MLS is a single-entity league, where the league actually owns all the players and divvies up the players based on supposed rules. However, there have been multiple recent cases where high-profile players sign with more successful teams in larger cities, seemingly against the league’s allocation rules with no explanation from the league. However, this is the first time the MLS has openly lied to the press, asserting that Lampard was signed when that was blatantly not true.
The Lampard saga highlights the league’s lack of transparency, and pigeonholes the league and NYCFC as second-rate. Don Garber, the MLS commissioner has highlighted transparency as a “big priority” in 2015. It is yet to be seen if he really means it. For Americans and MLS fans, hopefully he does. If not, MLS has bigger problems than an ownership group treating an MLS team as second-rate. In any case, the MLS is putting a hard ceiling on growth if they ignore the major concerns that this saga has brought up. Ideally, Garber will see his mistakes, and make the necessary changes; if not, there is little chance the league will ever be globally taken seriously.
The drama surrounding the Frank Lampard saga further exacerbates other issues experienced by the New York City FC organization and the marginalization of MLS in the US sports landscape. The team failed to secure land in Flushing Meadows Park to build a new soccer stadium – instead, due to the team’s ownership ties with the New York Yankees, NYCFC is going to play in the old Yankees stadium for the first few seasons. The fact that a long-term plan has not been established for simply the location of NYCFC games (and that the team must play in a former baseball stadium) further relegates the sport, the team, and the league to “second-tier” status.
By finishing out the Premier League season and starting MLS in July, Lampard will be missing 4 months of the MLS regular season. Consequently, Lampard will also be missing crucial playing time with his new team members, not to mention the fact that Lampard was recently injured on January 21 and surely fatigue/injuries will play a more significant role once summer rolls around.
The drama surrounding the Frank Lampard saga further exacerbates other issues experienced by the New York City FC organization and the marginalization of MLS in the U.S. sports landscape. The team failed to secure land in Flushing Meadows Park to build a new soccer stadium – instead, due to the team’s ownership ties with the New York Yankees, NYCFC is going to play in the old Yankees stadium for the first few seasons. The fact that a long-term plan has not been established for simply the location of NYCFC games (and that the team must play in a former baseball stadium) further relegates the sport, the team, and the league to “second-tier” status.
By finishing out the Premier League season and starting MLS in July, Lampard will be missing 4 months of the MLS regular season. Consequently, Lampard will also be missing crucial playing time with his new team members, not to mention the fact that Lampard was recently injured on January 21 and surely fatigue/injuries will play a more significant role once summer rolls around.