(by Bill Archer bigsoccer.com 6-7-17)
A funny thing happened in the run up to tomorrow's crucial qualifier between the US and Trinidad & Tobago.
Soca Warriors Coach Dennis Lawrence, whose team depends heavily on US based players, noted that MLS was releasing players to Bruce Arena's camp a week early and asked MLS to let his guys do the same.
He was told, in effect, to go pound sand.
So on May 27, David-John Williams, the continent-sized President of the TTFA, wrote to both Don Garber and Sunil Gulati, pointing out that reciprocity for his guys - Minnesota's budding star Kevin Molino, Atlanta's Kenwyn Jones and Seattle's Joevin Jones (plus Kevan George of Jacksonville of the neoNASL) - would be the only sporting thing to do in this instance.
(The group originally included San Jose defender Cordell Cato, but he was sent home for being a jerk)
In response, US Soccer sent a letter stating that “the MLS (sic) and USSF entered into an agreement before the beginning of the MLS season in January 2017 to release their players early for the June qualifiers.”
Really. How interesting. Difficult to figure why il Bruce and the boys at Soccer House hammered out this deal and failed to mention it.
T&T feels this is tantamount to cheating or at least unsporting behavior since Williams seriously doubts that MLS would have given him the same sort of deal if he had asked. But in this case, the league gets to claim that they would have if only he'd come to them sooner.
My question is: do we really need to resort to screwing over tiny noncompetitive Caribbean island sides so that the supposedly mighty USA can win by 5 instead of only 3?
Bad show.
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http://www.bigsoccer.com/threads/us-soccer-admits-shady-gulati-garber-collusion-plus-goodbye-to-the-captain.2057672/
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