CIENFUEGOS VERSION OF THIS POST: The MLSPU's public relations have been even more incompetent than anyone could have expected.
Bill went off on Michael Arace's article on the imminent unicorn fight, and I didn't agree with his interpretation completely. I commented on his post. You should read his post, and enjoy the comments afterward.
Anyway, here's what I considered the most relevant parts of Arace's opinion piece.
And then it hit me, like a diamond bullet to the brain. I have no idea whether this is true or not.
Didn't stop me from commenting on Bill's thread, of course. If I had to research every teeny little thing I've ever written on this site, I'd have never broken the story that the US was going to hire Juergen Klinsmann.
Fortunately, I thought to myself, there's a very easy way to see whether this was what the players want. After all, MLSPU has a website. It would of course be the simplest of matters to go to this site, and see what the players have to say, in their own collective words.
Boy – that's weird. The news feed on the home page connects to nothing but MLSnet articles.
"But Dan," you say, "that's just the home page. They must go into detail in other pages on the site."
Actually, no, what you're saying is "Dan, get to the point. The union website doesn't present the union's point of view in the CBA, and you're going to make about, what, seventeen paragraphs of value judgments on the union's intelligence based on that."
…tough crowd. Seriously, though. This is what it says under "About the Union."
There's also a link to the expired CBA, chosen articles from outside MLSnet (the last of which is nearly a year old) (but gotta say, this piece from Frank dell'Appa back from December 2008 turned out to be prophetic), and a page for union press releases.
Which would be inadequate enough if it was simply what was doled out to us via reporters weeks ago. Instead, the latest press release on the site is from August 2008. And it's about the SuperLiga Final bonuses being split evenly, which even at the time was about a four on the All-Bran scale.
You can also register your youth club in their network. I don't know what the hell that's supposed to be about, either.
To sum up – insanely enough, the only point of view on the current CBA negotiations presented by the union on their own site is a link to a management statement.
There are also the obligatory links and "Contact Us" pages. I sent an e-mail, asking:
"Dear Info,
Why the Christ can't you get the word out on your own CBA negotiations on your own website? Why do I have to guess whether reporters are interpreting your demands correctly? Why do you even have a website if you're not going to use it?
Love,
Dan"
I eagerly await a response.
According to Jamie Trecker – and I know how much comedy has begun with those four words – the person responsible for this mess is a public relations consultant by the name of Neil Hare. I'm guessing that refers to this Neil Hare. Through the magic of his contacts page, I sent him the following question.
"Dear Mr. Hare,
According to Jamie Trecker, you are the person in charge of public relations for the MLS Players Union. If this is not the case, I deeply apologize.
If this is the case, then why the Christ are you letting poor Chris Tierney and Will Hesmer get their asses beaten up and down the Internet soccer community? No one's asking you to stop Juan Pablo Angel, so why are they doing public relations?
Love,
Dan"
Again, I eagerly wait a response.
I've taken what I consider to be an inordinate amount of crap over the past couple of months for being a knee-jerk pro-establishment MLS shill. In fact, all I was doing was pointing out, repeatedly, how monumentally screwed the players were. If anything, I underestimated the situation. Case closed. Case drank.
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