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Didier Drogba Debacle Highlights Rough MLS Offseason: TWC

Didier Drogba's MLS contract doesn't expire until the end of the 2016 season. But the opportunity to return (again) and become an assistant coach at Chelsea has MLS on the verge of its seemingly annual high-profile player controversy. If this one ends in Chelsea's favour, MLS could be left reeling for the entire 2016 season and possibly beyond.

In many ways, the summer of 2015 was a fruitful one for Major League Soccer.

Average attendances from Week 20 to Week 28 eclipsed the 22,000 mark, according to Total MLS figures. Due to injury, neither of Commissioner Don Garber’s two disgusting All-Star Game roster selections (Frank Lampard and Steven Gerrard, neither of whom had played a single minute in MLS before being named All-Stars) took the field. Instead, injury fill-ins like Dax McCarty and Ethan Finlay got their well-deserved chance to beat Tottenham Hotspur in a refreshingly crowded Dicks Sporting Goods Park. The dream start that Sebastian Giovinco had gotten off to in the league in March was being matched, if not bettered, by two of the league’s biggest mid-season signings in Giovani Dos Santos and Didier Drogba.

Didier Drogba Debacle Highlights Rough MLS Offseason: TWC

Flash forward five months and the positively warm midsummer breeze has been replaced by a bitterly cold winter gale. As was the case in the summer, Drogba remains at the center of it all. If reports of him leaving the Montreal Impact not even six months after signing for them become reality, MLS’ head offices in New York will look like they got hit by a hurricane.

Did I say “a” hurricane?

I meant to say “The” Hurricane, courtesy of White Goodman from Dodgeball, as seen in the GIF of the Week:

In what has already been a painful offseason for Major League Soccer, what appears to be an increasingly inevitable conclusion to the Didier Drogba debacle could be the knockout blow. If Drogba decides to return to Chelsea as an assistant coach, I wouldn’t be surprised if MLS history buffs start calling this the worst offseason in league history.

So why has it been so bad?

1. Cross-Border Shopping

Liga MX has a bit of a history poaching talent from MLS (see Bornstein, Jonathan and Sanvezzo, Camilo). Chivas USA was designed as C.D. Guadalajara’s vegetable garden, where Jorge Vergara could pick out all the ripe carrots and fill the holes he left with dried-up cow manure.

But this offseason the talent drain has widened to the point where the problem is being dubbed the Mexican exodus.

Omar Gonzalez. Juninho. Jorge Villafana. Eric Avila. Luis Gil. Luis Silva. That’s six players: none of whom are older than 28, and all of whom were starters in MLS.

That’s also over 65,000 MLS minutes, 79 goals, 84 assists, and seven MLS Cup wins, but who’s counting?

The Latino factor certainly wouldn’t have diminished any of these six’s desires to go to Mexico. The money would have helped Liga MX’s campaign efforts for the out-of-contracts significantly. But with all except for Avila (he’s dabbled in Mexico before, has a Chivas connection, and was only ever on loan with Orlando City), my outsider perspective views Major League Soccer on the losing end of battles they were very well willing to fight.

Having admired Juninho for years I take his loss the hardest. But seeing Omar Gonzalez, who was the face of the USMNT contingent not named Donovan, Dempsey, Bradley, or Altidore playing in MLS, finally leave should be excruciating considering all the effort that went in to keep him. Not to mention the *cough* retention funds *cough* rules changes *cough* TAM *cough* that were also involved.

Just remember that some 35-year-old who says he’s Steven Gerrard is filling one of the DP slots that Omar used to occupy.

On that note…

2. In comes ________

Keep in mind that I am the liker of all things off the field. My soccer-watching is brutally low, and my ability to follow the tactics and evaluate the skill of players is of a similar caliber.

I have never seen Jordan Morris kick a ball.

I will tell you right now that he is not going to be the Messi-level starlet that North American soccer execs are waiting to ride to global prominence.

He could be good. He could be very good. Heck, he could even justify receiving the fattest Homegrown Player contract in MLS history IF he accepts it. But he’s already 21 and hasn’t played a game of professional soccer, which puts him behind every top young soccer player outside of the United States and Canada.

Was he smart to stay in school?  I’ll answer that for you with a tweet from Freddy Adu, who graduated high school with straight A’s three years early but dropped his education to earn big bucks as a pro. It didn’t work as planned, to say the least:

Regardless of Morris’ education choices, he has by far garnered the most attention out of league targets amidst a tanking SuperDraft and a foreign market that, though still early, appears barren.

To see MLS hang their hats on Simon Dawkins, who had previously played on loan with San Jose in 2012 and had most recently been playing in the English second-tier, thus far this offseason was bad enough.

To see MLS hang their hats on Simon Dawkins on a DP contract is cringe-inducing.

Which brings me to point 3:

3. “Commitment”

It’s the title of the autobiography that Didier Drogba put out in November. It’s also something he effervesces: commitment to getting Cote D’Ivoire out of a war-torn state, commitment to training to become the most physically imposing forward in the world since the start of the 2000’s, and commitment to the Chelsea Football Club.

This offseason is when we find out if he has any towards the Montreal Impact or to Major League Soccer.

Reports out of France earlier in the New Year suggested that Drogba has informed the Montreal Impact he wanted out of his contract (which runs until the end of the 2016 season) so that he could become an assistant coach at Chelsea. With Jose Mourinho sacked and the club nowhere close to the Champions League qualification places, Chelsea’s only hope of gaining entry into next year’s competition is winning it this time around.

Conveniently, Drogba, who scored the winning penalty for Chelsea in the 2012 Champions League Final, could make himself available for the first leg of Chelsea’s Round of 16 match with PSG on February 16 IF he leaves Montreal.

If it seems like it was mere days ago that soccer journalists around North America were tipping Drogba as MLS’ Newcomer of the Year (he finished second in that ballot despite arriving mid-season), that’s because it was. Drogba was like a shock from a defibrillator to the heart of a Montreal Impact franchise that save for a shock CONCACAF Champions League Final appearance seemed to be heading in the same direction as a Chicago, Colorado, or Philadelphia.

If he leaves now he’ll essentially be pulling the plug, and the Impact could very likely be left reeling.

On an Instagram post announcing his departure from Chelsea, Drogba stated he needed to leave in order to get more playing time than what he got in his return season. According to WhoScored, he didn’t get very far with that goal.

IF Drogba retires from/transfers out of/quits on MLS, the “Drogba Debacle” of 2016 will slot in nicely with 2015’s “Frankie Fiasco” and 2014’s “Camilo Conundrum” as MLS’ annual getting-taken-for-a-ride-by-the-stars-it-overvalues-yet-relies-on-so-heavily-to-attract-interest moment.

Vic Rauter of TSN is a legendary curling commentator. Set him up to commentate a soccer match and he won’t even be half as good. Put him on Twitter… he sounds robotic… rife with incomplete sentences… ellipses galore. But a while back he had the best analysis of the Drogba situation I could find on the Internet:

The last time I wrote here I said that there were only three humans on the planet that could call the masses “their people” and get away with it: Oprah Winfrey, Pope Francis, and Drogba. I stand by that statement.

Nobody, not even Drogba, should be able to get away with making MLS and its fans their cheap date in 2016. According to reports, the league is trying hard to stop it from happening and are holding back the Impact, who are surprisingly willing to see Drogba off.

But as much as MLS can try, and as much as they have Drogba under contract for another year, the decision is Drogba’s to make. In trying to put the uncertainty to bed, he only made it more clear that the possibility of him leaving is very real:

It’s obvious from his 11 goals in 11 appearances haul in MLS regular season play that he can still kick a ball at 37 years of age. A job at Chelsea would not just be a reason for him to retire. It would be THE reason.

If the Didier Drogba debacle ends in a second London return for the living legend, it will all but assure one of the worst offseasons in league history and will make the goal of attracting big names for the long-term in 2016 a tall order.

That’s a promise I can commit to making.

 

Main image: Clive Mason, Getty Images

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