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How would free agency in Major League Soccer actually work?

As I write this post on Saturday morning, just hours remain in the life of Major League Soccer's current collective bargaining agreement with the Major League Soccer Players Union.

As I write this post on Saturday morning, just hours remain in the life of Major League Soccer's current collective bargaining agreement with the Major League Soccer Players Union.

It seems more likely than ever that there will be a work stoppage for the first time in the league's 20-year history. And it seems more likely than ever that said stoppage will come in the form of a strike by the players. Union representatives around the league have made it clear that they are willing to walk away from the field in order to finally get what they want.

Among the men who have spoken up so far: Chicago's Jeff Larentowicz (a Chestnut Hill Academy product), Real Salt Lake's Chris Schuler, Portland's Nat Borchers, and two players from Toronto: Joe Bendik and U.S. national team superstar Michael Bradley.

The league has more money than ever, thanks in no small part to a media rights deal of unprecedented scale. Clubs are spending millions of dollars on Designated Players that are filling stadiums and selling jerseys across North America. On the whole, MLS seems to be in robust health.

The players see that money being spent, but they don't see it being spent evenly. Last year, 20 players made the league minimum of $36,500, and many more made salaries in the mid-five figures. It's one thing to be making a similar salary to most of your fans and neighbors, but it's another when you're making $50,000 and a teammate is making $5 million.

Meanwhile, MLS commissioner Don Garber continues to plead poverty. In December, he claimed at his State of the League roundtable that the league's teams lose a combined $100 million annually.

And at his SuperDraft question-and-answer session, Garber insisted that the league's byzantine salary structure - not just the cap and its many exemptions, but also the sometimes-nebulous mechanisms for bringing American players into the league from abroad - isn't going away. He may claim to want to bring more transparency to how MLS operates, but he and his colleagues know that keeping the reins tight helps keep player salaries down.

The players' chief concern in the bargaining room is the same as it was five years ago: free agency. In short, that means the ability to play for the club of one's own choosing in MLS after a contract expires. That doesn't exist right now, and it never has.

The league, of course, has no interest in that. It may be willing to budge on other financial matters, such as the minimum wage, the salary cap and giving more guaranteed contracts. And the union has non-economic concerns as well.

One such concern is how teams travel. Flights are on commercial airlines and players sit in coach class, though coaches and some big-name stars sometimes get to sit in business class. There are specific (and small) limits on charter flights.

It's a far cry from how the big American pro sports leagues - and even some college football and basketball teams - travel from game to game. And it does have a mental and sometimes physical impact over time.

Another concern is standards for training facilities and team-provided meals. As the Toronto Sun's Kurtis Larson recently wrote, "So, yeah. We're still talking about breakfast 20 seasons in."

Whether or not you're sympathetic is up to you. From where I sit, though, a lot of fans are on the players' side.

This much is certain: free agency is the biggest sticking point, It will be until the players win the right to it - whether in the bargaining room or, potentially, the courtroom. A legal challenge will be difficult, since the players lost their last one in 2002. But that was a long time ago by soccer's standards, and as The Soccer Wire's Elizabeth Cotignola argued this week, MLS' evolution may give the players reason to try again.

Danny Cruz is the Philadelphia Union's player rep in the bargaining room. He is one of two Philadelphia representatives in general players union matters, along with fellow veteran Brian Carroll.

Cruz spoke with reporters this week while the team was training at YSC Sports in Wayne. I also spoke with him separately to try to get some more detailed insight than the time constraints of the Union's practice schedule allowed.

My biggest question was this: What exactly would free agency in MLS look like? It's a concept that plenty of people (outside of league headquarters) agree with, but codifying and executing that concept is a different story.

Can true free agency be accomplished within the single-entity structure? Would an agreement to have free agency come with a baseball-style years-of-service requirement, so that a player would have to play for a specified amount of time in the league before earning the privilege?

Cruz demurred on some of the specifics, in part because the league has refused to engage on the subject in any way. But he was sure of one thing: free agency and the single-entity structure can co-exist.

"We do believe that the free agency we're going to for is going to benefit both parties, otherwise we wouldn't be doing it," he said. "We're not trying to change the way that the league works from a single-entity standpoint. We're just trying to get some form of free agency within the new CBA."

But the odds of that happening are slim.

"We're very far apart," Cruz said. "That's the reality. We disagree with the league on what the future is for it and how we can best get there."

There are some areas where the two sides agree, though. One of them, Cruz said, is the benefit of the Designated Player structure.

"We agree with the DP rule - we think it helps make our league better," he said. "But the bottom line is that they aren't the only guys that make this league, and we believe that the money needs to be spread throughout the teams. Right now, it's very top-heavy, and the guys at the bottom are just that, they're not making what we think they should be making."

Cruz added that "we fundamentally disagree" with the league on the overall wage scale system - and noted that the sentiment extends all the way across the union's membership. It matters a lot that Bradley, whose $6.5 million salary was the third-highest in MLS last year, is one of the union's leading voices.

"They believe in those younger guys they're talking about who make a lot less than they do," Cruz said of the league's top earners. "You see it when we meet on conference calls and things like that. We're as unified as we've ever been."

Cruz was a part of the last CBA negotiation as well, so he would know.

"We're trying to continue to see how this league has grown and where we are now, in today's MLS," he said. "I don't think we're asking for things that are completely outrageous."

The union's attempt to define what is and isn't outrageous will be affected in no small part by the aforementioned new TV and online media rights deal that MLS has with ESPN, Fox and Univision. It will bring $720 million into the league's coffers over the next eight years.

Add to that a forthcoming new deal in Canada - Bell Media's contract expires after the 2016 season - and any revenue that comes in from international broadcast distribution. The players see the potential just as clearly as the fans do.

"It's a lot of money - we just want it to be spread out among everybody," Cruz said. "Those deals are only good for the league. It's continuing to help us grow, and that's how we see it."

Now for the biggest question of all. Will there be a strike?

"We don't want to go into a work stoppage - that's not our goal here," Cruz said. "But we do believe we deserve a fair deal, and we're going to do everything we can as a union to get that deal."

And yes, if it comes down to it, the players will walk off the job.

"We are 100 percent behind a work stoppage in order to get what we believe that we deserve," Cruz said. "We stand firm behind that as a union, and we're going to continue to be unified."

The last MLS CBA was negotiated in 2010, the Philadelphia Union's first season. When I booked my plane tickets to Seattle to cover the team's inaugural game, I didn't know if the game would actually happen. A new deal was struck five days before the season started - and just as importantly, the announcement came mere hours before a deadline the players had set to go on strike.

After the CBA was signed, Danny Califf told the media that he and his teammates were set to walk off the job that night, and would have refused to board the plane to Seattle.

I wouldn't be surprised if this time around, CBA negotiations go down even closer to the wire. Indeed, I wouldn't be surprised if that wire is crossed without a deal in place.

And if the Union were playing in Seattle to open this year, I would be very hesitant to book plane tickets.