MAJOR LEAGUE SOCCER

music: Audio Two:
Top Billin' (DJ Quest East Meets West remix)

When the United States won the right to stage the 1994 World Cup, one of the conditions that FIFA laid down was that it had to be followed by a outdoor profesional league. In April 1996, DC United and the now defunct San Jose Clash kicked off the new league with a match in Spartan Stadium, won by San Jose.

MLS has grown from a league with bad skills and no defense to a faster playing, steadily improving league that has produced hemispheric champions and suppled vital players for the National Team.

Unlike its predecessor,the North American Soccer League (NASL), which during the 70s boasted such players as Pele, West Germany's Franz Beckenbauer & former MLS coaches Ray Hudson and Thomas Rongen, the league itself owns all the teams. When transfers of players to and from other countries are negotiated, it is the league that does the negotiating. The reason why this is done as opposed to each team handling them, is because the league is in such shaky financial shape that smaller market teams like Kansas City would NEVER be competitive.

Over the next couple of seasons MLS will be looking to increase the number of teams in the league while maintaining the improvement in the quality of play.

BLACKS IN MAJOR LEAGUE SOCCER

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Blacks from all over the Diaspora have represented in MLS. From the short lived MLS career of South Africa's Shaun Bartlett, to the 2000 appearance of Haiti's Sebastien Vorbe, to the welcome discovery of UNC's Eddie Pope, Blacks from Africa, the Carribbean, South America as well as the US have been featured on MLS teams.

Originally from and Ghana & Grenada respectively,
Freddy Adu & Shalrie Joseph battle for the ball (Foxsportsworld.com)

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Cobi Jones (l) and Ricardo Clark battle in
MLS' Western Conference(FSW)

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