MLS Commissioner, Don Garber (above), visited San Francisco last week. The Beautiful Blog sat down with him for chat.

BB: MLS has been successful in developing its product through the language of business but how successful has it been developing the culture of soccer and what challenges lie ahead to maintain momentum in that vein?

DG: The biggest driver of the league’s recent success is the development of a soccer culture driven by the passion of supporters. They are the engine driving major league soccer today. Five years ago we might have had a handful of clubs, DC (United) was one of them that had supporters, thousands of people who are really passionate about the game creating an environment that gives us a distinction that is separate from all the other pro-sports experiences here. Now you have those supporters everywhere. Americans are learning what it is like to truly be fans and celebrate in their stadiums like they do in South America and Europe. That has been key to the development of the league for sure. It provides us with an opportunity to have a more unique experience to sell to sponsors and broadcasters and to even convince players that they can come into the league and have fans that really care. I bumped into Robbie Keane in LA recently and I asked him, how is it going for you? and he said it was amazing. If people in the UK really understood what was happening in a lot of markets, what’s happening in Seattle, or Kansas City or Philadelphia, they would be surprised. Most people abroad don’t really believe that Americans can get soccer but we are getting it, it is part of a movement, the national team getting better, the league growing, more television coverage, more support, more cultural acceptance. We don’t have that many people now who are soccer bashers like when I came in ten years ago. They might not love it but they can’t deny it is happening when Fox and Telemundo spent over a billion dollars for World Cup rights, you can’t deny that soccer is here. Organic growth is the most important growth that you can have, you can try to manufacture cultural relevance but you’ll never win that way, you’ve got to have it kind of bubble up in an organic way and that is happening.

BB: Seventeen seasons of MLS, twelve under Don Garber – what have you learned?

DG: Americans and Canadians love the game but we have to deliver the game that they want to be experiencing, that means the right stadium environments, the right marketing and promotion, the right broadcast quality, the right scheduling, it means the right quality of play on the field. When I first came in, I thought , this is the world’s game, 80 million kids play, let’s turn on the lights and everybody will be an MLS fan. I realized that there were some really sophisticated people that are connected with the game and they are not going to follow us just because we are playing with a round ball on a big piece of grass, we’ve got to really understand and respect their knowledge and their experiences and deliver a product quality in an environment that they can connect to.

BB: The US Federation’s decision to introduce the all-year round season for the top boys teams, there is a debate over parents and kids having to choose either high school sports or the MLS academies.

DG: I played high school sports, my son played high school sports…I have mixed feelings about what it means culturally but when I am thinking about it as the Commissioner of Major League Soccer there is no question that this is the right thing to do. If we are going to have a national team that can compete with England, Brazil, Germany, Argentina and Spain, we have to have a proper development program primarily driven by our MLS clubs with academies that are training players almost full-time and giving them the right environments and programs to get better. If we don’t do that we will never be able to truly compete with the best countries in the world because that is what they are doing, and they also have kids who are growing up with a soccer ball in their hands when they are two, whereas we have kids growing up with lots of different balls in their hands, and hopefully they are not using their hands by playing our sport.

BB: So the goal is to make MLS one of the top leagues in the world.

DG: We set that goal when we were bidding for the World Cup and for some strange reason we lost. The World Cup will be in Qatar in 2022 but when we set that goal as part of our World Cup bidding process, we didn’t want to change it just because we lost, we thought that would be quintessentially un-American, it would be weak, we wanted to say, be bold and go forward with this plan and be one of the best leagues in the world, knowing that we had to improve the quality of play, ensure that we had the right marketing and promotion, and very importantly be sure that we had the right economic system because it wasn’t just about having a handful of really popular clubs but to ensure that our whole league would be viable economically.

BB: The Quakes may be breaking ground on their new stadium, how significant will that be for soccer fans in the Bay Area?

It is so incredibly important to have the right environment, the right grounds for fans and players, the media and other influences to be able to connect with. You take for granted that the 49ers will be playing in a nice stadium, they might get a better stadium but nobody doubts that they are going to have their own stadium…soccer is no different, if we are going to achieve our goals we have to have the right facilities. Earthquakes having their own facility, hopefully sometime soon, will be transformational.

BB: What would you like your legacy to be after you are done with being Commissioner of MLS?

DG: It’s a good question, no one has ever asked me that question before, so I’ll have to think about that on the fly, ultimately it is to be able to walk away from this with a professional Division One soccer league that matters in the US and Canada, so that the league will no longer have to question as to why it is not as good as the European leagues, or why is it that it is not having the television ratings that other pro-sports have, all of those things will be addressed, it matters, it’s got the right partners, it’s got the right players, and the right teams and facilities and America is proud of it.

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