Goal USA's Ives Galarcep spoke with MLS commissioner Don Garber about a wide range of topics, including MLS expansion, FIFA/CONCACAF corruption, and much more.

MLS commissioner Don Garber took time out from MLS Cup final weekend to speak to Goal USA about a wide range of topics, including MLS expansion, the FIFA and CONCACAF scandals, promotion and relegation, and much more.

Here is Goal USA's one-on-one interview with Garber:

GOAL: The news today about Overtown (in Miami). It sounds like David Beckham has confirmed that it’s happening and they’ve made that move. What do you think of that site for a Miami stadium?

GARBER: The Overtown site’s a good one. It’s closer to downtown. It has more development opportunity around it. It is much closer to public transportation, and most importantly, it’s available.

We were very focused with both the political leadership and the Marlins and others movers and shakers in the city on the former Orange Bowl site, but ultimately some land owners there believed that they’ll have a better opportunity to hold their land rather than sell it to Beckham United, so we move on.

GOAL: As far as Miami goes, you’ve really stood behind that push. Is your backing of it more about supporting David Beckham’s decision to want the team there, or do you personally want a team there?

GARBER: I really believe in Miami. It’s a gateway city. It’s growing as a cultural and business and media hub. It is one of the hottest real estate markets in the country and has a burgeoning and thriving downtown with the Arts District and Wynwood.

I’ve always believed that if we could put the right plan in place, with the owner and facility, that the market would be ripe for us.

GOAL: Miami has a reputation for not being a great sports city for fan support. Is that a challenge that you want to try and conquer, or do you not see it being an issue?

GARBER: It was a great sports city for the Heat, and the Dolphins certainly are a legendary and important team in the market. I see the demographics of the city shifting, and there is a massive influx of people into the town that are coming from soccer-loving countries and it could be that we become the league that they could end up supporting more than others.

GOAL: Is the fact that the league had to leave Miami before a reason for wanting the league to return?

GARBER: The past for us is the past. It’s always smart in business to be mindful of the mistakes that you’ve made, or timing challenges that you’ve had, but we will not go back to any city that we left unless the formula is right.

GOAL: The NYCFC stadium situation seems to be kind of nowhere right now. If you knew then what you know now about that situation would you have made some different decisions?

GARBER: Absolutely not. New York City FC is one of the great expansion team launches in pro sports. They’re averaging almost 30,000 fans a game. They’re selling out matches in Yankee Stadium when they play their rivals or other big-name clubs that come into town. They definitely have gotten a rabid fan base very rapidly. Like we have in many, many other cities, in time we’ll be able to have a soccer stadium from them.

GOAL: Do you get a sense from them that there’s progress?

GARBER: They continue to work hard on it, but as we’ve seen in Miami, it’s hard. We’re coming in as the last major league to come into town in almost every city we’re in so it’s hard to develop large stadium projects in big cities.

GOAL: Manchester City recently sold a stake of their club to a Chinese group, and some of the wording tied to that deal suggested it might free up funds for an NYCFC stadium. How much will that help?

GARBER: The challenge with the NYCFC stadium situation is not about Man City’s commitment to the project. It’s about finding the right place. We are very confident that they’ve got the leadership and the capacity to do what they need to do, assuming they can find the right location, regardless of what new investment has taken place.

GOAL: As far as the 24 team expansion number, why is there that kind of desire to take a pause when you get to that number?

GARBER: You have to have focused plans, and several years ago, when we were only a 16-team league, we set out to be 20, and when we were approaching 20 we set out to manage the timing of the rollout of our next expansion teams. As I’ve said before, we’re going to expand beyond 24. We’ve not yet determined the timing of that, but this will be a larger league.

GOAL: Is the fact that there’s a group like Sacramento, which seems to be ticking every box, something that could speed up your timetable of growth?

GARBER: It’s encouraging to see the progress that they’re making in Sacramento. There are other cities that have great interest that haven’t yet had the secondary league experiences like what’s been going on with the (Sacramento) Republic.

Certainly we believe that if a market can build a club and get the right facility, with committed ownership, that they ought to be able to play at the highest level (in this country). We are very seriously looking at what our plans beyond 24 will be, and what the timing of that will be.

GOAL: When it comes to ownership in MLS, there seems to be more of an appetite for wanting to spend more money. Whether that’s the case across the board remains to be seen. Do you feel good about the current group of owners being able to move forward together?

GARBER: One of the things that has driven the success of MLS over the last 20 years has been the commitment and the connectivity amongst our owners and our system dictates that, but it’s also the type of owners that are coming into the league, and the willingness of the new owners to adapt to the evolution of our league.

I don’t sense any conflict that is any different today than it was in the past. It’s really good that we have owners that have come into the league and have seen success in local markets, and many of them working full-time with their local clubs. I’m confident that dynamic will continue to exist.

GOAL: A lot of the new owners have come in and been aggressive about wanting to spend money and do what it takes to build strong teams. Meanwhile, there is a perception that there are some older teams that aren’t as willing to spend money. Do you see that being an issue for the league?

GARBER: Not really. The LA Galaxy have been big spenders and they’re a founding team in our league. I don’t think that there is an issue with what our spending path is going forward based on market size, or based on whether you’re a new owner or old owner. We are pleased that the dynamic that exists is one based on spending based on where the market will take us, and continue to be strategic about all aspects of our business, including what we spend on players.

To spend beyond your means, and to increase player spending randomly, without having the revenue to support that, is a recipe for disaster. Whether you’re in Major League Soccer or in any other business.

GOAL: As far as TV rights, it’s interesting to see how the international TV rights for the league have expanded. You have more countries broadcasting MLS now. How is that changing the dynamics of the league?

GARBER: This is the first year of widespread MLS media distribution and it’s been a real success story for us. The games are on live on Sky in England, they’re on live on Eurosport. We just launched a deal with Fox Sports in Latin America. We’ve got a deal on TV in China. They’re all paying for those rights and all getting behind it with marketing and promotion. It’s remarkable, some of the shoulder programming that’s being done around the world.

That represents not only an income and revenue opportunity for us, it’s also helping build a fan base and exposing our league to an international community of players who can see how far MLS has come, and might be attracted to live in a particular city or attracted to raising their family and ply their trade in the U.S. or Canada, which are two pretty cool places to live in.

GOAL: Has it surprised how quickly the international interest has come about? Five years ago there wasn’t much in terms of TV deals.

GARBER: Two years ago even. It surprised us a lot. A lot of it has to do with our really dramatic shift in player signing strategy. A lot of big names have come in over the years. The launch of Orlando and New York City, each averaging 30,000, in one case over 30,000 fans a game. Seattle continues to resonate around the world. The regular sellouts in Kansas City and in Salt Lake City, Portland and now San Jose is helping the world take notice.

We still have a lot of work to do to be able to achieve all the goals we have, but where we are today has been representing something that’s been both intriguing and exciting to people who follow the game around the world.

GOAL: Many times you’ve been quoted as saying you want MLS to be a top-five league or Top-10 league in the world, do you still feel like that can happen in the immediate future?

GARBER: Listen, you have to have goals. When we set the goal to be one of the top league sin the world by 2022, the date was very specific to what we thought would be the World Cup coming here. Now the World Cup’s not coming here, and it may come at a later point.

What we need to do to continue to drive towards that is improve the quality of play, increasing the relevance of our clubs, trying to fuel and support the passion of our fans, and doing it in an economically rational way. We are making progress. It’s not like we’re saying we’re going to be the (English) Premier League. We just want to be thought of when people think about the top leagues in the world.

I think we’re beginning to be thought of that way today. The new world league association that was formed, MLS was asked to be a part of it. The rest of the world looks to us as a leader. Perhaps not to the scale or revenues or even the player quality of some of the European leagues, but they certainly look at us as making a lot of progress, being professionally run and having a lot of opportunity for future growth, and doing it all with a strong ethical and business-savvy approach.

GOAL: What’s your relationship with NASL? Do you have a relationship with NASL?

GARBER: We really don’t. We had one in the past. We have less of one now. I think that’s a function of what path they’re determining for themselves, which they need to figure out on their own and need to work through with the federation.

We’re working as hard as we can to build our business and continue to grow our clubs and be more popular, and we don’t pay any attention at all to them. We have a development relationship with the USL and are very close to them. Our clubs are working closely with their affiliates and owner-operated USL teams to develop players.

I maintain that what’s good for the sport at all levels is good for Major League Soccer, and that philosophy of mine has never changed.

GOAL: Is it a mischaracterization to say there’s an adversarial relationship between MLS and the NASL?

GARBER: There’s no adversarial behavior coming from Major League Soccer. If there is coming from the NASL or any of their clubs you could ask them about that. I can assure you that there is nobody at our league office or at our clubs that is spending any time really thinking about them because we’re so focused on what we need to do.

GOAL: As far as the USL relationship goes, it has gone from no real relationship to an almost symbiotic one now. How do you see that relationship growing?

GARBER: I think it’s going to continue to grow because we’re so focused on developing players. We need professional games and professional environments for players signed to developmental contracts, and players coming back from injuries. We approached the NASL about that kind of relationship and they went in a different direction, but we were fortunate to solidify a relationship with the USL.

GOAL: There have been some deals done between MLS teams and NASL teams.

GARBER: What we and the NASL and the USL want is to have more people to be fans of professional soccer. We also want to develop players, so if an MLS team wants to loan a player down to the NASL we don’t just accept that, we support it. Ultimately, that’s going to be good for the player, for the NASL club and the MLS club.

GOAL: The FIFA scandals have grabbed the headlines and it’s kind of hard to be in the business of soccer and not be kind of smeared by it, with people thinking there might be corruption throughout the sport. How does that affect you?

GARBER: I don’t think everybody is smeared by the scandals at FIFA, CONCACAF and CONMEBOL. I believe there are two soccers going on in our world right now. The soccer we’re involved with today is celebrating our 20th season, having our championship and celebrating our success. Then there’s the side story of massive scandal and corruption with some people who have been charged with governing the sport. Nothing could be better for the good guys like us than to finally have all of this bad behavior rooted out.

I applaud the DOJ and I’m proud to be an American when I see that happening, because all of us who are around the game are disgusted by some of the things that have been going on. Most of it at the national team level, and the federation level and the confederation level and the FIFA level. You haven’t been seeing that happen with the professional game, and club football.

Now, We on that side of the business, the clubs and the leagues, believe that we should have more influence at FIFA because we’re producing 90 percent or more of the content and ultimately are doing in it in a very transparent and ethical way.

GOAL: It sounds like you had some sense that maybe you could sense that things weren’t run cleanly. Did you have ever get that sense being around CONCACAF and FIFA?

GARBER: It wasn’t a sense that things weren’t run cleanly, but you just had a sense that there was just largesse. There was so much money being spent, and so much focus on pomp and circumstance. Coming from the NFL, and being in the sports business for more than 30 years, I have no time for that.

There were aspects of what happened at the higher levels of the sport that I kind of just scratched my head of and thinking ‘This would never fly in our country and it’s disappointing to see it.’

GOAL: There’s a perception that American officials should have known what was going on with CONCACAF, and should have seen corruption going on.

GARBER: I don’t know how we could have. I really embraced Jeff Webb as a reformer when he came in, and really believed everything he said, but he lied. That happens in life.

There’s nothing that we could have done other than hope that those people who were put in place as reformers would actually live up to the words they made when they got up there and talked about how they were the new guard, and they weren’t, and we’ve seen more people who are in a similar situation and it’s terribly disappointing.

GOAL: There was a lot of talk earlier in the year about your relationship with Jurgen Klinsmann, and your misunderstanding or disagreement about his perception of the league. How is your relationship with him now.

GARBER: My job is to protect Major League Soccer, our players, our owners and our fans, and if I think anybody is going to go after us I’m going to do everything I can to protect the league. In that situation, that’s what I felt was happening. I’ve had many, many conversations with Jurgen since then. I call him before and after every national team game now. I believe that he is a supporter of our league and a big believer in our league. I accept the fact that he’s going to have certain priorities that are going to be more focused on the short term than my focus on the longer term. That’s understandable. We’ve both accepted that. In my heart I know Jurgen believes in MLS and he wants it to not just thrive, but to continue to be more effective at training, developing and being a great environment to make American players better.

GOAL: It sounds like you have a good relationship with him, better now than maybe back then.

GARBER: It was never bad. I just needed to do what I did at that time. My relationship with Jurgen was never bad, it’s good now, and it wasn’t bad then.

GOAL: There have been rumors suggesting that you wanted Jurgen Klinsmann out, and you were pressing Sunil Gulati to force him out. Is there anything to that?

GARBER: I have never, ever tried to influence anybody at the federation on what their hires would be. It’s not my place. I have never done that at any of my clubs. Any rumors that I was trying to do that are patently false.

GOAL: The 16 years since you took over as MLS commissioner seem to have flown by. Could you have imagined the league being where it is now back when you started?

GARBER: When I came over from the NFL, I thought this was just a great career opportunity. I was 40 years old, I had spent 16 years at the NFL and had an opportunity to run a new professional league in the U.S. so why not? I had very little exposure to the game at that time, but I knew the owners very well and I really believed in all the changes that were going on in the country just having experienced that in my own life.

My first charge was to sell the league-operated clubs, and then find a way to expand the league. The original $5 million invested raised $50 million. When I came in, for several years we couldn’t get people to take over these teams that were being operated just to manage the losses. Here we are today, with an average team value of $157 million. In no way did I expect when I got here or in the first year or two that we’d be where we are today. That we’d have 20 teams, that we’d be averaging 21,500 fans a game, that we’d have 15 and soon to be 20 stadiums, that we’d be looking at expanding to 24 and beyond. That we’d have three great television partners here and two in Canada, that we’d have global television coverage.

Not in my wildest dreams. It would have been unfathomable. Particularly when were going through the whole contraction and restructuring period in 2000 and 2001. We were worrying about survival. So today, that’s no longer even a remote concern.

Now we have to focus on what we need to do to grow our scale, what we need to do to have more fans and be a league of choice for players, administrators and fans who are supporting the game in the U.S. and Canada who might not yet be supporting MLS, and how do we become more important in the sports world overall? How do we become more influential in the major league professional sports world in the U.S. and Canada?

GOAL USA - Let’s talk about Chattanooga. You made some comments and it took on a life of its own. Did that whole episode show you how ingrained the sport is in every part of this country?

GARBER: The lesson there was, as I was sitting up on the stage and I was trying to talk about a team that wasn’t in MLS, the NASL or USL, the first city that popped in my mind was Chattanooga, and frankly I didn’t even know at that time about their championship game with 18,000 fans or 19,000 fans.

When you do this for a living, I’ve done 40 interviews in 36 hours, you’re not going to get everything right. I called the GM and issued an apology. You have to man up when you make mistakes.

As I did think about it after it occurred, it definitely spoke to me that this sport of ours at the professional level can thrive in any city in the U.S. and Canada. Talk about not seeing that. That’s not something that was even anyone’s dream five years ago. So whether it’s in Detroit, or San Diego, or Saint Louis, or Sacramento or San Antonio or Las Vegas or the Carolinas or Tennessee, these are two countries that will support Major League Soccer.

Now the issue is how do we manage this opportunity in a smart and thoughtful and strategic way. When you’re a fledgling it’s easy to take risks because you’ve got nothing to lose. Now that the opportunity is in front of us, you’ve got to be even more careful that you make good decisions because you could very easily take your eye off the ball because you’re enamored with what you see in front of you and sometimes everything isn’t what it appears to be.

GOAL: The answer you gave is a perfect segue to our last subject, promotion and relegation. It’s a topic that’s been in the shadows for years, and the die-hards have always been interested in it. It seems to have taken on more interest, more people would like to see it. Has that surprised you, do you understand why more people want it?

GARBER: Sure, I understand why. Nothing has changed. There’s just more people who have become fans of the game and they look at the rest of the leagues and say why can’t MLS be like the Premier League? We’re not playing in England. We don’t have 100 years of history. We live in a world where we are in the most competitive environment of any sport in any country. We’re not just competing against the other major sports leagues, we’re competing against international leagues and clubs.

The system that’s required to be successful is very different than the system that evolved in the rest of the world. Not everywhere, but in the most powerful soccer countries. They don’t have salary caps, they don’t have union agreements, they don’t have partnerships among their owners where they’re sharing all their revenue.

I can give you a hundred reasons why promotion and relegation would be an enormous challenge for Major League Soccer. There’s no promotion and relegation in the NASL or the USL because the sport is not nearly developed enough.

We don’t hear it as much as I think the insular group of hardcore soccer supporters talk about it.