by Paul Kennedy @pkedit, May 12, 2015

Bruce Arena

Sebastian Lletget

Sacha Kljestan

MLS has unveiled its new rules for the signing of players from outside the league, and, for one, isn't happy. In the aftermath of having to pay New England $50,000 in order to signfrom West Ham United, the outspoken LA Galaxy head coach and general manager told the club's Web site the league's discovery rules were "a blackmail job."MLS's Discovery Process is intended to keep players seeking to enter MLS from outside the league from negotiating with every club and driving up their asking price. Rights to a player are determined by the order in which they have filed a Discover claim.Previously, teams could file claims on 12 players. Now, they can file claims on seven players -- a move intended to cut down on the filing of frivolous claims -- but they may add or remove players on the list at any time. The mechanisms for settling competing claims have been codified.Now, the team that holds the priority to a player has the option of making a reasonable offer for the player or receive $50,000 in allocation money as compensation if another team comes forward with an offer.Arena's beef is that teams have used the Discovery Process to block other teams with a real interest in signing a player from completing the deal by forcing compensation (usually settled in the form of draft picks) to the team that held his rights.The Galaxy had brought Lletget into preseason camp in Ireland but had to pay New England $50,000, per the new Discovery rules, because the Revs put in a claim for him ahead of the Galaxy. "All that was a blackmail job," he said, "that's all it is.”Arena blasted the old Discovery system as being a way for teams to block moves a competing team wanted to make. “Now it just becomes a sped-up blackmail job," he said. "Now you get the player, but eventually, you have to pay money for it.”But Arena's harshest criticism of the league comes when he was asked how he'd change the system to make it more equitable.His response: "When you get enough people that understand how to do these things in real life then eventually you'll convince people. We should, in my view, be able to sign players that are outside the league. You discover them, you sign them. It shouldn't be an issue."Last year, Arena was fined $20,000 for his criticism of MLS's player signing structure after the Galaxy was unable to finalize a deal for telling the Washington Post, “They are children, and there have to be adults in the process, and we didn’t have enough of them."