Rejected!

MLS Reject $1 Million Offer from Celtic for Shalrie Joseph

Another player from New England is pursued by a big European club and once again the offer is turned down, not by the club or player not wanting to complete the deal (as was the case with the $5 million dollar deal to bring Eddie Johnson to Benfica), instead the deal was squashed by the league itself.

While you could argue ad nauseum to the value of Joseph to his team and league as a whole versus the million dollar offer, as well as the $2 million dollar offer by Charlton for Clint Dempsey, it is hard for me to side with the MLS in their decision. I understand that in order to get the league going and keep it competitive in the early stages it was imperative that the league have a hand in transfers, both within and outside of the league. This worked, note the past tense in that statement. The era of the MLS making decisions regarding players transfers should have left when teams were bought up by individual owners. If I were the owner of an MLS club and an offer was turned down by the league without me having a say in it something would hit the fan.

Certain decisions have to be made by the league as a whole, as they affect all of the member clubs, transfers just shouldn’t be one of those.