Time to grow up, Garber

With all the talk that MLS is planning to move away from single entity and give its teams more control over player acquisition, comes this nugget from Ives Galarcep of the Herald News. Apparently, Metro wants to sign English striker Matt Jansen, who was on trial with the club earlier this year. With enough salary cap space and allocation money, an obvious need to sign the forward, and Jansen's desire to play here, it looks like a logical decision. But no so fast; apparently, Columbus put a claim on Jansen first and is not willing to give up his rights without a fight.

The fact that an MLS club can put a claim on a player who has no interest of joining them (as Jansen has supposedly said), and has no salary cap space for him (according to a Galarcep league source), is completely and utterly ridiculous. In this case, the only thing Columbus' claim does is prevent Metro from signing Jansen; now, if they want to do so, they would have to give the Crew something for his MLS rights. According to Galarcep, they have offered a draft pick, a more than a fair deal for a player who will never wear the Crew yellow. But a free draft pick is not enough for the cow-loving Columbusites; they want Danny O'Rourke, and while we will not rave about the defensive midfielder's prowess, that suggestion is as retarded as the one they made two years ago, asking for Amado Guevara in exchange for Danny Szetela.

"We really wanted [Jansen], but he decided he wanted to play in New York instead," Crew coach Sigi Schmid told the Columbus Dispatch. "That's not the way things go in this league. We said sign with us and at the end of the season we'll trade you to New York, but he didn't want to do that."

That's not the way things go in this league? Hillarious, Sigi. Is this not the league which goes out of its way so players get to play for the team they want to play for? Francisco Palencia, Freddy Adu, Landon Donovan... Do you want more names?

Of course, Metro is not without blame here, as they should have put a claim on Jansen first. And it makes one wonder, if that's how MLS rules are, why they don't put claims on David Beckham, Ronaldo, and every other player in the world who is worth anything, for that matter. Or take another route, as soon as a player's name enters the MLS rumor mill, file a claim. Why not? What's there to stop them? Unless there's another insane MLS rule designed to thwart that. Hell, MLS can make them up on the spot.

But this is not Beckham or Ronaldo. This is Matt Jansen, an oft-injured player who peaked five years ago, a player who is trying to resurrect his career. Can he be a difference for Metro, difference enough to push them over the Crew in the playoff race? He can or he can not; at this point, we have no way of knowing, but it seems highly unlikely that an arrival of one player could mean a big change for Metro's fortunes. What Columbus is doing is preventing a player who wants to play in MLS from playing in MLS. Is that fair competition? One would argue that it's small-minded pettiness.

What makes the situation even more ridiculous is that earlier this year, Metro tried to sign a player they developed through their youth squad, 16-year-old Johnny Exantus, but MLS rejected the move, saying that he would have to go through the draft. Yes, there has been talk that Metro will be allowed to sign him next year, but we'll believe it when we see it.

So a team can't sign it's own youth players, the team can't sign foreign players without wrenches being thrown in. It's time to grow up, MLS. Metro is playing by your silly rules; the club is not trying to break the salary cap to sign Jansen. And even if they wanted to, MLS would never allow for teams to break rules, to go over the cap to sign a player!

Oh, wait...