MLS in Motown?

Two NBA owners are forming an investment group to bring an MLS team to Detroit and the league is interested.

Commissioner Don Garber was to have met yesterday with Detroit Pistons owner Tom Gores and Cleveland Cavaliers owner Dan Gilber.  Garber is on record as supporting an expansion to 28 teams from the current 22.

The story is on the MLS website.

Analysis of the U.S. Women's Pay Disparity Claim

In today's New York Times Andrew Das provides an objective and very thorough look at the dispute between the U.S. Women's National Team and U.S. Soccer over the difference in compensation between the women's and men's national team.  Worth reading to understand the issues, but as the headline says, "It's complicated."

Ribery's "Traumtor" Wins It For Bayern

I was switching channels tonight and stumbled upon the FC Bayern - Eintracht Frankfurt match that was played last weekend  - just in time to watch one of the most spectacular goals I have ever seen.

In the 20th minute Mario Goetze (you remember him, had that nice shot against Argentina that won the World Cup in 2014) took a shot from just outside the 18.  Eintracht keeper Lukas Hradecky made a nice kick save with his left foot, only to see the rebound loop towards Franck Ribery, who went airborne and made a perfect bicycle kick over Hradecky for the game's only goal.

The Bundesliga website said, "Ribery Traumtor Führt Bayern Zum Sieg" (Ribery Dream Goal Leads Bayern to the Victory."  

Watch a video of the goal here. 

From The Pitch To The Court House: U.S. Women and Former Union Coach

Good thing Coach P is a lawyer in his day job because there's more soccer news coming from the court house than the soccer pitch these days.

The big story is the complaint filed with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) by five members of the World Cup champion U.S. Women's team, including Carli Lloyd, accusing U.S. Soccer of wage discrimination.  This is only two months after U.S. Soccer sued the women's team asking a court to declare that the collective bargaining agreement did not expire until 2016.  This story was in Coach P'S Soccer Blog on February 5.

Not surprisingly, according Michael Powell's column in the New York Times, U.S. Soccer said it was disappointed in the action by Lloyd, Hope Solo, Alex Morgan, Becky Sauerbrunn and Alex Morgan.  (You won't find the news release or anything else about the EEOC complaint on the U.S. Soccer home page.)   In the main Times article on the complaint, Andrew Das quotes U.S. Soccer flack Neil Buethe, as calling some of the revenue figures in the players’ complaint “inaccurate, misleading or both.”  But Das reports Solo saying the men’s players “get paid more to just show up than we get paid to win major championships.”

The Boston Globe printed a copy of the complaint itself.  Shirley Leung's column in the Globe takes a look at the numbers cited and also contains a chart showing a state-by-state comparison of male versus female compensation. 

While we're talking about legal matters, let's not forget the lawsuit by former Philadelphia Union coach Piotr Nowak, who claimed the team breached his contract when it fired him back in June 2012.  Based on the arbitration clause in the contract, the dispute was submitted to an arbitrator who ruled in favor of the team in April 2015.  A final award entered in November 2015 order Nowak to pay the Union's legal expenses and costs.  The former coach moved to vacate the award.  As reported by Tim McCarthy in the Philadelphia Bar Association publication Upon Further Review, the federal district court in Philadelphia recently upheld the arbitrator's decision.