The uncertain future of the Major Soccer League seemed less so yesterday, as owners and the players union appeared ready to negotiate the non-negotiable.
Commissioner Earl Foreman, who on July 25 presented the players with a series of rollbacks in the form of an ultimatum, said a teleconference among the owners would be held Monday at 3 p.m.
After telling the players that the July 25 offer was not negotiable, Foreman said through MSL spokesman John Griffin yesterday that the owners would discuss a counterproposal presented by players association executive director John Kerr.
Meanwhile, Kerr, who had rejected the owners' proposal Thursday morning before submitting the counteroffer Thursday night, found his support among the rank and file eroding.
Players from four teams -- the Baltimore Blast, Tacoma Stars, Cleveland Crunch and San Diego Sockers -- faxed letters to the league office in Overland Park, Kan., saying they accepted the owners' proposal. Foreman, in Dallas to try to restart that franchise, had verbal assurances from players there that they would accept the owners' rollbacks, Griffin said.
"I'm not surprised," said Kerr from the union's Washington office yesterday. "These players are under tremendous pressure. They were told to accept [the rollbacks] or they would not only lose their jobs, they would lose their industry."
He said his counterproposal was not much different from the owners' demands.
"Isn't it something they can accept?" he asked. "There is is plenty of room to negotiate."
That is exactly what the owners said they would not do when they presented the demands. Foreman and Blast owner Ed Hale, who wrote the proposal, said it must be accepted by Aug. 1 or the league would fold. Foreman's call for a Monday conference call to discuss Kerr's offer appears to contradict that.
Blast player representative Rusty Troy said yesterday that he informed the MSL office the Baltimore players had voted, 13-5, to accept the rollbacks. It was his first opportunity to express the players' feelings, he said. The union had not asked.
"We [the player representatives] did not vote," said Troy. "My vote was not taken, and he [Kerr] never said, 'I need Baltimore's vote.' I was rarely talked to, and they never once asked me how Baltimore felt.
"I just took the vote myself."
Tacoma player representative Neil Megson said he told Will Bray, Kerr's assistant, the players wanted to vote on the offer.
