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Whitecaps-Camilo saga appears close to a resolution, but not a good one for the club

Andrew Bucholtz

While one of Canada's Major League Soccer teams is bringing in top talent, another one appears set to lose perhaps their best player. Toronto FC followed through on last week's reports by officially adding big-name players Jermaine Defoe and Michael Bradley, but the Vancouver Whitecaps seem set to lose top striker Camilo Sanvezzo. Camilo, the Brazilian striker who led MLS with 22 goals last season, has been training with Mexican side Queretaro over the last few weeks despite the Whitecaps holding a club option for his rights, and ESPN Deportes' Ana Patricia Fernández reported on Twitter Wednesday that a deal has been struck that will allow him to officially join the Mexican team. Marc Weber of The Provincewrites that the fee is reportedly $1.5 million, of which $1 million would go to the Whitecaps and the remaining $500,000 would go to MLS. However, while that's a considerable sum of cash, the Whitecaps are still losing a top player, and he won't be easy to replace. His departure also raises major questions about how enforceable MLS contracts are.

Let's start with those contractual issues. Mike Jarosi, an attorney who represents some professional soccer players, wrote on his website that the Camilo decision may empower other players to try and force their way out of MLS contracts:

The saga was instigated by the player, who simply went to Mexico and declared that he would play for Queretaro — the terms of his contract with MLS notwithstanding. MLS contracts contain unilateral option clauses, with the league holding the option. The world governing body of soccer, FIFA, does not permit unilateral options. Camilo, through his agent, declared his MLS contract void. Vancouver and MLS – initially — cried foul.

Recent reports seem to indicate that the affair will end with Queretaro paying MLS a transfer fee for the rights to Camilo, a result where all three parties – at least passively — acknowledge the contractual rights of MLS. The Vancouver club and MLS would share, after taxes, a modest fistful of cash in exchange for washing their hands of a stubborn stain.

I will submit, however, that this resolution would set bad precedent for MLS. While the folks at league headquarters in New York may pat themselves on the back for their problem-solving skills while simultaneously turning a small profit, they will, at the same time, be providing high-profile carte blanche to the next player who finds himself unhappy with his contract to simply flee, with reward and without repercussion.

And when the system of contracts breaks down, everyone loses.

Jarosi expanded on that in an interview with Weber

“You let this happen and you’re giving someone else a roadmap to do the same thing,” said Mike Jarosi, a Columbus-based sports lawyer and agent with a focus on MLS players.

“There’s going to be another Camilo, and an agent that says, ‘Screw the contract, we’re just going to go AWOL and make a mess,’ and this is the new modus operandi for these non-North American agents.” ...

So, why didn’t anyone put their foot down?

Despite the speculation, Jarosi doesn’t believe it was because MLS rules are on shaky ground; that the league was fearful of losing a precedent-setting case.

“FIFA’s come out and said they defer to U.S. labour law,” Jarosi said, noting that unilateral options are part of the collective bargaining agreement between MLS and the players union.

“I just think someone at whatever level [in MLS] said, ‘You know what? Let’s wash our hands of this and make a little money and everybody moves on.’

“And that’s not an irrational analysis, but I think it’s a shortsighted analysis. And you’re really giving people in Vancouver the short end of the stick.”

What's particularly disappointing for Vancouver fans is that Camilo was under contract for a very reasonable price, rumoured to be between $250,000 and $300,000 per year. That's well below most of MLS' top-paid players, and Camilo outscored them all last year. Finding a replacement for his production at that price or anything close will be all but impossible, which is why Tyler Green >writes that the team will likely take the money and invest a large percentage of it in their residency program. Still, that's not going to help the team on the field any time soon, and that will be a letdown for Whitecaps' fans.

One interesting cross-sport parallel here is to the situation that came up between Chris Williams and the CFL's Hamilton Tiger-Cats last year, which also was about a club option. Williams argued that the club violated the league's collective bargaining agreement by not offering him a minimum-length contract and took them to arbitration. An arbitrator found a CBA violation, but elected not to void his contract, which led Williams to appeal to a judge, who overruled the arbitrator. In that case, though, the league and the team still refused to release him, and the situation didn't end until a settlement was reached in October, allowing Williams to jump to the NFL. That situation suggested that a harder line doesn't necessarily work, either; Williams never played for the Tiger-Cats during the dispute, so the only gain for the team (and the league) was in proving that they'd fight at least a bit to protect their contracts, which likely wasn't really worth all the money they spent doing so. (The hard line also worked in preventing Williams from playing in the NFL until a deal was reached, but only because the NFL respects CFL contracts; that's not the case with the Mexican league and MLS, apparently.)

An element that shows up in both cases, though, and one that's worth considering for officials in any sports league, is that of market value. Both Williams and Camilo were substantially underpaid relative to what other players of their skill level (or similar skill levels) were making. In a multi-league system, such as world soccer (or even the CFL and the NFL), that's problematic; if you don't pay them, someone else will. That even can cause problems in a single top league, as we frequently see NFL players holding out in pursuit of richer contracts. While the CFL doesn't have the financial resources to compete with the NFL in open contract negotiations, though (part of the case for the league as a developmental one), MLS and its teams can certainly compete with Mexican squads and even with some European squads for players, as shown through acquisitions like that of Clint Dempsey last year and those of Defoe and Bradley this week. Camilo's salary-cap number was certainly useful for the Whitecaps, but if they'd stepped up and offered him a much more lucrative multi-year contract closer to his actual market value after his MLS-leading 2013 campaign, they might still have him, and this whole situation could have been avoided. Instead, Queretaro stepped in flashing big bucks, and that's a result that's concerning for both the Whitecaps and MLS.