Major League Soccer announced a change to its opposition in pursuing Solidarity Payments and Training Compensation on Thursday, and the decision will likely reverberate through soccer in the United States for quite some time.
The Seattle Sounders could feel those ripples more than most.
For those who haven’t been following, Solidarity Payments and Training Compensation are a FIFA-inspired mandate (Statutes 19 and 20) designed to reward youth academies who help develop young players into professionals. In 1995, “free agency” came to world soccer, which meant that teams could no longer extract transfer fees for players when they were out of contract.