After marathon sessions on CBA negotiaions throughout the night, MLS and the MLS Players Union is “scheduled to resume later this morning,” according to a tweet from ESPN’s Jeff Carlisle. He also tweeted, “Chicago Fire spokesman tells they are still planning to fly to LA this AM.”
Carlisle has been all over the CBA proceedings along with a few other reports as they are currently outside the Washington DC offices where proceedings are being held. Here are his tweets on the previous news.
Chicago Fire spokesman tells they are still planning to fly to LA this AM. #mlscba
— Jeff Carlisle (@JeffreyCarlisle) March 4, 2015
Source tells me talks scheduled to resume "later this morning." #mlscba #atleasttheyrestilltalking
— Jeff Carlisle (@JeffreyCarlisle) March 4, 2015
This is a better sign that a deal will get done. Yesterday, everything went topsy-turvy in DC. At some points, there was hope a deal would get done to there’s definitely going to be a players strike to somewhere in the middle. At first, MLS owners wouldn’t discuss free agency. Then they relented and offered free agency to players who are 32 and older and who have played on their team for 10 years. The laughable deal which would have only granted Houston Dynamo’s Brad Davis free agency was instantly turned down and caused the outrage of the public.
After things looked dire, a new suggestion for free agency is now the current offer that has been made public is free agency to players who are 28 and older and played 8 years in MLS. This all happened over the past 24 hours and this is the closest the two sides have gotten to. While we don’t know all the details, that plus the fact that teams are traveling to games shows that there’s still some hope. This is going to be a tense couple of days and will surely come down to the wire.
