Drunk Monopoly: A socialist critique of the 2015 LA Galaxy

The history of all hitherto existing soccer is the history of class struggle. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Europe where teams like Barcelona get to use their disproportionate TV revenue to dominate their leagues, buying the best players in the world or genetically engineering them in their shady academies where UN inspectors are regularly locked out, all while teams like Rayo Vallecano are so desperate for money that they fall prey to fly by night con artists seeking investments in Nigerian real-estate ventures, or more embarrassing yet, Oklahoma City FC.

That, in a nutshell, is European soccer. The rich get richer and the poor are literally relegated to a life of secondary existence.

I have long been a proponent of single entity, for its philosophies are deeply rooted in those of Karl Marx. In fact, in MLS, money has been trivialized to a point that at any given time, no one has any idea whose money is whose, how much of it they have, and how much they are allowed to spend. It's like playing Monopoly when you're too drunk to count. Don't believe me?

Can you explain concepts like "allocation money" and "targeted allocation money" in two sentences or less? Chances are, you can't, and if you can, the rules have failed to meet their purpose.

Early on in the season, the forces of Capital conspired to try and change the importance of money in this league. Certain owners sat in their ivory towers, stroking their beards and wondering just how many jerseys they could sell by bringing in the likes of Pirlo, Lampard, Villa, Gerrard, Kaka etc.

In the face of such a mutiny, Chairman Garber had no choice but to allow such an invasion to take place: Ad dollars were bought and jerseys were pressed and sold by the bushel. But Garber is a clever man and knew that no matter how much money poured in, it had no power to corrupt the league. He placed his faith in single entity and he was rewarded in kind.

These owners, try as they might, will never be able to change the simple fact that money has no value or relevance in this league. For proof of this, look no further than the final standings in the Supporters Shield race. The New York Red Bulls won the shield with the lowest salary budget in the league, barely edging out FC Dallas on goal differential, who happened to have the second lowest. Meanwhile, two of the five biggest spending clubs missed the playoffs and two of the three that did crashed out before ever getting to play a home game.

Since this is an LA Galaxy blog, I will end with this. The LA Galaxy's folly in 2015 was the mistaken belief that money would carry them through. You see, Robbie Keane and Landon Donovan were good players that just happened to make a lot of money, and they won trophies together because of the former, not the latter. But this point was lost on many across the league, creating a fools gold rush for foreign talent. Sadly, even the Galaxy got caught up in it.

They let Marcelo Sarvas walk because Gerrard was on the way. They pushed Zardes to the wing because dos Santos was going to save the day. They let Jaime Penedo walk because... well, nobody has really figured that one out yet.

The LA Galaxy counted on big dollar signings to save them instead of trusting in their developmental pipeline. Instead of handing the keys to Kenney Walker or Andre Auras, they went out and bought Steven Gerrard and Mika Vayrynen. They opted to buy Giovani dos Santos instead of giving guys like Jose Villarreal or Raul Mendiola a shot.

The LA Galaxy lost sight of the fact that, in drunk Monopoly, nobody really has a monopoly.