Sorry I missed yesterday, y’all. I was so numb from the Super Bowl that by the time I remembered to write this daily(ish) post, it was Monday afternoon. Thanks a lot, Maroon 5.

All was not lost, though, because frankly not a lot happened since Friday morning that would get you all furiously clicking away after you reviewed which Super Bowl commercials were better than the others courtesy of the Washington Post.*

LOL, that’s not true, because our neighbors to the south capitulated to MLS and Chicago Fire when they voided that loan deal with Celtic for Andrew Gutman I wrote about the other day.

That’s a bad look for the Fire, MLS, and Nashville, no matter how you spin it. It’s bad for the Fire because there’s no reason MLS should have cared about a loan from a Scottish club to a USL club other than the Fire throwing a damn hissy fit about one of their homegrown players playing for their would-be business partner’s separate and distinct USL club.

The Fire have Gutman’s MLS rights because he played for their academy before entering the USL draft. Rumor was they made him a low-ball offer to play for them which he promptly refused and then signed for Celtic. Apparently EU/English immigration/visa/work permit issues are what’s keeping him away from Hampden Park at the moment, which necessitated this loan to Nashville’s USL team. Celtic probably could have loaned him back to Chicago if they wanted, but again, there’s the issue with a) the red tape of doing business with MLS, and b) the pretty obvious fact that Gutman wanted nothing to do with the Fire. Rather than just be okay that their homegrown player was going to play in a league in the US that isn’t MLS, the Fire GM, Nelson Rodriguez, probably blew up Don Garber’s cell phone until he contacted Nashville to tell them they should nix the deal.

MLS probably had no reason to care about this loan if the Fire hadn’t complained about it. I’m at a loss for why MLS didn’t just tell Rodriguez, in that maybe/maybe not fictional conversation, to just pipe down and let it go. Maybe they were worried about setting a precedent? It’s not like there are any other USL clubs entering MLS any time soon, but I suppose it’s possible that this kind of situation could arise again. It’s still fairly unusual, and how it might negatively affect MLS in any way is lost on me at the moment.

Finally, Nashville looks bad because they had a deal with Celtic and this kid and then reneged on it because MLS and/or Chicago told them to. I understand that it’s good practice to make nice with your partners, which Nashville MLS and Chicago are. But that also exposes one of the myriad problems endemic to MLS’s single-entity structure. These clubs aren’t clubs. They’re all part of the same business. In no other soccer league would this sort of thing occur, because homegrown rights don’t exist anywhere else. Clubs playing in the same league aren’t partners with one another. On no planet could Manchester City object to Nantes loaning a former City academy kid to AFC Wimbledon or whatever. But in MLS it’s fine.

Nashville could have said “No, he’s not even playing in your league.” I don’t know if there would have been any consequences of that. They were too scared to stand up for their kid and find out. However, if there was ever any goodwill between Celtic and MLS, it’s probably dead now. And don’t be surprised if other clubs around the world take notice, either.

OTHER UNITED SOCCER LINKS:

*Chance the Rapper + Backstreet Boys FTW, followed closely by 2 Chainz going “skrrt” while trying to roll up the window of an open convertible in Adam Scott’s face.