Clementson also says Lassiter, who is 30 years old, an upper-middle-class father, husband and homeowner, has put money aside so he could take this stand. "Basically," Clementson says, "they've made him an offer of $130,000 and said 'Take it or leave it.' " He fails to point out, until he's reminded, that Lassiter is already under contract. "Well, this league has a history of re-structuring existing contracts," Clementson says.

	THE FIRST XI
	Best names rumored to be heading to MetroStars since 1996: 11. Dejan Savicevic (1999) 10. Pele (to coach, 1996) 9. Gheorge Hagi (1997) 8. Tino Asprilla (1996-99) 7. Fredy Rincon (1996-97) 6. Diego Maradona (1997) 5. Lothar Matthaeus (2000; Hey, we'll believe it when he shows up) 4. Giuseppe Bergomi (1998-99) 3. George Weah (1996-2000) 2. Paul Gascoigne (2000) 1. Roberto Baggio (1996-2000)

From the MLS offices, they're whispering that Lassiter's holdout is just part of a much larger Clementson scheme. Basically, league officials suspect Clementson is using Lassiter so he can gain ammunition for the MLS Players Association's (funded by the NFLPA) anti-trust lawsuit against the league, now scheduled for Sept. 18. Furthermore, the league suggests that Clementson is paying Lassiter during his holdout. "Do you think Roy Lassiter can really afford to cancel a year's pay?" one league offical asked rhetorically. "Corey's looking to make a name for himself. He wants to go down as the man who destroyed the single-entity structure of MLS."

Clementson doesn't deny his distaste for single-entity. Among other things, he says the $260,000 maximum player salary and the $1.7 million team salary cap are imaginary. "I could prove that in court today," he says. And that the league's structure is keeping a lot of potential investors out of the sport. "There are some wealthy people who'd like to own soccer teams," he says, "but are scared away by single-entity."

Clementson has many valid points, but it's just stuff every MLS fan already knows. No one with a clue ever thought the top players like Carlos Valderrama and Marco Etcheverry were making $250,000, or that the '97 MetroStars -- with Roberto Donadoni, Tab Ramos, Tony Meola, Branco and Antony De Avila -- were making a combined $1.7 million. As an MLS fan, you just dismissed it and played along, because you knew MLS was feeling its way around. Trying to figure out the right formula.

Well, guess what? The investors are still trying to figure it out, and it's simply too soon in MLS history for the players to stage an uprising. Sure, the league's structure is more maddening and confusing than ever, and there's always a sense that MLS is making up the rules as it goes along, but let's keep in mind, the players bought into the concept four years ago because they were willing to be part of a startup operation.

Sure, they figured it out pretty quickly that single-entity was harsh -- especially the part about negotiating contracts with the league office and not your team -- but they've also got to see that the league isn't exactly packing in the fans. If there were tangible signs of success out there, that would be a different story. Right now, the players have to forget what the NFLPA is saying, look around, see the empty seats, and think they're lucky to have a job as a pro soccer player in the United States.

A lawsuit now makes no sense. What does make sense is collective bargaining. The suit was filed in 1997 as a class action by Sean Bowers, Paul Caligiuri, Mark Dodd, Mark Dougherty, Iain Fraser, Rhett Harty, Tim Martin, Mark Semioli, Steve Trittschuh and David Vaudreuil, role players all. One of their complaints, and a fair one at that, was that the players had no rights of free agency within MLS.

Here's a proposal that would fix that. Once a player puts in four years, if he's out of contract, allow him to find the team that suits him best. It could be a team that's willing to pay him another 10-20 grand, or a team that's closer to home. Whatever the case may be, it would be a small act of goodwill on the part of the owners. Right now, the only alternative for a player who's out of contract is to see if he can get a job abroad.

One other suggestion. Get together and talk this out. The last thing MLS and its already poor image needs is a lawsuit. And another thing -- get back on the field, Roy.

As easy as Azizi
The on-again, off-again signing of Khodadad Azizi by the Team Formerly Known As the San Jose Clash is apparently on again. The snafu -- Azizi signed two contracts, one with MLS and one with a Turkish team -- has apparently been worked out, and the announcement of his signing is once again being termed "imminent."

An interesting aside to the Azizi story is that the Galaxy, the team originally interested in the Iranian forward, backed off for a couple of reaons. First of all, they got "bad 'tude" reports on Azizi. Secondly, the league has promised the Galaxy that it will make strong efforts to get them a significant Mexican player. And while that makes a lot of marketing sense for the team in Los Angeles, you can be pretty sure that the league's other big Mexican markets -- Dallas, San Jose, D.C. and Chicago -- are going to be wondering when they get theirs. Single-entity sure makes everyone get along, eh?

Same old, same old
The Hristo Stoichkov saga continues, unchanged. The Bulgarian star and former World Footballer of the Year has agreed in principle to come out of retirement and play for the Chicago Fire, but the Fire can't get him without an allocation. Trade talks have been hot all week, but the Fire and teams with allocations (New England and Tampa) are worlds apart. The main problem is that the league doesn't want to miss out on signing a name player like Stoichkov, and the Fire don't want to give up their best and brightest young players to get a 33-year-old who hasn't played competitively in a year.

The Fire, who asked the league to look into Stoichkov on a whim this past off-season, had expected to fill their foreign slots with discoveries. When the league came back and said Stoichkov was "a possibility," GM Peter Wilt went ahead and filed a Discovery claim on Stoichkov, only to have it thrown back at him. That's when the Fire were told they'd have to acquire an allocation and this drawn-out saga began.

The Fire has also asked the league to consider giving them Stoichkov as allocation -- compensation for Jorge Campos. If you recall, the Fire traded for Campos (an allocated, marquee player) prior to the '98 season, only to have Zach Thornton seize the goalkeeper's position while Campos was in France for the World Cup. When Bob Bradley announced that Thornton (the '98 MLS Goalkeeper of the Year) would start in the playoffs, MLS got worried about how it would look for one of its "stars" to be sitting on the bench during the playoffs, and decided to let Campos go home to Mexico instead.

The league's stance on Campos, so far, has been that you can't replace a "bench player" with an allocation. The Fire, on the other hand, say they bowed to the league's request that Campos not be embarrassed. But they say there was always a chance that if Thornton had suffered a bad defeat in the '98 playoffs, they might have opted to put Campos and his vast experience in the frame. And if Campos, not Thornton, had led the Fire to the '98 title, would he have been replaceable? Of course, the Fire think so. Trust us, it will all be over soon.

In tight space