Q&A with MLS commish Garber

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Despite a small dip in attendance this season, MLS commissioner Don Garber sees a bright future for the 14-year-old league. Andy Mead/YCJ/Icon SMI

SEATTLE -- The Los Angeles Galaxy meet Real Salt Lake in the 14th MLS Cup final here on Sunday (8:30 p.m. ET, ESPN, Galavisión), and I started the day off by meeting MLS commissioner Don Garber for breakfast in his hotel suite. The 52-year-old Garber, a former NFL executive, has been the MLS commish since 1999 and is widely expected to sign a contract extension in the next few weeks.

Our discussion addressed a number of topics, including his views on using instant replay in soccer officiating (in the wake of the controversy in Wednesday's World Cup Ireland-France World Cup qualifier), the MLS salary cap, Landon Donovan's future in MLS, a move to a single table, consensus-building with MLS owners, and his thoughts on my book, The Beckham Experiment. The following conversation has been edited for space and clarity:

SI.com: In light of the Thierry Henry uncalled hand ball in France-Ireland on Wednesday, do you think MLS and soccer should use instant replay in officiating?

Garber: At the risk of offending all those people who are the most influential in the sport, as an American sports fan who likes the fact that bad calls can get reversed, I would be a proponent of instant replay. I understand that's an inflammatory statement, but as a personal observer, I believe the right thing should happen on the field. It seems to me that the result of a sporting event generally should a result of what actually happened on the field as opposed to having a call missed.

SI.com: Would you be willing to let MLS be a league where FIFA tests instant replay?

Garber: Listen, I don't think that instant replay is happening anytime soon in soccer, globally or in MLS. That last comment was more personally than me speaking as the commissioner of MLS. But I do think there are things we should look at as a sport, and I'd be willing to be the test market for some of those programs.

SI.com: Such as?

Garber: A goal-line official. Additional officials on the field. Those would be two examples. Or technology that FIFA and Adidas have tested with the ball to figure out whether it has crossed the goal line.

SI.com: You got the league's best-ever rating on ESPN2 last week for the L.A.-Houston conference final. You've got David Beckham and Donovan in the MLS Cup final. What kind of ratings are you expecting?

Garber: The first half-hour of [the L.A.-Houston game] finished with a 1.4 rating, which is four times our weekly rating. The stadium lights went out, and obviously it was a West Coast game that finished at 3 in the morning on the East Coast, so we didn't expect to keep a rating at that level. But the fact that we could attract 1.7 million people to an MLS game is remarkable and a statement as to where MLS is today. There are soccer fans out there, and if you give them a great matchup and promote it well and schedule it right, people will come out and watch this game. That was proven with the final rating, which was almost a 0.6.

It certainly helps to have two of your biggest stars in the game, and it's going to be fantastic to have David and Landon in our MLS Cup final against a small-market team that, in many ways, has proven to be one of the better teams in MLS today. I'm smart enough not to make any predictions because you never know where it will end up, but our ratings have grown on ESPN and Fox, and I think that's a positive sign and an indication of the popularity of MLS.

SI.com: Here we are in Seattle, which is the league's success story of the year and probably Soccer City USA at this point. What makes this place so special for the sport?

Garber: You know you're in a true soccer hotbed when there are two stories about MLS on the front page of the Seattle Times this morning, four days before our championship game. There were so many factors that played into why the Sounders were such a success: the Sonics leaving and the pent-up demand over the last 14 years in a market that really cares about the game. We effectively seeded the market with MLS and international exhibition games, and we have a perfect ownership partnership.

[Sounders majority owner] Joe Roth is a Hollywood guy who coached his kids, [minority owner] Adrian Hanauer has years of professional soccer experience and the Seahawks are one of the best-managed professional sports teams. This is a team that's relevant, that matters in the community and that had a great strategic business plan that they executed very well. It raised the bar for what our other teams could hopefully achieve in time.

SI.com: It's fair to say you have a vision for MLS. Where do you see this league 10 years from now?

Garber: We've worked hard over the last 14 years to achieve stability and to ensure that we would remain in business and have a viable operation. Looking forward, we're able to move past this focus on ensuring that we're here tomorrow to get focused on what tomorrow should look like. That tomorrow will be a far more relevant league on the national level but certainly on the local level, with a better execution on how we market our teams and a deeper relationship with the local soccer community.

I don't mean the youth-soccer community. I mean those fans that really care about the game, that might have grown up with the sport, and we need to get them to embrace our local teams. Not enough of them are doing that. There are still far more soccer fans in this country than there are MLS fans. If I had to say, "What's the one thing we could achieve over the next decade?" it's that most of the people who care about the game care about MLS.