American beauties, the MLS free agency fight, more mailbag topics

Clint Dempsey's Round of 16-winner against Juventus rates highly for its quality, size-of-stage, and outcome-of-game factors. Phil Cole/Getty Images

On perhaps the best first day ever of the NCAA basketball tournament -- and believe me, folks, I still watch -- the madness wasn't confined to the U.S. side of the Atlantic. As soon as U.S. midfielder Clint Dempsey scored his brilliantly delicate chip for Fulham to cap a four-goal rally that sank mighty Juventus in the Europa League Round of 16 and sent Cottagers fans into hysterics, variations of this question started rolling into my Twitter account:

"Best, biggest goal by an American outside of international play?"
-- Adam Belz, Cedar Rapids, Iowa

If we're going to measure a goal, we need to take three things into account: How good was the quality of the goal? How big was the stage? And how important was the goal in the outcome of the game itself?

When you add it all up, I'm confident calling Dempsey's strike the finest big-game goal by an American in the history of European club soccer.

Let's break it down. How good was the quality of the goal? Sublime. We may have to wait until Dempsey is 75 years old to know the full truth, but he says he was trying to score instead of hitting a cross, and I believe him. If you look at the way he follows through, it doesn't appear that he's trying to hit a cross. When you take into account all the variables -- Dempsey's back to the goal, the advancing defender, the tiny amount of space, the goalkeeper's position, Dempsey's spot on the field -- the audacity of the attempt and degree of difficulty go higher every time you watch. Fantastic.

How big was the stage? Okay, so the Europa League isn't Champions League. Fair enough. But it's still Europe, and that's still Juventus wearing the opposing shirts. For Fulham to reach the last eight of this competition is a big accomplishment.

How important was the goal in the outcome of the game itself? Not only was it the decisive tally in a 5-4 aggregate thriller, it finished off a remarkable comeback by Fulham. The Cottagers were down 4-1 on aggregate after David Trezeguet's early strike on Thursday, and all they did was score four unanswered goals to take down one of the biggest names in European soccer. Granted, Fulham might have gotten a break when Fabio Cannavaro was sent off in the first half, but this was the definition of "stunning comeback."

Over the years, some Americans (including Dempsey) have scored important goals in European club soccer, and some have scored majestic goals. Here are the ones I can recall:

IMPORTANT GOALS BY AMERICANS IN EUROPEAN CLUB SOCCER

• 1999: Claudio Reyna's goal for Glasgow Rangers (at 1:20 in the clip) makes the difference in Rangers' defeat of Parma to qualify for the Champions League.

• 2007: Dempsey's goal for Fulham beats Liverpool 1-0 and saves the Cottagers from relegation in the Premier League.

• 2006: Jay DeMerit scores the decisive goal for Watford (at 0:45 in the clip) in a 3-0 victory against Leeds United to earn promotion for the Hornets to the Premier League.

• 2010: Maurice Edu hits the stoppage-time game-winner for Glasgow Rangers to beat hated rival Celtic in the world's biggest rivalry and essentially put Celtic out of the Scottish Premier League title race.

HIGHEST-QUALITY GOALS BY AMERICANS IN EUROPEAN CLUB SOCCER

• 1990: John Harkes fires from distance past legendary goalkeeper Peter Shilton for Sheffield Wednesday. Bonus points for Harkes's mullet.

• 1991: Roy Wegerle slaloms through most of the Leeds United defense to bang home a beauty.

• 2010: Dempsey creates a goal out of nothing in a Premier League game against Stoke City.

Got any other suggestions? Send 'em in...

The 'Bag is finally back in the States after an 18-day trip to Europe for pre-World Cup stories. And while it's profoundly odd for me not to be covering the NCAA basketball tournament for SI for the first time since 1997, my visit to Euroland produced some indelible memories. In Greece I got to see the most insane fan fireworks display I've ever witnessed live, which made me feel a little like Bernie Shaw in Baghdad. I got to infiltrate enemy lines and visit England coach Fabio Capello at his office in Wembley Stadium. And I got to see a crowd of Everton fans belting out U-S-A chants at Landon Donovan.

So now that I'm back, let's get excited for ... an MLS players strike? Let's dive into the 'Bag...

What is the main sticking point for the MLS labor situation? I've heard that free agency is something being fought for by the players. Why in today's climate are the owners so against free agency? It seems like free agency coupled with a cap is the model that is making money for the NFL. Why wouldn't it work for MLS? Also, has there been any progress on upping the minimum salary? It seems like trying to justify a league that pays its least-expensive players less than the fry cook at the local fast-food joint is paradoxical at best.
-- Jordan A., Indianapolis, Ind.

We're closer than ever to an MLS strike, which could start as early as Monday and scuttle next week's season openers -- from a nationally televised kickoff on Thursday between the Seattle Sounders and Philadelphia Union (think they regret that name yet?) to the New York Red Bulls and Chicago Fire at the fantastic new Red Bull Arena. The player union reps for each of MLS's 16 teams are meeting in Washington D.C. right now, and the main sticking point does appear to be their desire for limited free agency within the league.

Currently, MLS players who play out their contracts are not allowed to become free agents inside MLS and entertain multiple competing bids from MLS teams. The way the owners see it, players can always get competing bids from other leagues, both in the U.S. (as Steve Ralston did by joining second-division St. Louis) and other countries. The players, in turn, argue that not having internal free agency denies them basic rights that are granted to soccer players in other leagues around the world.

Everyone does agree on one thing: MLS's lack of internal free agency is designed to keep player costs down. But the league has repeatedly said that it will not budge an inch. It views preventing free agency as a cornerstone of its single-entity business model (in which the owners are all in business together and the league owns all player contracts). Hence the question: If you have a salary cap (as MLS does), shouldn't that be enough of a governor on salaries to at least allow some form of limited internal free agency? (The union argues that players who have a certain league tenure, like Ralston, should have the right to entertain competing bids in MLS.)

MLS president Mark Abbott gave me a hard-to-understand response when I asked him that question recently, but another MLS executive provided a clearer perspective. His argument: Limited internal free agency would cause a decline in the quality of players in the league (as long as the salary cap remained the same). Paying the same MLS veteran more money doesn't make him a better player, he argued, plus that extra expenditure would make it harder to pursue two groups on the international open market: 1) talented players from other countries, and 2) promising U.S. youngsters who are in demand abroad.

I certainly understand the economic theory, but I don't totally buy the quality-of-play argument. For starters, those U.S. youngsters with potential often need years to develop (or they don't develop at all), and it's hard for them to improve the quality of play over a 90-minute game in a way that a veteran making a low-six-figure salary could. What's more, MLS finds itself losing useful "middle-class" veterans such as Chris Rolfe, who decided he could make more money in Denmark and played out his MLS contract.

The owners' underlying point of forbidding internal free agency is also this: At a time when the league is not yet profitable and the court system has okayed the single-entity model, why should they bid against themselves to raise the salaries of players who aren't getting competing offers from other leagues? But I would argue that if a player has put, say, seven or eight years of sweat equity into building MLS (as Ralston had done), there's value in that long-term service that deserves recognition in the form of free agency once he has finished his contract. The question is whether that's worth striking over, and we're about to find out.

The owners and players have made concessions on other collective-bargaining issues -- including, I'm told, the league's minimum salary, which would go up --but internal free agency remains the main sticking point.

As important as these issues are to MLS players and fans, a work stoppage would be a terrible thing in the big picture. In the grand landscape of U.S. sports, MLS's presence would barely be missed. And, as I've mentioned before, the league's fans can be free agents, too, an option that's easier than ever with more than 50 games from other countries being televised each week in America. MLS needs to be closing the gap that remains between itself and the top foreign leagues, not making it bigger.