LEAGUES WATCHING FILED SUIT.

Byline: Associated Press

A lawsuit that seeks to rip apart Major League Soccer's control of player salaries may have more to do with American sports than soccer itself.

League officials and some lawyers accuse the NFL Players Association of using soccer players to sue the year-old MLS simply to test the legality of its business structure - a single entity that signs all players and assigns them to teams rather than the traditional structure of franchises that compete for players.

While MLS contends the setup - which limits salaries to a maximum of $192,500 per player this year - is more efficient, opponents claim it constitutes an illegal monopoly that violates federal antitrust laws.

Other professional leagues and their unions are watching the case closely. If single entity is upheld, the leagues could reform under a similar structure and significantly reduce player bargaining power and salaries.

Already, the NBA has formed the Women's NBA under a single entity and a new football league is set to start in spring 1998 using it.

``It is a suit that is incidentally about soccer,'' MLS commissioner Doug Logan said. ``It has more do about the life of sports in general.''

Soccer players voted in October not to form their own union and instead go the with the NFLPA and its antitrust lawyers - Jim Quinn and Jeffrey Kessler of Weil, Gotschal & Manges, who represent the NFL Players Association and the National Basketball Players Association. The decision set them on a legal collision course with MLS, and critics blamed the football union.

``Their primary fear in the soccer players forming their own union, is that the NFLPA would lose the opportunity to have a test case,'' said Jeffrey Rosenthal, a lawyer who lost out to the NFLPA in trying to unionize MLS players.

Ten soccer players, one from each team, sued MLS last month, claiming MLS violated the Sherman and Clayton Antitrust Acts in a conspiracy also involving the U.S. Soccer Federation and FIFA - soccer's world governing body.

John Kerr Sr., and an official of the Washington-based NFLPA involved in organizing soccer players, disputes claims that the football union is using the soccer players simply to have the single entity concept declared illegal.

``It's not single entity on its own, but bad law by anybody,'' said Kerr, who played in the old North American Soccer League and was involved in players unions in the NASL and Major Indoor Soccer League.

Kerr also has an interest in the success of MLS: His son John Jr. plays for the New England Revolution and, occasionally, the U.S. national team.

At the heart of the lawsuit is MLS' practice of signing all players and assigning them to teams. Clubs have input, but the league determines who gets hired, how much to pay them and where they play - all in the interest of competitive balance and cost control.

MLS probably will claim that its structure is designed to efficiently integrate its business, not to eliminate competition. U.S. District Judge Mark L. Wolf, who will hear the case in Boston, has not yet set a trial date.

Logan said the league is being sued, in part, because it changed the way professional sports are run. ``Any change to the confederation approach is viewed as a threat,'' he said.

The opportunity to challenge that threat had its origins early in MLS' first season last year.

``Everybody was just happy to be playing,'' said Los Angeles Galaxy defender Mark Semioli, one of the 10 players suing.

But a league minimum salary of $24,000 a year left some players, particularly in expensive Los Angeles, ``living in other guys' houses, struggling to make the rent. So there was some undercurrent.''