Alecko Eskandarian will not be going to camp this month, and he is disappointed. þþÿI really tried to work hard this season to get a call-up to the national team,ÿ Eskandarian, 22, said in a telephone interview from his parents' home in Montvale, N.J. ÿI was honored to get the call-up from Bruce and I would love to play for the national team, but. ... ÿþþThat is a prodigious ÿbutÿ because the union that represents United States national team players and the United States Soccer Federation remain locked in a labor dispute that resulted in the cancellation (one side says lockout, the other says strike) of training camps last month and this month. The federation said it would use nonunion players for a World Cup qualifying match Feb. 9 in Trinidad and Tobago if a new collective bargaining agreement was not reached by Feb. 1.þþLast week, the federation offered the union binding arbitration, but the union rejected it yesterday. ÿThe players have made a series of proposals to the U.S.S.F. and we expected a substantive response when the arbitration proposal was made,ÿ Mark Levinstein, the union's acting executive director, said in a statement yesterday.þþHe called the arbitration proposal, which the federation said was non-negotiable, ÿcompletely unacceptable.ÿ The union said the federation wanted a contract that would last only to the end of 2006; the union is seeking a deal that would expire at the end of 2010.þþBefore the arbitration offer was made, Bruce Arena, coach of the national team, proposed a compromise, which the players accepted but the federation rejected. It would have allowed for a training camp this month and for union players to participate in the game in Trinidad while the sides worked toward a deal by March 1.þþÿI know I haven't been a major part of the national team program, but I'm on the players' side,ÿ said Eskandarian, who has played only two minutes in one game for the national team, against Wales in May 2003. ÿFor me, what stands out is that the national team has been playing for two years without a contract, which had been promised to them after the World Cup.þþÿWe have so much pride in putting on the jersey and playing for our country. It's not like soccer players from other countries, who are making millions of dollars. Look, we've come so far and have become a top-10, top-15 team in the world.ÿþþEskandarian, who was the game's most valuable player when D.C. United won the Major League Soccer championship in November, is considered a promising attacking player for the United States.þþÿAll I want to do is be in Germany in 2006,ÿ he said, referring to the World Cup. þþM.L.S. Clint Mathis, the mercurial striker, is back in Major League Soccer with Real Salt Lake after a year in Germany with Hannover 96. He still had not decided to come back to the United States when the mayor of Salt Lake City, Rocky Anderson, lobbied him in a phone call. Mathis, who was entertaining offers from three other Bundesliga clubs and two M.L.S. clubs, will be the second-highest-paid player in the league this year, behind D.C. United's Freddy Adu. ... The MetroStars do not currently have a pick in the four-round M.L.S. draft, which will be held Friday in Baltimore.þþ
Source: NY Times
