Don Garber’s Twitter Q&A a nice gesture, but light on substance

MLS commissioner Don Garber waded into the always turbulent waters of social media -- specifically Twitter -- to do a question and answer session with a fun loving unruly mob of American soccer fans.

While a majority of the responses were fairly pedestrian, we did finally get a response to the Chivas USA story on HBO’s Real Sports as Garber said he would be addressing the situation during a halftime interview at the MLS All-Star Game though on-going litigation will likely limit what he can say.

As you might expect there were a ton of questions related to future expansion, officiating and a nice mix of clever and plenty of unclever jokes.

Things got off a rough start as the first question Garber answered was from Sporting Kansas City owner Robb Heineman...that was tweeted 199 days ago:

Here was Garber’s response to the multitude of questions about Chivas USA:

Garber also said that the league was aware of the banner displayed by the San Jose Ultras over the weekend:

As for future expansion Garber was expectedly tight-lipped offering up only friendly words of encouragement to fans from various cities who asked if they could expect an MLS team in the near future, including Orlando and Miami. Garber did say there are several potential ownership groups in Kansas City for All-Star week. He also made it clear that the no-stadium plan exemption for New York City FC appears to be an exception and not a sign of a new policy towards expansion teams.

One hot button issues for MLS fans that did get a positive response is transparency related to various rules and regulations concerning the movement of players. Hopefully MLS will follow through on the plan Garber mentioned and make it easier for fans to understand how various mechanisms for the signing and transfer of players work.

Unfortunately this isn’t the first time Garber has made statements like this and the information eventually released has been less than fulfilling at best. Don’t get your hopes up.

If you were wondering what retention funds are, Garber explained them:

Here are some other highlights from Monday’s Q&A session.

On efforts to improve officiating in the league:

On future TV and media negotiations:

Garber’s response to “what the hell happened to your hair?” was fun, but it was one of many softballs the commissioner answered including his preference for “cheese or pepperoni” pizza and his “favorite MLS memory”:

Garber was also amused by a New York Red Bulls fan who asked if they could ban him from the stadium.

Good to see that despite having a tough job and having to deal with a tough and demanding fan base hasn’t ruined Garber’s sense of humor completely.

Despite there not be a great deal of substance to Garber’s answers, it’s still nice that him and other league officials are willing to at least engage with fans through social media. They’re never going to be willing to go into too much detail but sometimes just being willing to spend a few minutes reading through questions can mean a lot to fans. It’s certainly a level of accessibility we rarely see in professional sports these days.