CHICAGO (August 3) – This week at the Fire’s new Bridgeview stadium complex, the 11th MLS All-Star game will pit an MLS select side against a pre-season Chelsea team gearing up to defend its second-straight English Premiership title.

Chelsea is an interesting choice of opponent for MLS. Arguably, this team is what MLS, as a league, aspires to be in the future. It’s also worth noting that both organizations have taken diametrically opposite paths to get where they are today.

The one thing the two outfits have in common, of course, are deep-pocketed investors with deliberately obscured, murky backgrounds and a propensity for losing money. Chelsea announced a loss of $252 million — the largest ever in soccer history — back in January. Owner Roman Abramovich has spent some $600 million in transfers since 2003 (accounting for 40% of all transfer monies spent in the Premiership in 2005, according to auditors Deloitte).

Coincidentally, $600m is about what MLS has lost in eleven seasons of play, with only two clubs, Los Angeles’s Galaxy and New England, coming close in that time to profitability. (New England’s profitability is now questionable considering the dramatic fall-off in attendance the club has experienced.)

That’s where the similarities end: Where Abramovich introduced a new paradigm into European football with his New York Yankee’s style of management, MLS’ attempt to change the rules with single-entity ownership remains a work in progress. MLS is light years behind the Big Five (MLB, NBA, NFL, NHL and Nascar) in both quality of play and interest; indeed, MLS has still to justify the “major” in its sobriquet at about every level, term becoming both a blessing and a curse.

Where Abramovich has been profligate, MLS has been parsimonious. And while Abramovich benefited from a slow-moving cadre of competitors, MLS has had to face off against well-financed, knowledgeable opponents across the American sports spectrum.

But while Abramovich has been blamed (by some) for “ruining” the English game, there’s no question that he has, in three years, demonstrated what the American “big-league” sports mentality can do to the European game. Some will sniff at that notion, claiming that Abramovich can buy any player he wants, which is the same argument used against the New York Yankees. The truth, however, is that success comes from blending complementary talents. There’s a lot to be said for knowing which players to buy and who can most effectively manage your assets — give Abramovich credit for hiring two experienced pros in Peter Kenyon and Jose Mourinho to do just that.

MLS, apparently, doesn’t have an open wallet. That’s why its odd that that the league has not leveraged all its assets by any stretch. In fact, eleven years in, it’s worth noting that MLS turned its back on one of the biggest resources available to it and is paying a hefty price for it.

When MLS kicked off, it marketed itself as the “anti-NASL.” Where the NASL recklessly over-expanded, MLS was going to take it slow. Where the NASL loaded up on over the hill players, MLS was going to instead be “an American league to develop American players.” MLS had a business plan that was going to rope in the huge number of rec players, contain costs, and make everyone a tidy profit. One day, MLS execs said, America will be home to the best league in the world.

As we know today, this was pure hubris.

One of the biggest reasons for this is simply the lack of experienced, knowledgeable soccer people in the league. There are a number of folks out there who know something about the game and are eager to help out. Yet because of MLS’ encoded animosity toward the NASL — encapsulated in commissioner Don Garber’s historically questionable assertion (to us in fact, here) that the NASL “didn't provide long-term benefits to the sport” — MLS has never reached out to the folks who were there first.

This is a rotten waste of capital. Just off the top of our heads, guys like Jay Emmett, Clive Toye, Noel Lemmon, Dave Socha (a World Cup ref 24 years ago) and Gordon Bradley, are experienced administrators who at the very least could be tapped to help reform what is a badly damaged development track and probably could help advise a new generation of scouts. Some other former NASL’ers also have something increasingly common among older Americans — money. Why aren’t these folks, who had some success in the 1970s, being tapped today to help fund some of the projects soccer needs to succeed in the USA?

We suspect a reason MLS doesn’t reach out is that many of the former NASL’ers would have a disturbing tendency to actually put the game first, and the marketing second. Say what you want about the NASL, but they did put a good product on the field. They may or may not have been the over-the-hill gang, but the NASL did have a bunch of guys who actually knew how to play the game. Take a look back at the rosters from the 1974 World Cup. A fair number of those guys went on to play in the NASL before too long. Now take a look at the 2006 World Cup roster. How many of them will ever kick a ball in MLS?

Moreover, they cared about it, deeply. And while we hate to agree with Giorgio Chignalia, he had a valid point when he noted last month that Americans like stars. Would spending a few million more a team on players — and a few million less bringing teams over for exhibition matches — really be such a bad idea?

Has MLS made strides? Yes — it has managed to get a handful of arenas built for its teams, has survived expansion, contraction and now looks set to expand again. Monday, Fox announced a deal to pay the league rights fees for some telecasts, and Univision looks set to follow suit. These are steps in the right direction for a business, to be sure.

But the business at its center remains hollow. MLS still doesn’t have a good enough product on the field to tear people away from competing entertainment.

We don’t like it, but the truth is that MLS has no true stars, little respect outside the country and a fan base that has remained dismayingly static. As a result, MLS has failed to rope in the large number of folks who enjoy the game or just plain like sports. The 2006 World Cup defied expectations in the USA by showing that Americans will watch soccer even if Team USA isn’t playing. What these fans do demand, however, is top quality, and MLS can’t yet consistently deliver that. Every other pro league in America has the world’s best players. MLS has none of them.

We know the guys try like hell every game, but the fact that so many players in the league can’t trap a ball exquisitely, can’t keep the ball in between the touchlines for extravagantly developed plays, can’t see the entire field or anticipate the next pass, and can’t shoot on net is glaringly obvious to a novice. And truthfully, those of us who have pleaded for patience over the years are at the end of our tethers — eleven years should be long enough for even the most slavish fan to realize that the league is failing at its core mission, which must be, as we have been told, to develop quality American soccer players, coaches and refs.

And this brings us to where we came in. MLS wants to use Saturday’s All-Star game as a measuring stick. The league clearly feels that if its “boys” can hang against Chelsea, well, then they’re not doing too badly. The problem is, the whole equation is false. How does putting the best players of a mediocre league against a top team in pre-season training, in a meaningless friendly, reveal anything about where the league truly is?

We think, truthfully, that the game, without even having kicked off, has already shown how far MLS has yet to come. We also think MLS should pay more attention to the lessons Chelsea and the NASL offer — or better yet, start making use of the resources.

And by the way, even if you disagree with our take on the league and the value of the NASL, one fact is really tough to argue away: The fans aren’t coming on Saturday to see MLS’ “Best XI.” They’re coming to see the stars.

That says about all you need to know about MLS right now, and it’s a shame, because it doesn’t have to be this way.