‘We are building relevance in our markets’

Now in his 22nd year as Major League Soccer’s commissioner, Don Garber has been one of the main forces driving the sport’s popularity in America. After dealing with contraction and taking the league down to just 10 teams in 2002, he has presided over a period of unprecedented expansion that includes Nashville SC, which became the league’s 26th team last year. Garber was in town to check on the progress of the Fairgrounds stadium and sat down with the Post to talk about salary caps, new facilities and whether baseball would affect NSC’s outlook.

Let's start with something a little topical: Lionel Messi just left Barcelona, the biggest club in the world, because they couldn’t pay him. The interesting thing to me is that a lot of top talent around the top leagues in Europe is having a hard time moving right now because there's only so many places. If you were talking to your counterparts in other leagues, what would you tell them about a salary cap system and the U.S. experience with that? Do you think that, in some ways, that's some kind of vindication of MLS’ approach?