To Christian Fuchs, it is not a complicated question. If you could do one thing, he is asked, to enhance Major League Soccer, what would it be?
“Lift the salary cap — done. Get rid of it,” he snaps.
Now aged 38 and retired, Fuchs, a Premier League winner with Leicester City in 2016, ended his playing career at Charlotte FC. He is now an assistant coach at Charlotte, managed by the former Aston Villa, Brentford and Leicester City manager Dean Smith.
As is common in American sport, MLS has restrictions to maintain a competitive balance within the league. Some may argue — for better or worse — that it is also a way to maximise revenues for owners, while also avoiding the dramatic losses common within European football. MLS also has designated players, whose salary and/or transfer fees do not count towards the cap, as well as initiatives that relax the rules around players under the age of 22. Six places within a roster are subject to more lax regulations than the overall salary cap model, yet Fuchs believes that MLS must go further to truly compete with Europe.
“Ever since I left Leicester or even before, everybody is curious about MLS,” he says. “Players would move here instantly (without a salary cap). I think the salary cap was implemented to protect U.S. players: to have a certain ratio of American players within the club. Or to protect the smaller owners.
“There are many different reasons for the salary cap. One of them is also to give American players the chance to play at the highest level. But I think that’s wrong because who are the main players here right now? You have Lionel Messi (at Inter Miami) but towards the end of his career.
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“Can you get a player a big name that is in his prime? Can you get five or six players of those sorts per club? The only way to do it is to spend money on them. They come with a salary. You have to accept it.
“American players will also develop more when they’re exposed to those players. And you can implement a rule where you say: ‘Listen, you have a minimum number of homegrown players’. But if you just make it down to the salary cap, where can have a maximum of three designated players, the league will be in 10 years where it is right now.”
At the same time, however, Fuchs describes MLS as “probably the toughest league in the world”.
Fuchs playing for Charlotte FC in July 2022 (Vaughn Ridley/Getty Images)
“When you play games on the East Coast, it’s fairly easy. The longest flight, because we are very central, is probably to Vancouver. But I said from my first year that this is probably the toughest league. The level is always competitive. But you have to deal with so many outside factors; the travel, the climate, and time zones. When you go to Texas and you play at 45C (113F) at 7.30pm kick-off, it is draining on the body.”
As somebody who played for six years in the Premier League, as well as in the Austrian and German top divisions and at international tournaments, where does MLS rank, purely from a football perspective?
“You have a good amount of teams that have great players throughout. It’s usually then the extended roster — I don’t want to sound negative with it or demote anybody. But where you have college players that fill up the roster spots who, before they come here, they have four years of three months of football per year. This is just not enough when you are aged 20 or 21. I would say that the better teams can probably compete at EFL (English Football League) Championship level, mid-table or something.”
Fuchs, it quickly emerges during an hour-long conversation with a small group of reporters at Charlotte FC’s training facility, is not a man inclined to duck a question. He is extremely fond of the U.S. and has founded soccer academies in New York (where his family have long considered home) and North Carolina, investing considerable sums into the development of young American talent. He is joined in the room by his son, Ethan, a 6ft-plus 15-year-old who is dreaming of making it as a goalkeeper.
Fuchs is an assistant but does not disguise he would love to be a head coach one day. What’s the dream job?
“There’s only one,” he says. “Leicester City. And do I miss Europe? Yeah, I do a lot.
“Maybe not the Premier League right away (for my next job). But then you see a lot of coaches that might not have had (big) experience. There’s a clear appetite by teams wanting to be new, fresh and playing attractive football.
“If I come to a club, I would like to see a three-year vision. I know you have only two years, really. But to go into something where it is, ‘Hey, we want to get there in the next five years, we want to play XYZ football.’ That’s something that would be my dream.”
Fuchs is nostalgic about his time in Leicester, a sentiment most recently triggered by the passing of Craig Shakespeare, who died at the age of 60. Shakespeare was assistant to Claudio Ranieri in the most extraordinary story of the Premier League era: when Leicester defied odds of 5000-1 to win the title in the 2015-16 season.
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“He was a very important person for me,” Fuchs says of Shakespeare. “He was the go-to guy, like your buddy within the coaching team — a very good person. Craig just made you feel so comfortable.”
Will miss your smile, energy, and exceptional character! Rest in peace Shakey. pic.twitter.com/Cb0mxMyGmP
— Christian Fuchs (@FuchsOfficial) August 2, 2024
Leicester have returned to the Premier League this season and Jamie Vardy, 37, is the one survivor from the playing squad that lifted the Premier League title.
“I was a big advocate for him to get another year at Leicester just to finish his career in the Premier League,” says Fuchs. “He’s just a crazy f***ing dude. In a positive way. I was sitting next to him for those six years, and as crazy as it looks on the outside, it is that way. He’s a good guy. But he is just different, but that is his whole story.
“As a team, we never expected to be going for the title. It was just Ranieri — four games before the end when he had a press conference — and he said, ‘OK, now we’re going for it’. That reflected the whole mentality of the team that year. Even when we were at Jamie Vardy’s house, when Tottenham drew against Chelsea to confirm we won the title, I honestly never thought that we would win it until it was final.
Fuchs kisses the Premier League trophy in May 2016 (Michael Regan/Getty Images)
“If you have not been inside, it’s hard to understand how the feeling was that year or even the following years. In those six years at Leicester, seriously, there was every year something going on. From the ‘Great Escape’ (Leicester were almost relegated the year before they won the Premier League) to the biggest success to death (the club’s owner and chairman, Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha, died in a helicopter crash in October 2018).
“Then we were the best-performing (English) team in the Champions League in the 2016-17 season. There had been a poll where they wanted to collect signatures for Leicester not to represent England in the Champions League. We ended up in the quarter-finals. Where were the others? So, it never got boring. There was just something special about Leicester that I don’t think any other club has.”
If Fuchs was to become a head coach, what style of play should we expect? He played under managers such as Ranieri and Brendan Rodgers at Leicester, as well as Thomas Tuchel at Mainz and Ralf Rangnick at Schalke.
“I could tell you what everybody wants to do: possession and playing out from the back. But I want to play what the game needs. I have my ideas. And yes, it is to dominate the game with possession; to suffocate the opponent by just not letting them even out of their own half. But is it possible? There’s an opponent that has their own ideas.
“If it is about proactive thinking, defending on the front foot, possession in the opponent’s half, 100 per cent I want to do that. But if the opponent presses you or doesn’t let you play out, you have to be a little bit more direct. There needs to be a plan B and plan C, but the principles need to be consistent.
“I spoke with Carlo Ancelotti (when Real Madrid visited Charlotte in pre-season) and, honestly, it was so interesting. We were talking about those basic ideas: how it can vary from opponent to opponent. He is focusing a lot of defensive work, which, again, plays into suffocating a team. But then also in the final third, he is giving freedom to the players. He said: ‘I don’t work offensively. I have (Kylian) Mbappe.’”
Fuchs laughs. “OK. Fair enough!”
His son Ethan, who is in the Charlotte FC youth ranks, has spent an hour listening in. He had his own private audience when Madrid were in town, taking advice from goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois.
What advice would Fuchs have for his son?
“The one thing that I always told him is don’t wait for anybody to come to you. Take your own initiative. If you don’t take, you fall short. Or maybe you make it only in MLS, even though you had the potential to go into the Premier League or Bundesliga.
“So it’s not about the hours that you spend here. It’s about the hours that you spend outside of the facility, of the team environment. It is what I have done my whole life.”
(Top photo: Matthew Ashton/AMA/Getty Images)
