MLS responds to Wayne Rooney after claims Apple TV kicked its coaching staff out of their seats for All Stars game
Major League Soccer has responded to claims by Wayne Rooney that his staff were forced to give up their bench seats for the Apple TV team in the MLS All Stars game against Arsenal.
“It is not true that any Apple staff member was sitting in the technical area during last night’s Major League Soccer All-Star Game,” MLS said Thursday morning.
Rooney said after Wednesday’s game: ‘Everything about the game is great and it’s great publicity for the league moving forward.
“Apple’s entry into the league has been great, even though they didn’t let my staff sit in their seats today. My staff were kicked out of their seats today by Apple members.
Wayne Rooney said Apple TV cameras prevented his staff from taking seats for the All Stars game
“And I wouldn’t be doing my staff a service if I didn’t mention that because if you’re asked to play the game with your staff, you expect your staff to have seats to sit down, so that was very disappointing.” Although I think Apple will help move the league forward.
Apple has a 10-year, $2.5 billion deal to broadcast Major League Soccer, a deal that is in its first season.
As part of that deal, part of Lionel Messi’s Inter Miami salary, which is around $50 million-$60 million per season, will be paid. They will pay Messi with the subscriptions they have taken out to see him play at Inter Miami.
Rooney’s MLS All Stars lost 5-0 against Arsenal on Wednesday night.
The 37-year-old coach only had two training sessions with the All-Stars, the second of which simply featured main tennis on the National Mall, where a makeshift practice range was set up.
And although Rooney called the game a “good event” and acknowledged that Arsenal were “one of the best teams in Europe”, he still had some complaints about the build-up to the match.
“As I suggested, I didn’t want them to train on the National Mall, but that’s where we train,” he said. ‘We can’t do anything, we were willing to play head tennis. So we literally didn’t have time to do any tactics.
“You put the players in and hope they can figure things out, and against a team like Arsenal that’s very difficult to do.”
