As of yesterday, the Major League Soccer season was hanging in the balance, with the players union and ownership at loggerheads over a number of issues including free agency, minimum salaries, and the duration of the deal. And now, contentiously, all is well and the season will begin. Seattle soccer soon! Yay! Kind of, yay! The deal that was reached was fairly owner-friendly, especially on the incredibly complicated topic of free agency. Let’s break down why this is damn complicated for the Sounders and MLS.

The market for soccer players is global, and the European system of free agency extends well past the collective bargaining agreements in American sports. Basically, players have far more leverage over where they go if they overachieve (because teams are able to buy player contracts from other teams due to either player pressure or prescribed buyout prices), but have locked-in contracts that have to be paid or bought out if they underachieve. This is the exact opposite of American football, where teams can cut players with limited repercussions.

The end result of this difference is a little counterintuitive: Players in Europe very rarely reach free agency. If a player is good and happy, their contract gets renewed at a higher wage rate; if they’re good and unhappy, they get sold before the player reaches free agency (so their current team gets some value from the unhappy player); and if they’re bad, they play out the string and then likely retire.

So, so very much is different about MLS. First of all, all the clubs are one business entity. They have separate owners, but that’s not actually how the business is structured. This makes any sort of intraleague free agency a weird lie. Also, every year, no matter who wins, MLS wins all the MLS trophies. Go MLS as a collective entity!

Second, MLS is only just starting to develop a system of development that can support a big open soccer league. Without anything resembling global pull of the Premier League, MLS has used its financial stability and the patriotism of our country’s best players to make sure that the league has produced a quality product.

An example of this weirdness: Tottenham Hotspur fullback DeAndre Yedlin was a “homegrown player” for the Sounders, but he still did a stint at the University of Akron’s legendary soccer program in order to develop his skills. MLS still has to account for the silliness of the American collegiate sports system in how it operates. Another example of the weirdness is former Sounder Fredy Montero, who is Colombian, developed the bulk of his game in Colombia, then moved to Seattle to both get paid and finish his development. If “get paid” were taken out of the equation, he likely would have gone to Argentina or Brazil before his inevitable move to a big European squad (in his case Sporting Lisbon).

Which is to say the Sounders are part of something very weird. And this is apparent in the construction of the team’s roster. You have an international star who is a bit past his prime (striker Obafemi Martins) and a domestic legend (Clint Dempsey) getting paid at astronomical rates. The team has a few players who settled in Seattle and developed into quality players getting paid very well (Brad Evans and Osvaldo Alonso). The team has a handful of developed players who cut their teeth in Europe and will contribute (Tyrone Mears and Marco Pappa). The rest of the roster is a mix of MLS guys who couldn’t play at the top level in other countries and are getting paid just enough to make it worth their while. In some cases, this is a good wage (say, that of Chad Marshall), and in other cases, it's shockingly low (last year’s league minimum salary was under $40,000). At the same time, the Sounders are a great club, capable of competing on the continental stage, and they are a hollow shell company that has to buy their best talent to stay afloat.

MLS has two long-term choices: remain a provincial oddity, or throw itself into the merciless world of the global game. This CBA—stands for "collective bargaining agreement," the agreement that sets the rules for how players are paid and interact with ownership—is putting off the choice for five years. Instead, the league will continue to walk the line, ensuring that the product remains pretty good without ownership having to pay more than a few guys on each team a competitive wage. The next CBA will be fascinating. A prediction: The league will develop its way into the global market. With American players increasingly training like their European counterparts, they’ll expect their peers’ professional freedom, too. Hopefully the owners will stop putting off the inevitable in 2020.

But for now? We have soccer. The Sounders season kicks off on Sunday against the New England Revolution at CenturyLink Field. The team comes into this season again looking like a top MLS Cup contender, coming off a year when they won both the MLS Supporters' Shield (awarded to the team with the best regular season record) and the US Open Cup title (awarded to the winner of the US Open Cup… duh). So, actually, the biggest takeaway of all this? Seattle sports are stupid great right now.