News: DC United 2014 - News, Speculation, and links

I have no idea how to value an MLS players' worth in terms of allocation funds. Is it the same value as if we bought a foreigner for $200,000?

 

How did EJ's number end up working out?

 

What the allocation? Who knows. Seattle intimated that it was a 'significant amount' and journalists mused that it was 'the highest amount,' but that all sounds like posturing. Best guess is between 350,000 and 650,000.

 

And we know those salaries weren't being paid down. Any chance they still page Troy Perkins at Dick's Sporting Goods?

 

FYP.

 

I saw him carry some stuff out to a customer's car after he had already been named to the MLS All Star team. At least the next year he upgraded to working in a mortgage office.

 

If I remember the time correctly it was a financial upgrade for him but not necessarily a moral one.

 

I feel like I've heard somewhere that the Najar money was allocated to other club expenses not related to player salaries.

I can't remember if it was an actual report or some poster pulling stuff out of their ass

 

Kinda both. Only $650K of it can go to paying for players (ie allocation money); everything over that is to be used for non-player things at the club's discretion (ie the team's academy, club finances, etc).

 

I was referring to the $650K. The way I understand it is that sum can be used on the roster but it doesn't have to be. My understanding was that the $650K was not going to be used on players. There's also no evidence that DC used any of it last year and most of our allocation spending this year can be attributed to other sources.

 

http://pressbox.mlssoccer.com/content/roster-rules-and-regulations

Those are the only things you can use it for. It wouldn't surprise me if a significant portion went to Salihi's release.

 

Not accurate. There are ways to use allocation for other things- particularly if you can demonstrate losses like DC United can with regard to their rent of RFK. If you peruse the publicly available allocation rules, you don't see things like "when does allocation expire" and "can allocation be paid at a later time if mutually agreed upon, rather than up front." The answer to the first is 'it never expires' and the second 'allocation can be paid in the future' but those are more of the hidden rules of MLS.

Notice that the rules mention "can be used for" not "may only be used for." ("Allocation money does not count against a club’s salary budget and can be used")

 

Allocations do expire. It just takes a while. NE was dumb enough to do that with their Dempsey allocation.

But using allocation money for other things? Not possible. Don't confuse allocation money (which has a set amount and set purpose) with things like transfer money (which is where the allocation money can come from). A team could get $2.5 million in transfer money, but only $650k (max) can be used for allocation purposes towards players. Everything else from the transfer fee is whatever the team wants to use it on that doesn't relate to players or contracts.

 

No, allocations currently do not expire because, assuming the theoretical expiration date exists, it is so long in the future that no team has yet encountered it. I asked Will Kuhns, MLS Spokesman, this question directly. What he said was you have basically 4 allocation cycles before the league says "hey, use your allocation" and then there is no official time at which point allocations officially expire. Even if a team reached this time (either the 'prod point' or the soft-cap expiration date), which could be as many as 8-10 years from when you initially get the allocation, teams can simply shift allocation around (i.e. set up trades with teams to essentially get back the same amount of allocation you traded) which refreshes the expiration period. No team to date has had allocation expire or, in MLS's words, even approached expiration.

There is no evidence to conclude, on the other hand, that allocation cannot be used for other ends in the league approves it. Again, when asked about allocation, Kuhns said that "the primary purpose of allocation is to pay down players salaries etc." I've never heard anyone say "you can only" do X or Y with allocation. Given what we have seen the league do over the years, I don't see it as a safe view to hold that our allocation or Najar money is sitting around waiting to be used on players. It may or may not be.

 

If you spoke with Will Kuhns and he gave you that much information, then you should be contacting every MLS beatwriter you know because that's information that has never been shared with the public.

 

None of it seemed like stuff I hadn't heard before.

There seems to be quite a myth surrounding the non-transparency of MLS rules. Some of them are a tad shadowy (as are all league's rules until they mature from being taken advantage of by greedy owners and are refined), but I didn't find much if any of that short post to be news I hadn't heard before. Of course I have also heard conflicting reports, but that's the nature of getting most soccer/MLS news from blogs instead of news sources.

 

non-transparency? Non-Invisibility? Non-seeing-through?

 

Those aren't words.

Look, I can make up words, too: Opacity.

See, you're not special.

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...14/04/16/pontius-to-miss-several-more-months/

not unexpected or surprising, but still very depressing.

 

This is a good thing. Now there is a fork in the road, he will come back after the surgery and either be the player he was, or at least close to it, or he will be done. Now we will know what's up.

Sucks for him, of course, but at least now he knows what he's dealing with.

 

That's what we were led to believe last time. But I hear you.

 

Rolfe move makes 100% sense now

 

Who are you going to get better than Rolfe, at the end of March/beginning of April?