I meant what I said and I said what I meant. MLS will be a top league in the World by 2022 one-hund

If the goal was to pay players as much as those teams do, you'd be right. But common sense tells us that that is not the case.

Look at those Ligue 1 rosters and you'll see that almost all of the players on the squads, especially near the foot of the table, are French, or from Francophone countries closely linked to France, like Senegal or the Ivory Coast. Only a handful of players on each team fall outside that definition.

It's possible that Ligue 1 is working in a completely open labor market, where players are free to play anywhere in the world, and French players are ending up in France as a total coincidence. But it doesn't seem likely.

So what is the obvious conclusion?

Most players on teams in most domestic leagues are domestic players.

Therefore, the total wage costs of a team in a domestic league has more to do with the domestic player market than it does with the international player market. In other words, MLS's relatively low wage costs do not necessarily reflect the level of play on the field; they represent a relatively high supply of, and relatively low demand for, American domestic players in American professional soccer

 

Arguez sure made the league better eh (he was just cut after coming back to the league from overseas) ?

Big issue with what Cosmo_Kid (and many others that do this) brings up is that all they do is focus on the handful that make their case. They completely ignore the twice/thrice/four times as big of a list of players that DON'T make this league or equivalent/slightly better foreign league any better.

 

Fernando Clavijo:

 

They have to pay a market wage. They don't have to pay a French market wage. Remember, there are barriers to entry in Europe. That's why only about a quarter of MLS foreign players come from Europe; more than half come from counties in South or Central America or the Caribbean, countries where the domestic market is weaker and players don't have EU passports, and therefore don't have easy access to the richer EU labor market.

So we get good players from South America who aren't quite good enough to play in Europe. And the fact that we have so many foreign roster spots, relatively speaking, depresses the domestic player wages that much more.

I wouldn't expect that. Three or four players per team is about 50-75 players total. Right now Yanks Abroad is tracking just about 100 American players in foreign leagues, total--and probably half of those, or more, are either (1) MLS washouts who are choosing lower foreign leagues over the NASL, not MLS, or (2) technically US-eligible players who were born and raised in other countries or otherwise eligible for an EU or Mexican passport.

Again: if you don't have an EU passport, it is hard to get a job playing soccer in Europe. There are only about 150 non-Europeans playing in Serie A right now, one of whom is American. The numbers get tighter in the less elite leagues; there are just about fifty non-Euros in the Netherlands--again, with one American.

Unless you think MLS is going to start producing nothing but Michael Bradleys, I don't see that there's anything to worry about. If all American players improve, then the league improves, even if slightly more of them head off to greener (or in the case of Euros, rainbow-colored) pastures. There just aren't enough European jobs to take fifty Sasha Kljestans--and that means some of them will stay here and keep improving our league. And even if they did, MLS is the clear second choice for the Central American and African players whose jobs they'll be taking.

Honestly, the thing that would hurt MLS competitiveness in the global talent the most isn't wage stagnation or improving American talent. It would be either (1) the complete break-up of the European Union, or (2) a loosening of the tight AFC "3+1" restrictions on foreign players in domestic leagues. Neither seems likely at this point.

 

I generally like your analysis, though I tend to be more optimistic than you are with regard to where this league can go. Considering everything, I don't consider the leap from $15.5 million to $25 million (the low end of what you consider the second tier) to be that big a leap whatsoever. Using the numbers already mentioned within the thread, $3.5 million of that gap is already accounted for with the new TV deals. Add in the fact that we will have at least one, and probably two more new TV cycles before 2022 rolls around, and I would have to think that TV alone will pay for the gap. In addition, local TV revenue is probably negative at this point, and that would be the next big frontier (unless you're the LA Galaxy).

One way of looking at it is breaking down what parts of revenue will grow geometrically versus those that will grow only incrementally. I tend to agree, for instance, that gameday revenue (tickets, concessions, merchandise) will probably not grow by leaps and bounds, but there are other ways that the league can get money. For instance, one of the biggest changes implemented by the league that brought in a great deal of revenue was the addition of jersey sponsors. I don't know what else they can do, but MLS has a good track record in this regard.

The other interesting part is that this will be a moving target. As saturated as Mexico is with soccer, Liga MX has done nothing but move forward over the last five years, probably spurred at least in part by finally having some actual competition. The question will be not what is the current target, but what is the 2022 targe.

 

Maybe your moving target is going the wrong way? Maybe Garber is banking on a European collapse.

 

Truth. If MLS could be one of the top three or four leagues in the Americas, that would be massive. If unlikely.

 

Some of those players will have better choices; some won't. Just like now. MLS won't capture all of the improvement, but it'll capture some of it, simply because total spots for foreign players are limited.

More than they've done to sign Brazilian or Argentine or Colombian players? If American players are competing on that level, we'll already have won the war.

It will not be the Middle East or Asia, unless the AFC significantly relaxes its current non-AFC player restrictions. The barriers there are even higher than Europe. That's why right now, with Lee Nguyen back in MLS, there is not a single American playing in an Asian league.

Not if they're facing increased competition from very good American players. Every spot an American takes on a French or German roster is an African or Caribbean or South American pushed back to MLS.

Payroll will have to increase, sure. But it won't have to increase to the level of a European league of equivalent quality. That's the point.

 

Not that it makes a big difference to your overall point, but there's one American in the A-League, which is an Asian league.

 

Good catch--forgot about him. Not that his is a story any promising young player wants to emulate.

 

I don't want to water down the goal. I'm just looking at a different goal: quality of play on the field, rather than amount of money paid to players.

Why not? Liga MX is probably one of the top leagues in the world based on their performances on the field, and their payrolls likely aren't that much larger ($5m-$10m). And their domestic player market, despite the gentleman's agreement, is a lot more inflated than ours.

Again, spending money is not the point: quality on the field is the point.

Tell me why French teams field mostly French players, despite having no real restrictions on the number of German or English or Spanish players who can play for them. That's the same reason MLS can pay American players less than France pays French players to get the same performance.

 

Because only 1-3 of them can actually compete in the inflated Euro market.

 

Right now there is one American, one Englishman, one Mexican, no Germans, no Dutchmen, and no Italians playing in Ligue 1. (According to Wikipedia, at least).

Are those countries not producing players that can "compete in the inflated Euro market" either?

There are also eleven Ivoirians and thirteen Malian players in Ligue 1. Are those countries outstripping the US (and Mexico and Germany and England and Holland and Italy) in player development?

I'm not disagreeing that U.S. players are not in demand on the world markets. I'm disagreeing with the idea that the world soccer market is a perfect market with no barriers to entry, which means that if the average American player suddenly improved to the level of the average French player, they would all get jobs in France and MLS would be left with the has-beens and also-rans.

 

No, the TEAMS in Ligue 1 can't compete $$$$$ wise in the inflated Euro market so they've stuck with mostly domestic players because the French National Player fits in right where the league does: Just below the true elite, but better than the vast majority of everyone else.

 

But that makes just as little sense. The French teams and the French players are competing in the same market. If the French teams couldn't compete in that market, the French players wouldn't be playing for them. The best of them would replace mediocre Italians in Serie A or mediocre Germans in the Bundesliga, and those players would end up in Ligue 1 as a result. It would be an incredible coincidence if out of all of the best European players that every Ligue 1 team, top to bottom, can afford, the majority of them just happened to be French.

Consider instead the possibility that you've confused causation and correlation. The French league is about as good as the average French player not because of any magic coincidence, but because, like almost every other soccer league in the world, they depend on domestic players to make up the bulk of their rosters.

 

I believe the number of US players that have made the jump from a Scandinavian league to a Big 4 league in Europe currently stands at 0.

MLS has a much better track record of getting players into the top leagues in Europe.

Players are figuring that out. It takes time. MLS is still a relatively brand new league. When you think about it. We are only just now seeing prospects who "grew up" with MLS hitting their late teens.

 

I respect you a ton as a poster, but you're entire argument is based on the assumption that this is the plan.

Its an assumption, and it could possibly be grossly inaccurate.

 

Sematics again I guess.

Heath Pearce (Promoted to B1)
Charlie Davis (French 1).

Both did not stick around very long in top flight.

Also didn't Gatt go from Denmark to Bundesliga?

 

BTW here is an old article (2008) about some "Scandinavian" Yanks

http://www.socceramerica.com/article/25703/northern-exposure-yanks-in-scandinavia.html

Funny to read it and see what happened to those guys, most back in MLS.