Keane's Plan: Go to Five DPs per Team

Robbie Keane offers his thought on making MLS a World Class league by 2022 in the Sporting News:

“The next step for MLS, Keane argued, was to increase the quality of play while maintaining that competitive balance. Each MLS team currently has three Designated Player slots, which carry a significant salary budget hit but which allow clubs to pay anything they like above and beyond that initial charge.

Keane told Sporting News that it’s time to raise the number of DPs to five per team. They don’t have to necessarily be foreign players, he added, pointing out that Galaxy teammates like Omar Gonzalez or Mike Magee could “easily” be DPs.

“. . . in England you’ve got 20 designated players (per team). ... You could sit here all day and speak all day about (MLS), but it is what it is. But if we move on and keep talking about and extending it to maybe five players, I think we’ll 100 percent help the league and it will help the U.S. national team.

“In 10 years’ time, this league would be massive if you extend it to five [designated] players. If you don’t extend it to five players, it’s going to be the same.”

That “same” isn’t so bad, he argued. It’s just not world class. At least not yet.”

http://aol.sportingnews.com/soccer/story/2013-02-21/mls-on-track-to-be-amongst-worlds-best-leagues-robbie-keane-says

^ was going to post this. I can't wait for "their" reactions to this.

I'll grab some popcorn.

"“If you look at Seattle, Colorado, Portland, you look at the fans there every week, they’re there two hours before the game,” Keane said. “The league is set now to keep going. We’re at a level where it’s going to stay like that."

I'd actually like to highlight that part specifically for certain people.

People often roll their eyes when players offer opinions like this, but I was struck by how refreshingly balanced his assessement of the league was.

If I had to paraphrase it:

-- MLS is a good, competitive undervalued league and Europeans don't understand the challenge parity presents -- you don't get games off.

-- MLS is sustainable.

-- If MLS wants to improve, it should add two DPs and consider making more talented domestic players for those spots.

-- If MLS would keep doing what its doing and go to 5 DPs, it will be trans-formative for the league by 2022. If it doesn't, it will remain much the same . . . not world class, but very solid.

Personally, I agree with his assessment. I'm not sure about the plan to add DPs, but I do think five would allow the teams the luxury of both using more slots on Americans and, also, to go back to our previous discussion, reward quality defenders and goal keepers too. If you only have three, offensive is at such a premium I think foreign attacking players will occupy most of the slots. Five would allow a more balanced use of the rule IMO.

Going up to 5 DP's would also require increasing each team's salary budget. Assuming the first ~$300K or so of each DP's salary counted against the cap, that's not going to leave all that much money to fill up the rest of the roster. I can't see too many teams being eager to hire that many DP's until the salary cap hits at least $5 million.

Absolutely.

I think his choice of words really does illustrate the league at this point:

"The lads asked questions ... players in England I speak to, youngish players that want to come over here and play" ..... that speaks directly to the growth of this league.

" It’s fairly always tight, usually tight games. For me, that’s been a challenge in itself because you have to be performing every week." .... that kind of flies right in the face of the pro/rel zealot brigade around here.

“Some people are quite ignorant, you know? It’s like, when people ask me about the league and stuff like that, you have to come here first to realize how hard it is to play here." .... talking directly about people in the UK/Ireland when they speak about the MLS.

He then though talks about the league being "what it is" and "not world class, but no so bad"

Very realistic from about as respected a professional footballer as there is. Nobody can argue with that but there will be those that will ... and feel their opinions are more truth than Keane's experience and take on it having actually lived both ends of the spectrum.

I agree with your take, but I think he was speaking about DPs merely because that's the construct as of today. More directly I feel he's talking to how close the league is to really making that "top league" push. He points to the DPs because that's what everyone knows. I mean, stating that merely adding another "top" player or two to teams around the league would be setting the clubs/league up for that push ? That's pretty encouraging in my opinion.

I think it was a very balanced take, the only part I kind of disagree with is the quote above. I'm not saying the quality wouldn't be better, but as he says, Tottenham has 20 DPs, and while they're a good team, they're not a big team.

What it would do is potentially make LA and NY superteams in MLS, for good or bad (assuming they increase the cap by another 600k to cover the new DPs. For the other teams, I don't know.

How many teams have used all three DPs at one time, and for how long?

Terrific find. What I like about the article is that Keane takes a "on the one hand/on the other hand" approach. He's not out to bash the league or praise the league, he's merely trying to explain it.

His cite of Mike Magee as the kind of player who would fill the 4th and 5th DP slots was kind of confusing to me. Either he was very imprecise in his use of "DP," or I don't get what he was really trying to communicate, or one of us is COMPLETELY wrong about the value of Magee. I like the guy and think it's very important to winning in MLS to have that kind of player on your roster, but he ain't a world beater. He's not worthy of a $300K+ salary.

Here's the follow up I would like to ask Robbie...how are players #6 through #16 going to be good enough to fulfill your vision of what MLS could be? I'm interested in whether he thinks the league will just increase the salary cap and get better foreigners as the main route to achieving that goal. Or whether he thinks the Rest of the Roster will improve primarily by better youth training. Even a club like Columbus or Kansas City has a base population for youth development that dwarfs almost every club in the world, so if an average sized MLS market like DC is 25% as efficient as a typical top division Euro club at developing talent from its base population, DC will have very, very good depth.

But we're such a long way from hitting that 25% mark.

Looking RSL, my guess is that such a change would sacrifice some of the competitiveness Keane lauds here:

Actually, looking at RSL and the way they've spent their money .... they'd up the competitiveness.

I'm just not sure RSL has that much more to spend. The new owner (Dell Loy Hansen) has said he'd be willing to spend more on the team, but that's no $5 million/year local broadcast deal. LA and NY will always be able to absolutely destroy Salt Lake in spending on DPs. Eventually, that cost differential will make a difference, no matter how intelligently RSL fills out their roster.

If there's a national TV deal that sends significantly more money back to teams in 2014, though, that might be enough to bridge the gap. I'd be cool with 5 DPs if RSL is getting $2 million/year in national TV revenue.

Pay American players. Losing players to Denmark, Sweden, Norway for a brief stint and slightly better pay needs to stop. Yes those leagues can offer UEFA CL and Europa League depending what team one is on, one could argue there's better coaching but some Americans go there for a season or two and then come back. MLS is no where close to being a top 10 league in the world if they can't even do that.

It starts with improving the average American player. Not finding a bunch of Euro/South American players looking for one last pay day.

Increase ticket prices.

Disagree. Paying a guy in a salary capped league 200k, 300k or more when his only other options are a Sweden or Denmark level leagues is a waste of money. If those are your Euro options as a player, you're not good enough to move the needle in MLS or makes that much of an impact, aside from a player here and there.

The best prospects we have in those leagues, guys like Mix, Gatt and Cunningham either grew up there or skipped MLS all together so they're not really part of the conversation. And the best prospects we have in MLS, the guys who are NT prospects for the most part have better options than those leagues.

IMO if you're going to throw 200k-300k at a younger prospect, instead of throwing that money at guys who aren't top 6 league caliber players you throw it at Brazilian and Argentinian U23's, or Columbian, or another of other countries I've outlined before who's players are going to Russia, Eastern Europe and Japan as there's not enough roster spots for playing time in their countries. There's very good young talent sitting on benches in those countries who go far and wide searching for playing time. Technically sound, tactically sound, creative players. That's where MLS should start turning it's focus. Not only would it add sorely needed creativity in the center of the pitch if done correctly, but they'd probably get higher transfer fees a few years later as well.

But throwing say, 250K at some 23 yr old who's only other option is a team in Norway or Sweden is a complete waste of money imo in a salary capped league. That's generally not that great a player. And the best Americans we have in those leagues skipped MLS all together.

Yeah, there's not really a point in increasing the number of potential DP slots until at least more than a couple teams have theirs actually filled. Once almost all the league's potential slots are full and in high demand, then we can talk about expansion.

That is what I was thinking as well. Once we see more clubs being able to attract more DP options in then we can talk about adding more. At this moment it would only benefit New York and LA.

And Seattle they had to trade some DPs to bring in another DP. They may not hire big name DPs like NY or LA but Seattle usually has at least 3 DPs and I assume they have the money to sign more.

They probably do. My problem is not the quality. Quality is something that, to me, is more of a... low barrier. The player does not have to be a world known star but he bring something that a normal non-DP player brings to the league. Whether its quality etc I dont care.

Are they going to play five-a-side's?

Ah, seriously, his heart is on the right place but ... it's just easier to increase the cap to $5M or so and drop the DP rule (or make it one per team, purely off the cap). Then you proceed to up the cap IF the revenues follow suit.

The current system is horribly anti-competitive. His proposal is NASL Part Deux.

There's no need for a salary cap in MLS. So 3 DP's or 5 DPs or 20 Dps is all just a silly scheme.

Replace the salary cap with financial fair play to prevent clubs from going bankrupt.

MLS playoffs are the great equalizer. You wouldn't have one or two teams winning every year.

Working so well at the moment in Europe at the moment.

I don't think they have any intention of jumping the cap $2 million. Garber has been very clear in recent interviews, including those during the games this weekend, that the salary cap will only increase as revenues increase -- they won't use higher pay to "prime the pump" and generate a bigger audience to generate more revenue.

This interview with Garber is currently on the league's website:

On importance of increasing salary cap to reach 2022 goal: "We don’t want to just have a league that is popular, we want to have a league that has a strong financial foundation, so it all has to work hand-in-hand. We want to grow our fanbase; that will lead to increased revenues. If our revenues are able to grow, I’m confident that we will, like most leagues, end up spending more of that revenue on players."

http://www.mlssoccer.com/news/artic...ks-seattle-media-about-tv-ratings-expansion-c

That suggests to me that unless they get a bigger fan base they won't do much beyond the annual 5% adjustment they have been making, because the I/Os are painfully aware if they move the cap up it locks them into more spending for successive years regardless of whether the revenue follows.

Now, history suggests that they might increase the DPs or the amount of allocation money in the system in a given year for selected players because they can always pull that back without changing the salary structure for everyone else.

So I understand the rationale for calling for a higher cap to bump salary budgets across the board, I just don't think that's on the menu.

Apparently, the owners disagree with random posters on the internet. I wonder who knows better what's good for MLS?

The league hasn't outgrown the need for the cap. It won't in the near future either.

How's about we see what FFP really means first ?

Check the all-time hardware list for the MLS guy.