Oh yes. I'm with you there. I will never pretend to understand MLS finances. Especially in regards to NY/LA who seem to operate from a separate financial rule book.
NY and LA have deep pockets. The cap only covers some of the DP money. the rest has to come from out of pocket, sponsors, allocation can help bring the hit down etc. My Soccer IQ is not that high to understand it all but this is the picture I get. You can pay a guy whatever you want but most of the money has to come from somewhere that is not MLS' salary cap.
NY has deep pockets in Red Bull who basically writes blank checks and LA pretty much has the same thing. Not sure if I am remembering this correctly but when Beckham signed MLS helped the Galaxy out with certain exceptions to the merchandising percentages the player got as MLS wanted Beckham at all costs and I have no clue if that changed with him resigning. Besides having deeper pockets then most of the other teams they also have the attraction of the 'life style' some players may want. I wish MLS would do something about it but NY and LA are the cash cows of the league. It also hasn't helped that the rules keep getting adjusted to benefit those two teams (there are others that are close but still not in the same financial category that they are) with adding of DPs and other things.
Beckham is paid by his management team (Simon Fuller) to play for the Galaxy, because it increases his exposure, and therefore his non-salary income, of which they get enough of a percentage to make a t on the deal. This is detailed in The Beckham Experiment. That leaves Donovon and Keane to be paid for by the Galaxy, which has a big sports oriented ownership group that can afford them. Donovon seems to have been grandfathered in under some strange arrangement because I believe he was already outside the normal rules when Beckham came in. If the Union could find somebody Bimbo was willing to pay, that could work too. But they have been taking advantage of Generation Adidas to have Adidas cover a bunch of their payroll.
The orininal contract had a gimmick like this because there wasn't a formal DP. AEG did pay Beckham but there were obviously quite a few other opportunities for him to earn. Simon Fuller has been out of the picture in LA for falmost five years.
I saw him play against PDL at the college of new jersey last season and he looked like a pro then. He was def the best player on the field for fc del co
So, realizing that there are some insane exceptions, would it be generally correct to say that the "salary cap" represents how much each team is allowed to have paid by the central MLS pool of $$? (as opposed to the team's total payroll like in other sports) Beyond that, you are allowed to pay a player anything you want to help lure them to your team -- but all of that extra money is solely the team's responsibility? So in theory if the Union attracted some crazy investors who scraped together $20M to lure Aguero, only $200,000 of that might hit the cap and be paid for by MLS while the team would foot the rest of the bill?
More or less, that's the case. Each team can only field three designated players though. I think they need to pay a fee for the third space tough. These players take up about $370k or cap space, paid from the salary budget. Teams also receive allocation money from the central pool. The amount varies for a number of reasons and, though it has an expiration date, teams haven't lost any of the budget set aside. A percentage of any transfer fee received when a player is sold also goes in to this allocation pool. This money can be used to pay transfer or loan fees or to buy down a player's cap hit. For example, a player signs for $500k. A team could avoid dipping into it's own pocket by applying allocation money to that salary. If a team had $200k to use, it could use it and effectively change the cap hit to $300k. There are also non-budget contracts which do not carry a cap hit. The Gen Adidas contracts and some homegrown players fall into this category. In the case of GA players, they can get a much larger salary than they might otherwise command. Once they graduate, all bets are off though and the salary counts so the player will need to earn the cash to stay. The combination of DP, off-budget, and allocation dollars applied to a payroll accounts for the deviation between the stated cap and the actual team by team spend.
OK thanks -- makes more sense to me now. Sorry for the thread hijack -- I suppose it's probably the question I would've asked at the Summit given that this team, while promising & youthful, still needs a serious injection of quality.
Yeah, no Bimbo sponsorship on the shirts. Henry & Keane have done well with there clubs, by putting the ball in the back of the net. We need a player like who's able to do that. Maybe we could get a loan deal done with Man U for Chicharito. I'm sure Bimbo would love to pay for a player that has a huge following in Latin America.
I wouldn't want any of them on the Union. I'd rather see MLS as a league that develops talent. Not one where players go to wind down their careers.
f league development, I want to see championships. FYI, if the U had 2 of the 3 (Raul, Drogba, or Anelka) we would be talking playoffs not playing the kids in August. and if you say, you would rather see development and league growth over aging vets and cup, you are lying to yourself.
I'm happy lying to myself then. I'm not stupid enough to think MLS can compete with the big leagues for top players in their prime. But they can become a league that attracts top young talent to develop. That won't happen as long as its viewed as a retirement home payday. And yes, I'd cheer the Union all they way to to Cup if they decided to sign a Raul, Drogba or Anelka. But that doesn't mean I think that's the best model for the long-term success of the league.
Ideally the teams with the best success have been able to blend the two. Nothing helps develop young talent than quality veterans that can impart their past experience on a kid, as well as the "match day general" stuff that is definitely needed as well.
Drogba would score 20 goals in MLS. Don't kid yourself. He would make us an instant contender for the fifth spot, at the absolute worst.
That is how I feel as well. You can have all the young talent (oh look, the Union are the youngest MLS team) but you need some help in mentoring the young ones. Without Yoda, Luke never becomes a Jedi Knight like his father......I had no problem with Mondargon coming her last year thinking it would be for only two years. I think MacMath would have been able to learn more from him this year, especially if they were splitting time. Paun Star was also a good player for us late last year. Now neither of those were DPs (Mondragon was close) but if you get the right player with the right mix of young talent it should only help regardless of their salary. Cahill would have been nice but I doubt he really would have gone anywhere else. What ultimately will help MLS the best is getting some high priced veterans spattered throughout the league with some young hot international prospects mixed in and the core being American/Canadian middle of the road quality players and the handful of mid-quality internationals to round out each team. For the foreseeable future MLS cannot attract the Neymars of the world but may be they can find diamonds in the rough. With soccer being the 5th most popular sport here we would need something catastrophic to happen for that to change.
I have no problem with veteran talent and think it plays a role (Mondragon as noted above). I don't think that veteran talent needs to be a big name, highly priced DP. It can be. But I don't think an Anelka is the kind of veteran influence any team needs.
Just saying. But look at the LA Galaxy. They went after Lampard, offered him 2 years, $20 million, and were unsuccessful. So what do they do next? They're going after Kaka for the winter transfer window. We just need one of those players to get back to scoring real goals.
Drogba still has it and he is probably making more money now than he ever did per year. Who said communism doesn't work.
I just wonder if the Chinese league will be like the old NASL and spend themselves out of existence. I haven't the foggiest clue how their soccer league is funded though, if it receives government funding then maybe it can, if not they will have to sell a lot of tickets to afford players like Drogba. While Drogba was one of the few big names linked even remotely with the Union that I really would have liked, there was no way we could compete with the money he got.
The owner is a rich bastard. Shanghai is the Galaxy/Red Bulls of the Chinese League. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhu_Jun_(businessman)
