The Designated Player

How is mls going to get globally respected without getting global players?
Paying mls current players more won't improve field play. MLS owners
won't pay those players much more even if there were no DPs. This is
just stupid argument that people makes who don't want DPs in the
first place. You make it sound like mls owners are so low on cash that
they of to choose between Dps or paying everybody more. The owners
who wants Dps also want the cap to increase more as well. While the
ones who don't want DPs also don't want the cap to increase by much.

Is global respect the goal?

I think it's a side effect.

I'm not an MLS player, so I don't have a problem with DPs. But of course paying MLS players more will improve play! As soon as a player gets any good, he leaves for a higher paying league overseas. So the league as a whole can't get any better.

The MLS owners could pay more for salaries. They are billionaires. With a ~$2M salary cap shared by 17-18 players, they are ensuring parity in the league with a median salary that is probably barely above the poverty level.

Paying an average player more will not improve his performance on the field, he will continue to be an average player that is better compensated. Lets take Bobby Burling for example(not trying to pick on someone, just had to pick a player making the senior minimum). He makes 34,000 per season. Everyone, including Bobby, knows that if he wants to make more he needs to become more valuable to his club.

The point being that security breeds complacency while a system that pays players based upon their market value(I'm guessing that Bobby doesn't have anyone willing to pay him more than 34k to play soccer) is superior in terms of motivating and fairly compensating players.

I don't agree with your point but I don't have any problem with mls paying players more. Its just that the owners who want to spend more are the
sames one being attack e.g AEG. The pressure should be put on owners
who don't want to spend instead of the ones who do. I wouldn't mind each team have 4 dps options without any money against the cap. If
a owner don't want to make that investment then find just don't stop
the owners who do.

I think 4 is a bit much but if every team had two, the teams that wanted to use them could trade for two more.

well said totally agree.
off the field MLS is doing great things but on the field is still the same
or worst than it was in the late 90's.
Soccer is not the same as other american sports like tuckle ball for exsample you don't know how good are those sports because the rest of the world does not care and there is not competition. but soccer is a worldwide sport were there are differents levels.
does MLS has a goal of improving the level of play ?
If yes it should be step by step first win on soccer fans that live in USA
that don't respect MLS, beat their teams. CENTRAL AMERICANS, MEXICANS, AFRICANS, ASIANS, SOUTH AMERICANS, EUROPEANS etc
and with DP's wich region can we beat the did'n beat before ?

Are you really going to sit there and say that the level of play is lower now than it was in the late 90s? Because if you are you are flat out wrong and have no idea what you are talking about. The league was nearly unwatchable in the late 90s. But I still when to games because well it was the only way I could attend live soccer games on a regular basis.

The other issue that people are not talking about here, or at least most of you are not is that the reality is that most of the players here are paid by their actual market value. That is not to say that there are not some under paid players, and there are some over paid players, but for the most part most of them are making what they should in our system. The problem is that when we look at european leagues there is huge wage inflastion which is directly related to the transfer window system. If I had to put a number on it I would say at least 50% of player in europe are over paid based on fair market value.

The other aspect of our wage system, which triplet and Stan Collins have stated several times, is that if the cap goes up that does not mean that lower end players are going to suddenly get paid more. There is actually a pretty good chance that they might end up losing their jobs all together as FO's suddenly have more money to spend on better players. So the decision becomes I can pay a guy that is making 35k a year another 50k or I can take that money and the money I might be paying his teammates that are making around the same and apply that money to buying a much better player and maybe eliminate a lower end player. This is also why money is not really a bid issue with the CBA as it is not like Petke is going to suddenly get some huge raise...

also as far as winning over soccer fans, well there are some fans that are just never going to care about mls. These are generally people that refer to it as football because they are flat out snobs. They will be content to simply watch the epl et al.

That's a logical fallacy. Without changing league eligibility rules, MLS - for the most part - has the best players it can currently get. Increasing the salary cap, unless you're talking about orders of magnitude, will only result in the current players making more.

Exactly.

In leagues with strong salary caps, it is the "average" player who gets squeezed the most. Just like we've seen with Los Angeles the last few seasons, when two or three "stars" eat up most of the salary cap space, the team tends to 1) underpay the average players and 2) load up on entry level players at the minimum salary.

The salary lists of leagues like MLB, NHL, and NBA begin to look like a proverbial donut. "Average salary" and even "Median salary" begin to lose meaning. There are the stars making many multiples the average, the bulk of the players within spitting distance of the "minimum" and not a whole lot in between.

One reason TV series end earlier than they used to is that networks generally feel that it's cheaper to develop a bunch of new series with low paid "stars" than fork over the increasing salary demands of established stars that the series can't continue with. NBC may shell out for a final season of Friends or Seinfeld, but even a cable series like Stargate Atlantis got canned after five - not because of ratings, but because the increasing regulars' salaries made creating a whole new series more palatable.

But then, those same factors exist in MLS even today - but a different scale.

No I realize that it is generally the the middle level players that get hit, but if you notice the time of the post and factor in the bar down the block and the snow storm...i was 3/4 in the bag by the time I wrote that. So I am just glad that it is intelligible...

And as far as the entertainment thing yeah I get that as I work in the entertainment field, and I have two pilots in development as well as a documentary...

Yes base on the international results in CCL by DC UNITED and GALAXY
in those years also when DC beat VASCO DA GAMA in the intercontinental
cup in 1998 those team played better than todays DC & GALAXY.
and about the market value maybe you are wright for exsample the Mexican league is among the best paid in america maybe next to the brazilian league, but the market value is as big as it can gets, like the owner of club america is a billionere he could bring any player from
europe as messi or C ronaldo but the market is not big enough to pay for those salaries, and I think the USA market has the potencial to be bigger than the mexican market.
Also in the future in order to grow this game in CONCACAF my ideal is to create a league to compete with europe is a 20 teams league like
8 from mexico like chivas, america, cruz azul, monterrey etc.
8 from USA galaxy, ny, chicago, seattle etc 3 from canada
toronto, vancuver, montreal maybe one or two from central america
this way you increase the market value from this region with cities and clubs with resourses to really grow this game.

That's a good observation. Caps not only control payroll, but especially when coupled with free agency, they tend to shift and concentrate payroll dollars from average players -- or more accurately players who, for whatever reason, were not been in a strong bargaining position when they signed their contracts -- to those players who (at least at the time of the contracts were signed) teams wanted to retain or attract.

That's why I am a proponent of taking at least one DP slot off the cap if the first $415,000 of their pay is funded by the I/Os. Not only would it provide the I/Os with more incentive to take the risk and sign more DPs, it shifts fewer dollars away from those "average good" players who may not have "names" that draw people to the stadiums, but are important to elevating the overall level of team play.

If players were really paid their market value, would Stuart Holden be earning $37,000? Of course not. Since all players are owned by MLS, there is no competition for players amongst MLS team owners. So there is no way players are getting paid on an open market salary.

If the salary cap went to a reasonable level, even the lowest end players would get paid more. And in fact, the level of play would increase, because all salaries would rise, and the lowest paid player could earn a real living wage of perhaps at least $70,000.

The key is the definition of a reasonable payroll for MLS. In 2003, the Oakland A's had the lowest MLB payroll of $40M for ~25 players, whereas the Yankees had the highest payroll of $200M. The MLS payroll is limited to only $2M. And yet, the better of those players could go to Europe and get salaries comparable to the MLB. I just think the MLS has to raise its salary cap to like $8M if it wants any respect in global club football.

Yes, because that's what he was worth when he signed the contract.

Let's try this again.

Yes, because that's what he was worth when he signed the contract.

MLS should set up two salary caps. They should have the standard 2.3 million salary cap (or whatever is decided as part of the CBA) that covers all but two players on your team. They then should have another salary cap that covers two players (i.e. two DP's)

the team will have to be required to stay within the 2.3 million cap, but the DP cap could be either set by the league as not to exceed a certian number or be unlimited. the bottom line though is that the DP should not count against the cap.

What was he worth when he signed the contract he played under in 2009?

Do you believe he'll earn $37k in 2010?

Wahl may have been trying to make a larger point about DP's, but it's really all about Beckham. Beckham has paid off financially. Blanco has. The others.... not so clear.

MLS hasn't made the decision to have unbalanced payrolls. The LA Galaxy has. You're quoting Vanney is interesting, because on the Rapids he was a high priced player. In LA he's not. He should recognize the difference between the way the Galaxy has gone and the way the league has gone.

If Holden were getting current market, no, but then that's the double edged sword of contracts. Players who are confident about their ability to grow their value, should abhor contracts that tie them to yesterday's value. Players who are worried about a decline in value, they love contracts, because they're protected from tomorrow's value. Owners have the inverse, issues.

Sure, there's no cap on the DP, but what difference would it make it there was? Would a cap have put Beckham and Blanco out of reach? If so, that would be a shame, because they appear to be the two DP's paying for themselves.

Make it like australia's A-league.

DP is cap exempt.
Junior DP (U23) in which $150,000 of his salary is cap-exempt.

This amounts to arm-twisting teams that don't want to use it into using it by giving the big clubs a tax break on it.

Our generation adidas program is already more generous than this. You can have a bunch of talented young players, totaling a good bit more than 150k, on your roster and not have to pay for it.