The only current American DP's are Landon and Adu............right? I believe Houston offered DP money to Holden, but he chose to go to Europe instead. There are more cases like that. Here's the thing about the players you mention above. The league has them all on salaries lower than DP money. You want them to overpay??? If they want to keep Agudelo when his contract expires, they'll probably need to pay him DP money. He'll probably choose to go to Europe instead, though.
Interesting first pass. For me its a matter of production vs world economics. Feilhaber does make over $350. Beckerman is about $40K short so he's very close. Zusi will quickly move into the $300 range for his next contract if he stays consistant. Cooper is making $290 so he's close to 350K and for me he's too inconsistant. Agudelo is too young and has not yet proven on the field he is any more than potential at this point. You pay for performance and he doesn't have it yet. I like where he's headed though.
Looks like Villarreal is just like Delgado and can't make an appearance for the Galaxy until August. Per French: Jose Villarreal is not eligible to play for the Galaxy and won't be until August, when his first anniversary in L.A.'s academy arrives. http://espn.go.com/blog/los-angeles/soccer/post/_/id/17160/galaxy-saunders-shutout-lifts-l-a
actually its not capitalism. In free market capitalism companies compete for the employee. MLS is all one company and there is no competition.
Sort of. MLS has the majority of draft-eligible kids in this country by the short-and-curlies. The overwhelming majority of them don't have an opportunities in Europe/Mexico/etc. So if they want to start their career in the sport, they need to take what MLS offers. In this day and age there isn't "no competition" for American prospects, however. Mexican clubs are getting more aggressive in scouting/recruiting Mexican-American kids (particularly in California and Texas). European clubs are scouting and recruiting American kids more than ever before. Traffic was supposed to be a conduit for youngsters to latch onto clubs overseas as well, although we've seen what a disaster that can be. MLS will face increasing competition year after year, as essentially every American teenager is a free agent. Right now MLS is content to lose some of the top youth prospects to Euro/Mexican clubs. They offered Gale Agbossoumande a pretty good deal, and he chose not to take it. Fine. I believe they were in discussions with both Pelosi and Guido about joining the league on GenAd deals, and those two chose to go abroad. Fine. Right now MLS seems to be a stronger league than ever before. Attendance is doing great. The television package is stronger. The stadiums are getting built. As long as fans are happy with the product, and coming out in droves in most cities, the league isn't worried about possibly losing Junior Flores to a Euro club. Of the players mentioned above..............Kenny Cooper is an interesting case. [I'm going from memory here, so could be wrong about a few things] Kenny was on an above-average MLS salary as a youngster with FC Dallas. When his contract was close to expiring, Kenny's representation (especially his father) wanted DP or close to DP money from the league. MLS/FCD wasn't willing to give him that. I remember much consternation in some quarters that the league was willing to give DP money to unknown foreign players, meanwhile an American like Kenny (who had just come off an all-star year for FCD) wasn't offered the same. So the league/FCD let him pursue Euro opportunities, which eventually led to him being sold to 1860. But of course he flailed around Europe for years (due to injuries & performance)...........and came back to MLS with his tail between his legs. And they probably offered him the same deal they offered years ago (not DP money, but good money). And this time he took it.
Who's better or who's playing more or who's having a better stretch... Looking at salaries of someone else then comparing salaries then saying the lower should be raised is fool hearty. I think inherent skill and production is very close for the two. Castillo makes 56K and Agudelo makes 100K. I would think Castillo is alittle under paid but contracts are about leverage, negotiation, talent, and for 3-4 yrs. So everyone in the league at some point will be underpaid, overpaid, and appropriately paid during the life of a contract.
Good point. But its capitalism in the sense that MLS is one entity and the rest of the world is the competition if you show you have value on the open market of the rest of the world your leverage with MLS goes up. That's the capitalism I refer to.
The Gale Agbossoumande saga really highlights the problem with our league. It's not a free market league and thus players do not get their market value. You say that MLS offered Gale a pretty good deal. Whatever deal it was, it wasn't his market value. Gen Ad deals, discovery claims, allocations, drafts, and DP's are all gimmicks. The player should get his market value. Gale wants to play for NY Red Bull. He should be allowed to negotiate with NY Red Bull.
You keep repeating this over and over and over again as if saying it repeatedly will make it true. Gale was offered the chance to make more money for larger Spanish clubs like Villareal, etc. He turned it down to go to MLS, where he was offered a deal in the neighborhood of 150K per year with everything considered (80K base+incentives). He balked at the deal. It wasn't the choice of clubs that led him to this decision. It was the money. Those were his words. He saw the Spanish offers first and had a figure in his head and felt lowballed when he got the MLS offer. What you don't seem to understand is that his market value in the US is very different than his market value in Central America or his market value in Europe. This is the same trap Agbossoumonde fell into, and it's the reason he's in this predicament. Championship League in England has average revenues that are twice MLS. Premier League is 10 times. Even removing Real and Barca, La Liga is 3 to 5 times. Those guys can pay more because they have more. They can convert a player's work into cash (via gate receipts, television rights, merchandising, advertising a product) much better than MLS. So can a club like Braga. True market value is the highest and best use of a player. The highest and best use of a player is the club that will have him (for a given role in the squad) that makes the most money. It's pretty simple, and it holds true for all professions and other sports as well. It's the reason a star basketball player will earn more in the NBA than he will anywhere else in the world. Lebron James will not make as much money in euroleague. It's also the reason why NBA bench fodder can earn more in Europe as a starter for a euroleague club. An NBA team is not going to pay their 10th man 2nd or 3rd man Euroleague money. If there is enough of a disparity, a player can go sit on the bench for a megaclub making more money than he would being a star elsewhere. Just because Barca is willing to pay a guy X to rot doesn't mean that DC United should pay him the same amount to start. Similarly, a league with less money that needs some marketing faces (Henry and Beckham for example) might pay more than a richer club. But 19 times out of 20, a nameless youngster will earn more money playing at the biggest club that will have him--and that's not MLS thanks to the league's status...and that's not due to transfer fees or what you view as lowball player salaries.
this is the first time I've ever mentioned Gale's situation on these forums. So what exactly am i repeating thats not true? Fact : A player cannot get his market value when there is not free agency. It's irrelevant that you think 150k was a good deal. It's not the players market value. Not only that, the player would sign with MLS and then MLS decides what team he plays for (or the allocation system or some other gimmick). What you really don't seem to understand is that with single entity and no free agency there is no such thing as market value. There is no market.
He had at least 3 (and as many as 5) opportunities to latch on with a big European club prior to signing with Traffic. If it was about maximizing his earnings via "finding his market value", then his market value was with one of those 5 signings--not with MLS. Not even if there was unrestricted free agency for incoming players into MLS. Because all 5 clubs had much deeper pockets. Only exception: some MLS club would view him as a marketing savior (and therefore would be willing to pay more than normal) while European clubs would just view him as another good prospect. This scenario is unlikely because unlike a kid like Adu, he wasn't a household name for the general public. It's not that he had a choice of where he went if he signed w/ MLS. It's just that this is entirely irrelevant w/ respect to your argument..."market value", because his "market value" isn't on this continent. And without Adidas pumping in money and w/ no restrictions on players salaries in MLS, no team would be able to pay a teen of his level of development 150K anyway, so for this country, that likely exceeded what he could make in an open market setting in MLS. Which is my point. His market value globally can't be attained here anyway. What you're missing is that you're trying to run this using a simple econ 101 playbook you would use for standard businesses. Standard businesses either run in the black or have an imminent point at which they do so--otherwise they aren't businesses for long. MLS franchises aren't profitable--not when you look strictly at the soccer end and not the venue revenue generation for other events. In a market setting, a company (or one of its divisions) wouldn't continue to pay people X for 15 years without showing a profit. If you really want MLS to use an open economic model, it would never have existed in the first place. If the shackles came off, then undoubtedly some clubs will pay more and some will struggle. How many is open to debate. What isn't is that if restrictions were lifted, at least a couple clubs would be in trouble in a war of attrition and would fold. And unlike other industries, sports franchises aren't scalable. If 20 domestic auto cos consolidated into 3, that just means the volume of the other 17, and almost all of the workforce, is absorbed by the surviving 3 as they pick up that volume. If clubs fold, those workers are unemployed, and there is more competition for roster spots, which mitigates gains made by lifting restrictions anyway. And those gains wouldn't be felt across all player categories anyway: premium vets, young prospects, run of the mill vets, roster filler, etc. Some of them would likely end up with less $$$...different story for another time though. As others have mentioned, there is a market value, because the market is defined globally. Not within MLS.
you're argument really falls apart when you look at the NY Red Bulls roster: 4.6 million a year for Marquez. 5.6 million a year for Henry. If that's not the shackles off then I don't know what is. Over 10 million for just 2 players for a league that says we must have single entity or we will go under. This argument is just not logical. Then you have a player like Gale who has been capped with USNT and is not allowed to seek his market value in MLS. Who knows? His market value may be just 150k (I doubt it). But the reality with MLS is not only are players not allowed to seek their value in the league, they also are not allowed to pick which team they want to negotiate with. No, only over the hill foreign players are allowed to do that.
MLS simply is not ready for intra league free agency. Just because the league has enough money to grossly overpay two players does not mean they wherewithal to open that door for every player in the league. I'm also of the opinion that most of the players coming out of college and and from the lower leagues of Central and South America would be able to find better guaranteed contract than the one offered by MLS. That's why a player like Perry Kitchen signs with MLS instead of trialing around Europe as Agbossoumonde did.
I don't have a problem with your general argument. However, Gale Agbossoumande is a terrible example to make your point with. MLS got it right in that case. He's currently a sometimes-starter in the NASL making significantly less than MLS offered. I've pissed some people off on these boards by arguing that he's the most over-rated player in recent memory on these US youth boards. Every time I've seen him play he's been mediocre at best. The only time I was impressed was against Northern Irish teenagers at the Milk Cup. Stereotypical great athlete with no soccer brain. And MLS offered him 3-4 times what Tim Ream was making. MLS was willing to OVERPAY for Gale Agbossoumande because he was a young American. Due to his young age and inexperience, he would NOT have been a starter right away. Players get the salaries they do based on their leverage. Is Rafa Marquez overpaid? Of course. But that was a decision the Red Bulls made in order to acquire a current Mexican international from Barcelona. Tim Ream had no leverage. He was a 2nd round draft pick, who'd never played international soccer on any level. Only real NCAA soccer afficionados (and youth nutcases who knew him in Missouri) had any clue who Tim Ream was when he was drafted. Tim Ream took the lowball 45k deal MLS was offered, worked his butt off for several years...........and has now hit the jackpot. Stuart Holden was on 35k when he left MLS. Single-entity isn't going away any time soon. However, the Union and MLS are slowly chipping away. When you think of it, one of the biggest moves away from single-entity was the implementation of their homegrown signing policy. Clubs can now develop talent, and keep it in house. The draft has been cut down to only two rounds, because MLS wants clubs to do just that. When the next CBA negotiations come around, the sides will continue to chip away. Patience........... One could argue that the league exists only because single-entity allowed the owners a degree of security during the leaner years of the league. It's going to be a while before the owners move away from it.
I tried to a make a point about him being from Togo and thus having low expectations considering the quality of defenders they produce.
Colorado signs U17/18 DA player Shane O'Neill to a HG contract. http://www.coloradorapids.com/news/2012/06/rapids-sign-boulders-shane-oneill-homegrown-player
Youth players that sign their first professional contract don't get promised first team football. Its a step in a process whereby now he competes with the other team members continuing to develop. That's the professional way. Every young professional is not first team ready nor should they be expected to be. They have another development jump to make.
I understand your point theoretically but practically a point can be made that there is a world market with MLS being one component of that marketplace with input from its individual teams making recommendations on their salary offerings. So while not a true traditional laissez faire domestic market an arguement can be made that there is enough of a market for $150K being not only an appropriate price for a young American defender trying to get playing time who has not succeded for middle of the road European teams like Dujardens and Frankfurt, but also a market based salary offering. MLS is not trying to underpay everyone their trying to suppress salaries for unproven talent to reduce speculation which is the quick sand of capitalism. Once proven teams pay what is generally considered world based market value.
LOL what? Gale moved to the U.S. when he was 8 y/o. The hype for Gale came because he was wanted by some of the better La Liga clubs (Atletico Madrid, Sevilla), Sporting Braga wanted to sign him but Traffic demanded too much. Aalborg in Denmark wanted to sign him but Traffic asked too much, that was when the manager that signed him at Djuargardens was at Aalborg. He ended up going over a year without any real games except for a few U-20 YNT games, which set his progress back a ton. Don't want to turn this into Gale thread because he's not even in MLS, but this is a very good article to look at in regards to his past with contract situations. http://espn.go.com/sports/soccer/news/_/id/5764564/anguish-gale-agbossoumonde
It's definitely a bit unusual, but keep in mind that Hernandez has a Guatemalan father. The cultural transition should be easier that way and once that is settled, playing for Comunicaciones is better than playing for an NASL team. Assuming he actually plays, of course. Another MLS youngster not getting any PT goes out on a long-term loan, though. That's good and a loan to Central America is an interesting experiment even if this doesn't work out.