... or Why MLS will be adding more DPs soon. OK, lets lay it all out on the table, because some major stuff is going to have to go down this offseason. When MLS added the DP rule, and grandfathered guys like Donovan, Johnson, and Adu in for 07, they were setting themselves up for some major issues come 08. Here is what we have so far (we have to make a few fairly safe assumptions). The Galaxy want to play big time. They want more DPs and they want more big time players (Ronaldo, Figo, Shevchenko?). After the success of Beckham they want to add on. And they need to win. You can't be America's super club if you can't win. Adding Gullit (whether a good idea or not) was a serious play to continue to raise their profile. Gullit also has lots of contacts and pull in Europe and will certainly be looking to bring in some reinforcements. However, LA has only one DP and its being used on the most valueable player MLS has ever had, a guy named Beckham. They desperately need another, at the very least to keep Donovan or to add a new big time player. The word on the street is that Donovan has a no trade clause, so all of this may be a moot point. Even in that case they need a DP to retain Donovan. But what could they give up to get a DP from another team? Buddle and Tudela and an allocation. Probably not. DP's are highly valued, and after Chivas grossly undervalued their DP and gave it away for a couple of weeks of Amado Guevara (they go nothing), only to see Bruse turn around and sign one of the best forwards this league has ever seen. DPs are worth alot, and LA is not going to get one for anything less than Donovan. Teams are going to want major compensation. If LA trys to keep Donovan (under current rules they need a DP spot to keep him), they have almost no way of acquiring a DP slot. They have no leverage. Now lets assume that Donovan waives his no trade clause because he is sick of Lalas. Options are... 1.He would certainly love to go to San Jose and play with Yallop. But San Jose can't get him. LA would want a DP and as soon as they made the swap, San Jose would not have the mechanism to sign Donovan. No wiggle room. They could try to go get another team's DP slot. But what have they got. Some discarded players and some allocations. Plus as LBJ would say, all the other teams would have SJ by the short and curlys, because SJ would be desperate for a DP slot. No one is going to do them any favors. 2. Chivas is in LA so that might work also. Oh yeah, but they don't have a DP, so no deal. 3. Even if Donovan would want to go to another team, he can't because teams would have to trade away the DP mechanism with which they need to sign him. 4. He could leave for Europe. 5. LA could restructure his contract. Give him 5 million right now and then pay him $200,000 a year for the next five years. That might not even fly under MLS standards however. 6. The league could step in and re-assign him, since a trade could not get done. They did it before under Logan with Valderrama. But don't expect Anschutz to go for something like that. 7. My guess is that LA will force a showdown over the issue with them, the league and the other teams that don't want to add more Dps. They can basically sit on Donovan, not agreeing to any trade offers, and force the league to accomodate their needs. I see this happening. They will get a second or third DP somehow. MLS doesn't want to loose its most marketable American player and they certainly don't want him embroiled in a bizarre face off over salary cap room. Of course the Crew might be willing to trade their DP slot to LA for Josh Tudela and some salary cap space, since they seem to have the ambition of about a 5th division Moldovan league team. In any case, LA will want to keep Donovan or at least add another DP level player. Most likely they want both. Donovan probably wants to stay in LA and at least in the league. Under the current rules this seems almost impossible. Something will have to happen.
Re: The Donovan Conundrum Thanks, really, for this breakdown. It saved me a lot of reading in a 100+ post thread.
Re: The Donovan Conundrum Or the league could simply extend the grandfather clause for another year. We'll see.
Re: The Donovan Conundrum Interesting. I did not think of that one. That is like granting LA and KC a second DP without officially doing it, though. Other teams might not like that. Surely Donovan's agent is on the phone with someone at AEG and MLS about this as we speak.
Re: The Donovan Conundrum only one correction a team can not have 3 Dps, there is a 2 DP cap The league has also forced teams to trade players in the past. They not force a donovan trade but they may force LA to trade a few players away for a DP to retain Donovan
Re: The Donovan Conundrum My guess is they will allow teams a secon Dp spot. That would mean NY would have 3 and Chivas would get 1. Or if Reyna is renegotiated they may force NY to relinquish that DP back to Chivas and everyone will have 2. But i would bet anything that they are going to allow a second league wide, most will use just 1 though if at all.
Re: The Donovan Conundrum If they added a 2nd DP per team, then they would have to allow at least 3 to be allowed per team after trades. NY already has two and they would be bumped up to 3. LA could conceivably do the same thing.
Re: The Donovan Conundrum A few weeks ago, I had pondered the issue on the YA board (where a frequent Donovan rumor pops up now and again). This is the solution I came up with - Step 1. The LAG trades their (first) draft pick(s) for an allocation, which lowers Donovan's cap number by $300K-$400K. Step 2. The league raises the total team cap (to, let's say, $3M) and the maximum non-DP level salary (from the current $400K to ... eh, let's say $500K). Step 3. The league raises the foreign player limit. Step 4. Donovan is no longer a DP player with a on-the-books salary of $500K (though he still gets $900K) plus the Galz have room to sign a couple of mid-tier free agents. Step 5. Lalas trades Joe Cannon, Mike Randolph, Abte Jasic, Kelly Gray and Edson Buddle to Toronto for Marvelle Wynn, who promptly injures his foot and is out for the season.
Re: The Donovan Conundrum It would be fun to do a poll on this, and break it down by fanbases. My guess is that about 80% of NYRB and Gals fans think this is what will happen, while about 20% of the fans of the other 11 teams think this will happen.
Re: The Donovan Conundrum I'd like the league to increase the number of DPs spots, but I think a more likely compromise would be the permanent grandfathering of "DPs" before the creation of the DP rule.
Re: The Donovan Conundrum Hey, my view is this. Uncle Phil carried this league and in some respects (along with Hunt) he is the only reason we are having this discussion. Phil wants a second dp per team, give it to him. They are good for business, and they will raise the level of play but not in a crazy way. So the galaxy get to keep Donovan. Will the Fire be at a disadvantage because we have the non-DP Chris Rolfe playing the same position? Your count may be wrong, however, because you can probably lump Fire fans in with NY and LA as we need a striker and we have an owner willing to flash the cash.
Re: The Donovan Conundrum I think it will happen. It is an embarrassment to the league for its highest profile team to suck. Forcing them to trade Donovan (who is apparently untradeable anyway) in a deal where LA has no leverage would not help that situation. Whereas simply allowing everyone to have two DPs would get rid of the headache. On paper it would be a fair move, since every team would have the option of signing the same number of DPs. Problem is I don't think "the league" can mandate something like that, since you need the approval of all the owners, no?
Re: The Donovan Conundrum It's much easier to raise all the caps and the minimums than to pass another DP rule. I doubt many owners would be against an increased cap, as it gives them far more room to sign players, DP or not.
Re: The Donovan Conundrum As we can see, there are numerous ways for MLS to change rules that allow Donovan to stay with the Galaxy. MLS changes rules on this stuff regularly; sometimes seemingly after the fact.
Re: The Donovan Conundrum excellent points, especially considering how adamant the league has been about saying the current DP rule is a 3-year plan, and will not be re-evaluated or altered until the end of the 2009 season. raised minimums (to both the cap and the non-DP level of pay) will help all teams facing "conundrums" of high-earning non-DP players who were grandfathered in during year 1 of the DP rule (2007). initially i thought LD might be interested in trying to get to SJ, asap. now, I think he'll stay in LA (or perhaps go to Europe), but he very well could be back in SJ with Yallop (as soon as they get their own stadium built, 2010).
Re: The Donovan Conundrum They will find a way to allow Beckham and Donovan to both stay in LA. Thats why everyone in LA thinks this will happen, the grandfather is suppsoed to end this year so Ruiz, Johnson, and Donovan will all suposed to be covered by the DP rule. They cant say everyone can have 2 now and not give NY another one since they had to trade value for it. Maybe they do limit it at 2 and give NT a major allocation as compensation, or maybe the Reyna deal is allowed to be altered as rumored and they can use their 2nd again. Bottom line is the DP rule has been a major success overall, and you can bet MLS officials will devise a way to allow LA a second DP to cover Donovan. His contract is airtight, the best contract nay player in MSL was able to negotiate. He aint leaving LA and Becks isn't either, thus something has to be done. My guess is the 2 DP rule and they will figure something out for NY to make it work. (then again, i know for a fact RB and MLS HQ are not on the best of terms with each other, so maybe they dont care if NY gets screwed over)
Re: The Donovan Conundrum I kind of see it the other way. Adding a DP doesn't add any cost to the league; all the cost is borne by the team. However, if you raise the cap, the league has to come with the additional money for all the teams. If the league has the money then they might as well raise the cap, but DP's are a seperate issue. They're about competitive balance rather then money.
Re: The Donovan Conundrum 1) With San Jose coming back, LA could probably trade a few players for SJ's DP spot. 2) I've said a few times I could see the league adding extra DP spots, but not necessarily two per team. Raise the limit to a maximum of 3 per team, with 24 spots for the league (1.5 per team). The extra 8 could be given out via a lottery, or just first come first serve basis. The point being a limit of 3 per team with 24 in the league gives an interesting twist to the rule and solves the immediate "Donovan problem".
Re: The Donovan Conundrum The introduction of an American DP slot, to keep the players such as Donovan, Johnson, etc., could help solve the problem. That way, teams can look abroad for that star player and still pay their top American the big money. Every team would get 1, with a limit of 2 per team, much like the current DP slots.
Re: The Donovan Conundrum That could be a possibility, but they would still have to give NY another DP spot. They probably wouldnt knowing MLS but the it would make sense to do so. Because NY traded for Chivas's primary DP spot. They didn't trade for an american DP spot that would be made up out of thin air. If they are going to allow every other team to have a second american only DP then we should also get one of those two. Whatever they decide to do they are going to have to figure out how they are going to treat the only team that traded value for a DP spot in MLS.
Re: The Donovan Conundrum There is a player on the Galaxy whose been waiting for years to suit up for the Quakes: Joe Cannon. I don't see the Quakes using that DP slot in their first year, so a DP for Joe Cannon and a package of other players seems like the likely scenario.
Re: The Donovan Conundrum And that's the real source of the problem here. These guys probably should have been grandfathered for the length of their contracts, since they were all signed before the rule existed. Instead they come up with the arbitrary 1-year grandfather, which only postponed the problem until now. That said, dave's right. An addition to the DP rule is going to run into a lot of no votes from Hunt, Kraft, Kroenke, Checketts, OnGoal, probably MacFarlane and Wolff. Maybe even MLSE, as they're unlikely to go out and get two of them.
Re: The Donovan Conundrum You mean... ... The league had the audacity to NOT cede the Galaxy this favor? But I thought the entire purpose of the league was to give LA every advantage it can get? And it would have nothing to do w/ the box office success of Blanco and Beckham and how that has led to a shattering of merchandise sales records, given the league legitimacy in Toronto, whose season ticket sales sky-rocketed? It has nothing to do w/ league estimates that around the league season ticket sales (outside of LA and TFC) shot up 10% w/ the signing of Beckham? It has nothing to do w/ high profile DP's probably leading directly/indirectly to shirt sponsors? My gawd! The DP's have been a rousing success, and even b4 the arrival of Blanco, w/in weeks of signing Becks, league officials were predicting that the economic windfall would allow for a raise in the cap. Get over the "It's an AEG Conspiracy" crap for once and for all.