Fair enough. You can do that; and I can find these discussions tedious and irrelevant, however sanctimonious that may come off to you. There are two sure ways to derail YA threads, as I see it: comparing the relative merits of foreign and US leagues, and discussing a YA's national team potential.
The main problem with YA is that some people come here 15 times a day and there is nowhere near enough players and relevant content to justify that so it leads to lots of off topic posting.
If it references the player in the context of soccer its on topic. Such narrow views of what is appropriate to post makes all of this BS endeavor boring. Side discussions are fine with me, thought police not so much.
A pair of Yanks up top in today's friendly match: Broll - Lorch, Krause, Hoffmann, Maria - Binakaj, Bauer, Aschauer, Damaschek - Gyau, Rodriguez— DORFKLUB® (@sgaspach) February 14, 2017
I explained my position and you agreed with it. Wasn't about bad mouthing MLS, it was about freedom of movement and opportunity, and that if he's betting on himself to return to a higher level, he has far more chance impressing where he is and moving up to a better league than if he came to MLS. I'd suggest it's the simple feeder league vs non-feeder league scenario. If you want to move up, you're better off in a feeder league. An example, does Wood make it to HSV if he didn't move around in the 2Bund and instead signed with MLS? Most likely, no. Evidence is MLS has hasn't sold an American to a Bund club since Landon many moons ago. I generally find it odd that viewpoint is widely accepted but as soon as MLS is mentioned, gets a negative reaction. It's a global game, naturally many leagues/trajectories will be compared, including MLS when a yank is on the move. In no way did I suggest the 3Liga is a higher standard than MLS. That wouldn't be the case. I honestly don't know why you took it that way when the above is pretty straight forward. So now we hope Gyau impresses and gets opportunities. If that happens, it could be the 2Bund, maybe another league in Europe or MLS. And if it is MLS, he likely earns a little more than he would coming of an injury and not playing. Lletget got about 100K/Y coming to LAG after not playing but he wasn't coming off injury. So maybe Gyau would have gotten 70-80K? I too would have bet on myself where he is and tried to parlay success into more money than that. And evidence of that is mild success in Norway got Mix 700K+, failing in the C'Ship got Shea 520K, a few goals in the Ered also got Agudelo 425K. So financially if your goal is MLS, it makes more sense to find any success you can in Europe as MLS pays more for that. My guess is Gatt's move to Minn sees him earning more than what Lletget got.
Ok, these are the guys who have the rights over most 3.Liga games that are broadcast at all: https://www.ndr.de/fernsehen/ They focus on teams from Northern Germany though, so it would be a good idea to check their Livestream when Sonnenhof is playing a team from that area.
Agreed. My ten cents worth is that while MLS play has improved a hell of a lot in the last 5-6 years, to the point where most MLS teams would give a lot of BL2 or Championship sides a run for their money, MLS pay hasn't improved as much. If you strip out the DPs and the players who aren't DPs but are in the "if he's fit, he starts" category (Jamison Olave at RSL or Michael Parkhurst at the Crew) the player's wages in MLS are still pretty poor, esp. for the depth players. If you look at the player's union figures, there's still a lot of guys on $50-60k total compensation. Someone like Gyau could be on as much as 100k Euros with fringes (accommodation, car, maybe food), with bonuses on top (no. of games played, no. of goals scored, win bonuses, etc.) and a really serious upside - doubling or tripling his money - if he moves to BL2, and doubling or trebling that if he makes it to BL1. For Gyau is the fact that his new club is owned by a top agent - word about his abilities will get out fast if he plays well - is another plus point over MLS, whatever the level of play. Also, MLS has a reputation for demanding excessive transfer fees and insisting on contracts with options that can tie a player down for a long time. If mid-table BL3 squad is his level, he's not going to be making any less than he'd get in MLS and MLS will still be there when his contract runs out in June 2018. If the lad thinks he still has what it takes to make it in BL 2 (or even with a BL3 promotion contender), he owes it to himself to find out.
So much misinformation here. The reserve minimum this year is $53k, which is a base, not a "total compensation". Any player on that salary automatically is guaranteed by the CBA to a bonus of $1,250 for every game he starts (or $750k if he comes off the bench) plus 4% paid on top of the salary into a retirement fund (which is actually required for all players regardless of salary level). Moving expenses, top notch medical care, not to mention other paid media appearances, sponsorship gigs, per diems, meals, etc. Most importantly, the guys on these low end contracts are unproven young players (typically with next to no MLS experience) and the equivalent unproven young players around the world aren't making more. Big prospects get better salaries in MLS like they do around the world. Not to mention, only 4 players per team are allowed to be on that contract level. In total, there were 51 players on this pay scale in MLS last year, or about 9% of MLS players. A guy like Gyau wouldn't even be eligible to be on that pay scale. At the VERY minimum, he'd be on $65k base, which is the senior minimum. There is this absurd notion that foreign teams pay bonuses and provide housing and cars and MLS doesn't. That's absolutely false. MLS has provided housing and cars for players in the past and present and it's all accounted for in the CBA. It's absolutely something you can get built into your contract. This doesn't also doesn't account for other required bonuses that the CBA guarantees league wide for teams such as $7.5k per team for every regular season win, $20k for qualifying for the playoffs, $275k for winning MLS Cup and other benchmarks which are off-cap. It also doesn't even touch that all of those bonuses you mentioned are able to be negotiated in MLS contract. Performance based contracts aren't uncommon at all, particularly for players coming off injuries. Plus every player making less than $150k is guaranteed at least a 5% raise the next year. MLS salaries are absolutely bonus laden as guaranteed by the CBA and any extra bonuses can and frequently are built into contracts. We'll see what Minnesota signed Gatt for but I'd imagine it's more than $100k (though Gatt had a lot more previous success than Gyau did before his injuries) and his contract will have significant performance incentives. Plus, the salaries shown by the MLSPU are notoriously iffy and on the low side. There was an interview with Garth Lagerway a year or two ago about the increasing transparency of MLS and he was against releasing true compensation numbers, which are almost always above the MLSPU guaranteed compensation numbers. But ignoring all that, the median salary in MLS in 2016 was $116k . 57% of the players in MLS made more than $100k, 41% made more than $150k, 22% made more than $200k, 18% made more than $300k. Also the "if you take away the top earning players" thing is such malarkey. Take away the top earners of any team/league and you're going to have a significantly lower number. The top three earners for Barca (Messi, Neymar and Suarez) account for about 40% of Barca's first team wage bill. While it's true MLS's top heaviness is certainly higher than most, top heavy wage bills occur in most teams around the world, you can't just waive away those players. Just in general, if you average the nth highest paid player on each MLS team in 2016 (compared to 2010), you get this: Now you tell me MLS hasn't improved it's pay over the past 5-6 years. An MLS team could match whatever he's getting at Sonnenhof without breaking a sweat if they felt he could contribute. Guys like Fafa Picault and Gatt are in similar boats and both came to MLS recently, so we'll see what their MLSPU numbers are. The MLS salary budget at this point is, including all the allocation money MLS has been flooding the streets with recently, about $5.3m minimum. That doesn't take into account the two expansion teams this year who get a ton of extra allocation money which widens the pool even more, plus any players sold generate allocation money, money given to teams in the CCL or you suck allocation given to teams who miss the playoffs. In reality, the average budget is much higher. So considering that, the average salary for a player on an MLS senior roster (counting DPs as the max salary of $480k) will be $265k. If you just exclude DPs entirely and assume every team carries three, it would be $227k for non-DP senior roster players.
Why do we have to rehash all this here? None of it is new, it has all been discussed ad naseum and nobody is changing their position because of some post that brings new light on a subject that has been examined at length across multiple threads. It is clear that a move to MLS very likely limits his career choices well beyond what playing in Europe will do simply because the single entity that is MLS pretty much controls your career once you sign with them. Competition or lack thereof, for players does that. There are pros and cons to both sides, successes and failures, for both options. Although not many players start in Europe, come to MLS, and return to Europe. Anybody???
Plenty of Europeans do! I was going to say Steve Clark, but in checking that I realized I forgot he had a one-year stint as a backup in the USL in 2009 before heading to Hønefoss. Hmm. Stu Holden went Sunderland --> Houston --> Bolton. Oh...Landon Donovan.
I'm still pretty new here so I'm just going to ask it. Is there any corner of BS where we can discuss yanks abroad without having MLS come up every five minutes?
I doubt it. MLS is the top league in the USA, so people following Yanks Abroad--mostly from the USA--will likely always draw comparisons. But, if people like Jond stop intentionally inflaming things then perhaps we will get a 10-minute respite.
Very unlikely. Someone will always bring it up and a flame war will start. Best thing to do is ignore it and try not to bring it up yourself.
This annoys me as well. Every time I see the letters MLS, I just stop reading and go to the next response.