Agree, but see it a bit differently. By attacking instinct, if you mean beat 2,3,4 people on the dribble, I agree 100%. His attacking instinct is with the pass (why some use the DeBruyne comparison) not the dribble, but with the same result. I’ve seen him beat players, but he needs to look to do it more and improve in this area. Setting up teammates in the final third is why I think he will be an 8. That said, he could just as easily end up as a CB. He won’t have the license to roam as a 6 at the next level like he does in the youth level. So many variables...team style, teammates, etc will dictate that. I love Durkin as well. While they share some traits, I think they are completely different players . Servania could be a decent comparison if we had to choose a younger American to compare skill sets, a huge one being versatility.
Cochoran is pretty solid in the final third in my opinion but I think his strength as a player is his passing range and ability to command the midfield. He isn’t going to be your bulldog 6 but he will be more defensively adept than a player like Chris Durkin. When Adrian Simons-Gill is looking like the best option as the 8 I think Cochoran would be fantastic as the 6 for the next u17 cycle and the 2025 u20’s.
I disagree, it absolutely is coming out of my pocket. If I'm worth 100k to a company, and they know they're going to have to pay my University 20k, they're going to pay me 80k, because any more than that and they'll be spending more than they're getting. Or more likely, they're going to find someone from a University they don't have to pay, and give him 85k. Either way, I'm getting less than I'm worth because of the set up. As for soccer, great players will come out of it fine, but mediocre players are a very liquid market. Players who have TC required with them will be less in demand and get worse offers because of it.
durkin acknowledged his disappointment with his performance and specifically cited being a half step slow or whatever and working to get quicker. speaks to a willingness to work hard and realistic view of what needs improving
This just isn’t the case in football and the comparison isn’t valid. TC/SP is completely separate from wages, but use the same valuation to determine the flow of money. This is the very reason that wages are typically agreed before the acquisition takes place. These two completely separate valuations drive the wage and acquisition price and one has ZERO effect on the other. Now, will a high wage demand or a high acquisition fee on their own reduce the number of possible suitors, absolutely. A better analogy using a University is to imagine a University holds your employment rights (I know it couldn’t happen, but go with it) until you graduate (end of youth contract). The market has already set the value (TC) of your education based on what school you went to. That number is set, it’s a formula that can’t be changed. There may be 500 employers that are willing to pay that fee for you to come work for them. Now you have the other side, wages. You decide that you will not go to work for less than $100k per year. Of the 500 companies willing to pay the fee to acquire you, only 100 are willing to pay more than $50k. You as the employee now hold the leverage and these companies now will have to battle each other to employ you. That’s not a bad thing for the employee (player). The only downside to TC is maybe without the fee, there could be 1000 clubs willing to negotiate a contract instead of the 500.
I don't understand how the TC and wages can have "ZERO" effect on each other. They're being paid by the same entity. There's not some magic pot of money that the TC comes out of. Both these fees come out of the same finite budget. If you pay more on one, you have less to pay for the other. It doesn't matter they they're separate negotiations and with separate sellers. The buyer(s) has a relatively fixed budget, and a relatively fixed value of what they're willing to spend for the player they'll get at the end of it. Say I'm buying an apple and have to pay both the farmer and the trucker to get it, but have an option of 2 different farmer/trucker combinations. Say one trucker charges one dollar and the other two charges dollars. Are people going to be willing to pay both farmers the same? If course not, that would mean you'd be paying different ultimate prices for the same item. If the trucker charges more, the farmer has to charge less to compensate. It's hard to see this in soccer because all these negotiatione are complicated and unique to specific players and teams. Plus the contracts we're actually aware of are for big players, and that's even more complicated and unique. But the premise remains the same, and most players are replacement level and are worth very small amounts. paying 100k in TC makes a big difference on whether it's worth signing most of these players.
Not a good analogy. Furthermore, a transfer budget and wage budget might be on the same P&L but they are completely different budgets. The cost to acquire a player (TC/SP/Total cost) is market and value driven. To use your apple analogy, a club very well pay more for the apple and transport if they can sell that apple for more than the other in a few years. They also may be willing to pay more for the apple if it is a vital ingredient to make a pie that will be more valuable. If Club A has a player with a price tag of $10M there could be 50 teams that can meet that valuation. If that player demands a weekly wage of $50k, that list of 50 teams could now be reduced to 10 that can afford that wage. TC is nothing more than a fixed valuation. It takes away differing valuations and provides a fixed price, but has nothing to due with wage demands by the player. No club will buy a player (via TC or transfer) in which they haven’t already agreed to a wage package. Full Stop.
You're 100% right. It's basic economics. Having to pay TC and Solidarity does depress the transfer fee and payroll markets just a bit. It also does decrease movement. It's one of the reasons why USSF hasn't pushed it; because it would likely get blown up in court. It's a decent trade-off to accomplish multiple goals, but there are some drawbacks to it.
You have to think of the player as an asset, because that’s exactly what they are. They are even treated that way on a balance sheet. Most player acquisition costs are amortized over a period of time on the balance sheet. I’ve been thinking of an analogy and this is the best I can come up with at the moment. Acquiring a player is like acquiring a car. When you go to the dealership the dealer has all the leverage if you really want a particular car. Bottom line is you will not walk out of that dealership with the car unless you pay him what he wants. You can haggle and negotiate and possibly get him down from his original number, but you aren’t leaving with that car unless he accepts the deal. It is the exact same for acquiring a player. Let’s call this acquisition cost. Now, in your analysis when deciding what car you wanted to buy, you probably took into consideration the operating costs (player wages). If you can’t afford to put fuel into the car, you would never make an offer to buy it in the first place. If you couldn’t afford the specialized technician you would need to fix the car, you never would have made an offer in the first place. If the dealer originally wanted $100k for that car and you were able to talk him down to $80k, that has absolutely zero bearing on what the operating costs will be. No matter how great of a deal you made to acquire the car, it’s going to cost the exact same to operate it. You wouldn’t take the $20k you saved and voluntarily pay more for fuel or maintenance. (overpay the player) Just like you wouldn’t receive a discount (player agrees to wages less than his value) on fuel or maintenance if the dealer talked you into paying $120k. Players are no different than cars from a risk/reward standpoint. Only certain people can walk into the Ferrari store and buy a Ferrari (Messi, Ronaldo) and afford the operating costs (fuel, maintenance, insurance). A larger subset of people (clubs) may be able to afford a Range Rover, but still may have a hard time paying for the fuel and maintenance (wages). Even more people will be able to afford a Ford Taurus due to a lower acquisition cost and operating cost. When analyzing a purchase like this, sure clubs will take into consideration both the acquisition cost and the wage cost, but they don’t control the market for either. In a football scenario, you know exactly what your operating costs (wages) are going to be because an agent has told you. You aren’t even going to look at a player if you can’t afford to pay him. Just like a car, there is more negotiating to be done on the acquisition cost since the operating costs are essentially fixed. You don’t go buy a car if you can’t afford to operate it, just like clubs don’t buy a player if they can’t afford to pay the wages he demands. Once you have determined you can afford the operating costs (wages), only then do you go and try to negotiate the acquisition cost to a number you can afford. If you can’t afford the Ferrari, you buy something else. I fee like I was all over the place with this. I hope it makes sense.
You have complete control over the $80k portion, not the employer or the University. You think your worth more than that, you don’t accept the offer and wait for someone to come along that will pay you want you want. If none of them come along and that offer doesn’t materialize, you overstated you’re value at the beginning.
If it seems like you're having to make an awful lot of effort to convince yourself that you're right, maybe you're not right. Transfer fees are acquisition costs, too. Don't players who move on free transfers get better wage offers? If I'm looking at two players who i consider to be the same quality player, and player A is going to require training compensation fee and player B isn't, you better believe I'm going to be willing to pay player B than I would pay player A to close the deal. And his agent knows that, so he's going to ask for more, so his market value goes up.
I'm not trying to convince myself. I am just trying to pass along information to people who may not have experienced transfer deals and what goes into them. That's exactly what I said. Not sure about free transfers getting better wage offers. Do you have any examples, because I don't have any in my experience? Things don't happen like this in the real world. Decisions are made and one of the technical staff or the BOD agree that they will go after a certain player with a number of players as plan B. No two players are alike and some clubs rate different players on different levels. IF the situation you mention above actually occurred, than yes, I would agree that a club might be willing to pay Player B more. How exactly does your wage make your market value go up?
It probably does have an effect. The more potential the player has, the less effect it has. The best analogy is buying stocks. When you buy stocks, you pay a commission completely unrelated to potential gain of the security. If you are investing $100,000K in a stock you expect to be able to sell for $200,000K, do you fret over whether you pay a $10 commission or $20 commission? Would you even balk at a $200 commission? In an economists model, it would show less demand to make the trade for $20 then $10. But in the real world, nobody passes up the chance at $100K profit because of $10. Now, as your expectations of gain come down, the friction costs matter more. In the soccer world, these are hard to define. The players where a $25K TC payment would make a club balk are very low potential and are probably marginal pros. Again, in theory, every cost counts, but I don't think in reality it matters for any players discussed on these boards. Now, on the other end, those small commission costs are actually quite large. The $25K the Sockers (or anyone gets) funds quite a bit.
Great write up on San Antonio FC and their philosophy. https://www.scoutedftbl.com/post/san-antonio-fc-the-blueprint-for-usl-youth-development
Your market wage is whatever wage you agree to that someone agrees to pay you. If someone is willing to pay you more because you have a lower acquisition cost, and you know that, you will ask for and ultimately get paid more, and thus your market value is higher than if you had an acquisition cost attached to you. I worked as a temp for a while. I got paid like $8/hr as a temp worker for a company. The temp agency got paid $2/hr. If I got hired directly, I definitely would have earned more. I don't work in the business. Maybe you do. It's just very hard to believe that basic microeconomics don't apply in this instance.
I understand where you and others are coming from, but you said the wage is tied to the market value of the player. Broadly, you could probably make a connection, but Alexis Sanchez's $350k per week deal sure didn't make his market value go up. On the surface it makes sense, but in reality its not how it works in football. As a player, if you and your agent think you are worth $100k per week from a wage standpoint, then you aren't going to sign for $75k per week, no matter what a club pays in any iteration of transfer fees or TC. Now, could you overcome that difference in wage by demanding a sign on bonus, sure, it happens all the time. People miss that as an employee of a company, people like you and I are only an expense. Football players are an expense from a wage standpoint, but also an asset on the balance sheet. Your company can't sell you to another company and earn a profit, at least I am not aware of that happening with regular employees. Its a unique market that is difficult to draw parallels to the normal business world.
The city of San Antonio is THE perfect example of why the DA ultimately failed - they always had youth soccer people running their DA, even when they tried to “affiliate” with a pro team. When people who are responsible for a pro team run a DA, it suddenly has natural responsibility to be developmental with natural consequences if they fail. They no longer need to be strong-armed into following one-size-fits-all rules made by bureaucrats or forced to travel 800 miles to play a game when better opponents can be found within 100 miles. USL have another HUGE advantage over the DA - the number of League 2 teams can enable their academies to play a very reasonable regional schedule once enough of them field academy programs. Right now you are hearing about the teams that “get” that the academy can be great for marketing as well as player development so teams like San Antonio, Louisville, and South Georgia are looking to hit the ground running, but how long is it until innovative clubs like Forward Madison or Union Omaha figure it out? I see the same process happening at the USL League 2 level very quickly. Right now we are correctly viewing it all as brand spanking new, but over the next five years expect MLS to look to piggyback into USL’s academy system. It simply isn’t feasible to travel hundreds of miles every time that you want to play a youth soccer game and the number of teams in League 2 would actually make a true national developmental league possible and, most importantly, organic. Once the mentality changes in League 2 as to the need for developing your own players, watch the USL Academy take off, similar to the way their top league took off once they figured out that combining with MLS reserve teams would give them more teams and make their league more relevant to more people.
I should have chosen my words better in my first post, maybe, but it should be clear from my second post that I was referring to their market wage going up due to the acquisition cost being zero, not vice versa. Maybe you're right and most clubs don't consider TC/SP when they're deciding how much they're willing to pay a player, but that would be pretty dumb. There was a time when baseball clubs decided whether a player was a good prospect by whether they "looked like an athlete", too. Then Billy Beane started kicking their asses by playing moneyball, and the other teams eventually followed suit.
I've heard the Hunts are one of the ones pushing for keeping the status quo. I think they'd actually do better if it opened up but they must not think so.
I think its because there is no domestic market for transfers with the CBA and still no official word on training compensation. If they get settled Dallas could have the first model that has some sign in Europe, many sign with Dallas, and some get sold to other franchises for transfers or training. Real development can then occur with this model.
Hard to believe there is anything wrong with transferring money from a Pay for Play to a Pay to Play. Could be that doing so would reduce the costs of the latter. CAS and FIFA already have said the business model of the youth club has zero impact.
That is a question that I've never heard a good answer for. Other good questions: If the MLSPA was so against whatever effect TC has on player salaries, then why doesn't it care at all about club only options, five year contracts for minors, allocation lists, the draft, HG territories, or roster limitations? It is especially interesting because, by definition, TC only applies to players no longer in the union and could be paid to clubs without any players in the union. Makes you wonder why they care at all? And cared so vehemently until the day MLS decided it wanted to participate in TC, then one PR release and nothing. No lawsuit, nothing. If you really think it through, TC is a revenue stream from non-union players that can be used to pay union players. It is really difficult to see why they cared so much.