I would imagine it would be, as will everything else. It took them a year and a half to negotiate the first CBA (which runs through the 2009 season) and to get direct deposit of paychecks. Again, market forces or collective bargaining determine that, not the goodness of the owners' hearts. If the players are able to negotiate through collective bargaining to raise developmental salaries, they'll do so by giving something else up. It's not like the owners are going to say "Well, we're making a little money on this deal now, boys, what say we throw a little more to the players?" Management doesn't do that, by and large. I wouldn't expect it. Doesn't matter whether it matters to you or not. It's reality. It's the way the free market works. Well, that's your right as a consumer. But as long as the majority of people either can't tell the difference or don't care and it doesn't impact what management is able to do financially, there will not be economic forces brought to bear. You don't have to get excited about it. It's true. Part of any labor/management relationship is the eternal struggle between labor's desire for better wages and working conditions and management's desire for control of costs and profits. As was (I believe) originally said about baseball, "it's too much a business to be a sport and too much a sport to be a business." Welcome to the new reality. You want the league to survive and thrive? It's going to be subject to the same economic market forces that any other business is subject to. It's not great. It's reality. It's Economics 101. It is what it is. We have more players now than we had 25 years ago. We're getting there. In 1981, 106 American-born players played in the NASL. Maybe half of them were any good. The bottom of any talent pool is going to be largely indistinguishable. If you expect the 23rd through 28th players on an MLS roster to be really good players, you're expecting too much, I think. They're better than they would have been a generation ago, but not there yet. And it's only through continued development at every level from youth to high school to college to PDL to pro reserves to first team pro that it's going to continue. It's not going to come through just bumping up everybody's salary. Like democracy, it's the worst system out there. Except for all the others. Saying something on a farking message board? What are we going to "do," exactly? "Doing something does force change" - what exactly are you planning on doing that's going to overturn the most powerful forces influencing human behavior? And there, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, is the point.
I was speaking of the Union's POV. In the case of the last CBA, its position with regards to the Dev players had to be weakened by the ownership and financial status of the league. At this time, there is more money invested by more parties in MLS, so the union has more leverage in the negotiation.
They'll have a slightly stronger position, yeah. Or, at least, the owners' cries of poverty might not find safe haven quite so readily in the ears of those listening on the other side of the table. But it's not like the league is profitable. Sections of it are. But the longtime cries of "You know they can afford it! They're billionaires!" from the ignoscenti on Bigsoccer are only slightly more relevant today than three years ago (it was only three years ago that the CBA was approved). As with anything else in collective bargaining, they can get something if they're willing to give something else up. NFL players (more specifically, their union) were so hell-bent on getting free agency that they willingly went along with the salary cap and franchise tags that they now hate, and they didn't see the unintended consequences of the salary cap that has forced the middle class into some early exits from the league.
Oh no thats definately an issue. The quality at the bottom is low enough that you can find two or three players per year to supplant them but simply because new players are stepping forward doesn't mean development is going on. My point is just because we are achieving the same thing AJAX is achieving, yet at a much lower level, is not a cause for celebration.
Of course, the Developmental roster, misnamed though that is, probably isn't the place to look for that. It's not much different from AAA baseball in that regard, where the real development takes place at lower levels. The DEV roster is much like AAA, a place for 'cup of coffee' warm body type players and a few who've slipped through the cracks. I'm no expert, but I suspect that's somewhat true in European soccer as well. I suspect the best prospects don't spend a lot of time on reserve rosters, but tend to go from youth system to starting lineup of a smaller club, to starting lineup of a big one. (Whether or not they were products of the smaller club or loaned out. In the case of, say, Cristiano Ronaldo and Wayne Rooney, they made it rather quickly to the first teams of the smaller clubs they were brought up in, Sporting Cristal and Everton respectively, before moving on to ManU. I suspect that, or else John O'Brien's experience at Ajax being loaned out to Utrecht, is often the order of the day.) I suspect that the only reason you see more future talent in a reserve game than a PDL game is due to the inefficiency of MLS in identifying talent (like say Josh Gros or Troy Perkins, who spent significant time in the dev rosters), as well as the limitations of the PDL as a development option, rather than the problems with the Dev roster.
I know in Europe many clubs regulate meals as well as living arrangements for many younger players even in the lower divisions. Some are not paid much however, they have their most of their expenses paid for. What I want to know which no one really has addressed in a while is how can the players live on this salary? I mean do the clubs pay for their room and board? If so then I can understand the low pay but if not I can not see how anyone can make a living out of a 12,900 a year salary.
I just can't get as excited about it as much as others can. What we need is for the league to move beyond the point where 20-22 years olds who would even consider playing for that kind of money are simply not good enough. I don't have a problem with some academy kid making that kind of money but a grown man making that kind of money is not a 24 hour professional and can't dedicate himself to his craft fulltime, and simply going to training for a few hours a day is not what I mean by dedication. And that is more function of those teams and coaches ability to recognise talent than a lack of talent on the part of those players. I don't see how anyone can say that. The DEV player salary used to be even lower and now that its been raised they spots still exist. If you say with a higher minimum salary the platform won't exist then why does it still exist now since todays salry is a higher minimu salary? This is all down to the willingness of MLS brass to pay (up to, in some cases less than) 10 players per team roughly 17k more per season which amounts to 170k per year per team or 2.7 million per year in a 16 team league. If they want to save a few bucks and scrape the bottom of the barrel and once in a while discover a truly good player thats fine. Its simply indicative of where their priorities (more likely the teams themwselves) lie but lets not pretend its anything less than a choice. If those spots go away it will be a choice, they won't have been forced to do so. Those players are simply players at the bottom no matter what they make. The resources commited to those players is indicative of the leagues and the teams commitment to improving its greatest weak point (the players at the bottom). And thats the bottom line.
Not everyone has the time to sit around on bigsoccer all day reading threads. For many people this is not a rehash. Furthermore some people want to discuss ideas not simply read what other people have said Its just as easy to not read what is being said now.
Dude. Do you ever get tired of repeat the same thing over and over and pretending you are saying something profound? We all get it and few of us are fighting it. The discussion has moved on. Your building a strawman I think in an effort to be dismissive. I have been talking about minimum standards I even went so far as to say the players don't even have to be anywhere hear as good as AJAX players for progress to be made. This is just a really poor response to something i didn't even say. The same can be said about 20 other nations and that standard is still not high enough. The USMNT team was better in 2006 than they were in 2002 but got sent home with their tails between their legs. This love affair with low standards always puzzled me. Let me say it again as I have in other threads "Herein lies the problem with bigsoccer and ussf group think. Too many of us believe that any improvement relative to the past is actual progress. That may not be so. We are not the only ones improving and no matter how much we improve with respect to ourselves unless we improve as much as others have we are not advancing. Think of how many times you people talk about how much better the players in MLS are compared to 1996 as if that is some sort of massive accomplishment to see how ingrained this mode of thinking is." You can talk about how much worse the players were a generation ago all you want. It doesn't vindicate your argument. If the rate of improvement of those players is not keeping pace with the rate of improvement of those outside this country progress is not being made. Yet another strawman. That is not even the argument I am making. Maybe you should take a break from posting in these salary threads (that goes for a lot of other people who post bomb these threads whenever they appear). You seem to be having great difficulty keeping what people are saying straight. I think what this topic needs some new people discussing it not just the same cast of characters who feel they need to browbeat everyone else into submission.
We need to really stop with the minor league baseball analogies just because they are convenient. These players are on the roster of the top teams in the country and some play significant minutes. That analogy is just broken. The dev roster is the primary source of future players. I hate the fact that when some new kid comes through people want to trumpet the process as being well executed yet when its convenient treat it less serious. The dev roster is an opportunity that this league has to acquire and bring through good talent at very low cost if properly executed. I don't expect miracles I just expect more than year long trials.
Most of them yes, but our experience has shown that some of these guys are Chris Rolfe or Bobby Boswell. I'd hope that improved scouting will reduce the number of those "surprise" standouts, but even in Europe, there are guys cut from the youth team who go on to be stars elsewhere. You always want to make sure there's another youth team for them to make it on. You want a stage. Presumably that wouldn't extend to, say, a youth team, right? Ideally, the lowest wage dev players are eventually more like youth players than senior roster players. You didn't follow the argument. Now that the dev salary is 12k, there is no longer a spot for a player who's apparently worth only 11k. You raise the minimum to 30k, Chris Rolfe doesn't make the roster. Maybe he plays USL ball and makes it to MLS the next year. Maybe he just quits. Either way, an MLS caliber player wasn't playing in the league.
If the Dev minimum is raised to a living wage, does that possibly take people out of college and into a full time job as a professional soccer player? And if so, doesn't that help the growth of our players as players? Perhaps the Dev minimum just needs to include a year of free tuition for each year you earn a spot.
Show me an American coach, hell any coach anywhere in the world who can tell the difference between a player who is only worth 11k and a player is fully worth 12k and I will accept your point. We have coaches in this league who are paying players who are barely worth 100k over a million. At any rate there is no indication that palyers with talent won't get signed simply because they cost 17k more we are talking about 170k per team. I can easily point out 170k in wasted money paid to players on current rosters. The idea that teams won't "waste" that money on players just doesn't hold any water especially when so much more money is being wasted elsewhere.
Sure it would. But you don't need to raise the dev minimum to get the same effect: you get the same effect by increasing senior roster spots (or by having more dev spots at a slightly higher salary). The point is that 12k dev player slots will allow to target different players than 30k roster spots. Ideally, you've got enough spots on both rosters to get all the potential big time players.
That might be start. But we can't lose sight of the overall goal: greater yeild from the players at the bottom of the roster. Paying players more is simply not constructive unless the other changes that are necessary to reach the goal are put in place (better coaches, a more serious Reserve league being a start)
There's a basic concept here that we may not be able to agree upon. Here it is: people won't pay more for something than they perceive it to be worth. Valuing players is tricky, as you note, but there's a point in salary negotiations for every player where a GM/coach will say "This player is not worth that much" and they won't pay that player a dollar more. For some players, that point will be between 11k and 12k. Or 12k and 30k. Or any two numbers you pull out of the hat. It's irrelevant whether the coach/GM is actually correct in that determination (although a successful coach/GM is going to be correct more than his less successful peers). Of course there is. If Chris Rolfe was worth 30k, in coaches' eyes, when he got into the league, he would have been signed to a senior roster spot. He wasn't. HE couldn't supplant any one of the guys on the senior roster. Here's the fundamental problem with your argument: bad judgment (what you're describing) does not mean that teams set out to be economically irrational. Teams do not set out to waste money. They do so because they have made bad decisions. The fact that the Fire overpaid Tony Sanneh doesn't mean that they'd like to overpay a scrawny kid who played for the Dayton Zips. They will not pay 30k for a player they believe to be worth 17k.
People don't only consider present value when signing players if people see potential in a player who is not worth 12k now but could easily become a player worth 50k by the end of the seaon guess what that player is gonna get signed for more than he is worth now. Almost the entire football economies of countries like Argentina are predicated on making just those kinds of judgements. so I don't see why this concept seems so alien. If MLS coaches are signing players only based on what they are worth today while allowing players who could easily be worth more in a short period of time walk that is level of shortsightedness that borders on outright incompetence and not even I think they are that stupid. Thats just not based in any type of logic. They got away with paying Rolfe what they did because they could. If this were any other league they would have had to compete with other teams for his talent because his agent would have been shopping him around. His talent is just that obvious. If he had options that allowed him to walk away from their offer Peter Wilt wasn't gonna say "We don't care how talented you are we are inly gonna pay you 12k." He didn't have any options so they lowballed him and soon after he was a senior roster player. He was an immediate impact player in the league so the idea that he couldn't supplant anyone on the senior roster flies in the face of history. And if all they look at is present value they will lose out on a lot of talent.
And so...? How does that affect the statement: "people won't pay more for something than they perceive it to be worth." Why wouldn't worth encompass "potential"? Right. What did I just say? "people won't pay more for something than they perceive it to be worth." Certainly the league is able to depress salaries to pay guys less than they are worth. But weren't we just talking about guys who weren't scouted properly? In that situation, Wilt doesn't realize that Rolfe is so great. Wilt genuinely believes Rolfe is only worth 12k. Wilt has, after all, pased over Rolfe twice in the draft (to take Will John and Chad Barrett). In that situation, Wilt will say "we are only going to pay you 12k."
Kpaulsen seems to be on target here. When a club evaluates a player it looks not only at current form, but at the potential that they rate him to have. Take a look at Bryan Arguez from DCU this season. He was their first round pick and didn't see a single first team minute. The point stands that a team will pay a player what they believe he is worth. Although there are some barriers to that in MLS because the player is not able to look for other offers inside the league because of the way it is set up, but that does not stop players of dropping to USL or go play in a foreign league. If Chris Rolfe believed he was worth significantly more than 17k he could have found a team that would pay him more. It's Econ 101. Cold Economic fact.
No, not really. There are those who apparently need refresher courses. Fight the good fight, man! You're going to solve the problem on a message board! Sorry, I missed where they put you in charge. You know, just because I say things in a post quoting something you said doesn't mean I'm attributing everything I refer to as having come from you specifically, okay? Considering it wasn't necessarily a response to anything you said, but about the topic in general, I really don't care what you think of the response. And I'm sure the folks who actually run a league instead of their mouths haven't noticed it at all and aren't doing anything about it. But as soon as they find out that another farking New Yorker thinks they're not doing it well enough, they'll get right on it. As does the refusal to believe that sometimes....things happen. And that claiming you're striking a blow for high standards by opining about them on a message board puzzles me, too. How old are you? Seriously, I'm not being a jerk (for once). This thing where people take such a goddamn short view of things is just completely bizarre to me. Maybe it's my age. But you simply physically can't sit there and tell me that American soccer hasn't improved by leaps and freaking bounds since the year before Paul Caliguiri's shot. You can't. You can't say we haven't made actual progress. You can say we haven't made enough progress to suit you, which is where someone (probably me) breaks out the "I want a pony" line. Which is not to say that we don't all want the US to be the best or very nearly the best at the game we all love, but that that's unfreakingrealistic right now. We're getting there. I'm sorry it's not going to happen for you in your timeframe, but that's just a cross you'll have to bear. Uh, are they not better? How massive is massive? How massive would you like it to be in 11 years' time? Is there an incubator that would make that process happen faster, when most of our best athletes go to other sports, unlike what happens in other countries? I'm sorry that 11 years of actual, visible process just isn't enough for you, or that it hasn't happened quickly enough for you. Okay, then. So I guess our national team isn't any better then, right? It does validate my argument, because it's true. Do you have a sort of progress-o-meter on how the other countries have improved? And how does it stack up to our progress? We made a quarterfinal run in 2002. We went three and out in 2006. Three games isn't always the measure of how far you've come as a progam. England didn't even qualify in 1994, and France went three and out in 2002. They must be going backwards. And you seem to think that I speak only to you when I reply to a post of yours. Some of what I say refers to things that others say. I'll keep pointing out the rational points of view, thank you. Sorry if they don't fit with your worldview, but you're not going to tell me what threads to post in or not post in.
Oooohhhhhh, man!!! Rommul's here? [/unsubscribes] Pot. Kettle. Kettle. Pot. Pot. Kettle. Kettle. Pot. The only strawmen involved in an argument w/ you comes from you. Now... this time I admit to having skipped over parts of the conversation in order to verify who is strawmanning whom... but let's just say one person here [cough]Rommul[/cough] is no-to-ri-ous for his strawmen. Normally, I would have sympathy, but this is your m.o.: take a minor point of poster A, prop it up as if it were the cornerstone to an argument and then pick away at that tangent. And then you get shockedSHOCKED that ppl get rude w/ you. It happens every time. Maybe in the grand scheme of a globalized game, MLS is a minor league, as are all leagues outside the top 6+ on the planet...
Of course it does. But that was my argument not your argument. You are now taking aspects of my argument incorporating them into your own and prtending that was your point all along. It wasn't. Right. What did I just say? "people won't pay more for something than they perceive it to be worth." You don't know what Wilt believed and thats all speculation. It doesn't matter what happened on draft day since he wasn't signed on draft day. He was signed after/during camp and side by side comparisons with those players will see Rolfe win every time.
The idea that a contract pays a player not just for what they might do today, but also for what he might do tomorrow and, indeed, the rest of the days throughout the contract is not controversial and indeed forms the basis of much of modern economics. But if you want to assume that, by "worth", I didn't really mean "worth, which incorporates the concept of present value" despite the fact a huge part of my argument is that some great potential players are available at dev salaries because others haven't recognized their potential, that's fine. It's a great argument Rommul, and I'm happy to pretend that I thought that all along. "people won't pay more for something than they perceive it to be worth." How does this speculation relate to the point? Does it mean that coaches/GMs always recognize the full value (including potential) of players at the moment when the players are signed? Because if they don't, then it still remains true: you need to have roster spots at all stages of the economic continuum in order to catch all players.