A League salaries

Depends on which teams you are talking about in the A-league. You run the full spectrum between fully professional and semi-pro here. Rochester and Charleston and a few other teams will pay players full time and sometimes outbid MLS for players, but then you get the Cincinnati's that will play players only during the season and sometimes just on a game by game basis. There are some good young players just making a name for themselves and some older players hanging on in hopes of making it back up and a few good foreigners enjoying living in the USA. A lot of the players in the A-league are truly doing this for the love of the game because the money just isn't there for the most part.

 

As far as salaries go i've heard Rochester and Charleston will pay players somewhere between 20k - to 75k per year and some of the smaller teams might pay as low as a couple hundred dollars per game. But it has been awhile since I was keeping up with the A-league. You might try www.a-league.com and see if there is any info there. That is a fan run site and usually has better info than www.uslsoccer.com if that site is even still up. Perhaps I should have checked these things out before posting...oh well.

 

A recent article about a rookie fresh from college mentioned that he will make $7500 for the season playing for the Timbers. Not sure if that includes whatever he can make coaching around the area. The top players in the A-league make significantly more. There were rumors last year that keeper Matt Napoleon made 40K +

 

From what I've read and heard, the vast majority of the players in the league get payed for the season and not all year. The range that I've heard for team salary budgets for the different teams is $100,000 to $600,000 range. But some of the teams also provide housing for the players. And additional income is available through working camps that the team may offer.

 

I remember reading about how some of Rochester's players made more than they could in MLS, between their salary from the Rhinos and the money they made playing indoor. I think the general answer is this: some make a decent living, some make just enough, some don't, and nobody gets rich.

 

I hope the teams provide insurance. I even did that for a men's rec league team I managed many years ago. Without insurance the players would be crazy to step on the field. Dedicated but crazy.

 

To me it seems that some players make more than the MLS is willing to offer them. For example, fictional Bob Smith may be a great player at the a-league level but the mls isn't sure about bringing him in. He's already 27 so he needs to produce. Plus, they already have their started for right mid. So the MLS may only be offering him a 2 year deal worth 38k the first year and 41k the second. Some a-league club like Charlseton comes in and offer him 50k a year to play plus he can make extra over the summer coaching kids at a camps.

 

Sticking with the Charelston theme, we did have two players this preseason trying out with MLS clubs: Ryan Trout and John Wilson both Im sure would be fine additions to most MLS clubs but the league wasn't willing to offer them more than the league min. $26K per year in NY aint going to cut it. So they stuck with Charleston. Also Ive heard that MLS contracts prevent players from playing anywhere else in the off-season.

 

I just watched the VA Mariners on FSW. They have Lassiter, Dante, Amani-Dove and Biylik. These guys are not playing for a few hundred dollars a game. That almost looked like an MLS side, not a good one, but the names were there. They must have a lot of backing.

 

Re: Re: A League salaries

When they get paid at all.

Charleston's ex-GM told me once that their owner spent $500,000 on salaries, this was back in 2000. That's on the high end. Others at the low end maybe spend $130,000?

I'd say your run-of-the-mill A-League player, if he could get $1,800 a month and an apartment during the season, and a chance to coach in a local club, would jump at it, pretty much. Better players with better clubs, obviously, would do better than that. Doug Miller was rumoured to get something in the, what $75,000 range? I'm trying to recall exactly, but he had a nice year-round deal with Rochester years back.

As for Virginia Beach, they had their biggest crowd of the season over the weekend (2500+), but I can't for the life of me figure out how they're going to pay all those guys all year.

 

As a fan, you have to admire how much the new owner is putting into the team in Virgina Beach. He's spent $60,000 on FSW broadcast rights alone for four matches if what I read about the FSW deal is correct.

As a businessman, I would be cringing at the attendances 500x10 (wild guess) is $5000 per home match; not much income there.

Mikey