Hi, Just followed the contract negotiations AGF & Wade Barrett, and is of course pleased to see him sign for "my" club He looks like a really talented player, and i look forward to seeing the guy secure the left side of our defences, which is really our weak side I saw the player in a winter tournament last weekend, and he looked to be of the right level to really go & make a difference. He looks like a real catch for us ! I have been briefly running through the threads on the board here, and i noticed some of you writing that Ronnie Ekelund has turned down a offer, and might be leaving MLS ?? Do anybody have any news on this ? I havent seen Ronnie play in years, but i remember him as a very talented playmaker, in his Brondby & Barcelona days As i read the thread regarding Ronnie, it striked me that i have never really figured out how your contracts work in MLS ?? Are players signed by the soccer federation, or how does it work ? Do anybody have a moment to explain this to a poor confused danish guy ?? Regards from Denmark ! A guy that is looking forward to see Wade Barrett in action ! Kenneth Bojsen
Major League Soccer is all actually one company, not a series of seperate companies (or clubs). A player is signed by the league and is paid by the league. Each team is allowed a certain amount of money (the salary cap) for all the players in its roster. There are certain ways around the cap. For example, some player's salaries are shared between teams as terms of trades, or parts of a player's salary can come from outside companies (we all guess that Donovan gets lots of money from Nike). Also, each team is only allowed a limited roster (no matter how much money they have left over), and the roster is further limited as to the number of foriegn players allowed (Ekelund is a foriegn player by MLS rules). But besides this, teams have lots of flexibility in who they sign on the teams. They have to go through the league (using the "allocation" process or the "discovery" process or other mechanisms) but they can basically get any player they want as long as they are in the league's price range. Players can be traded to other teams, and they can be sold to clubs outside the US. When players are sold, MLS gets the money but the team get future considerations (like an "allocation"). Players can also be cut.
Thank you very much. It's a lot different from the European system. I guess the good part is that clubs don't go bankrupt over enormous salarys - top clubs in Italy have yearly salary payments of more than 100 million $ (100.000.000 - a lot!) and on top of that have to find other millions to buy players. The down side must be that clubs don't have an incentive to develop younger players outside to roster? Just a few thoughts - thanks again.
Hey enlight: Barrett will certainly shore up the left side of your defense, and adds a good offensive spark - he is a very energetic player with a high work-rate and can run up and down the left side of the field for a full 90. He will freqently overlap a midfielder or forward to provide an outlet at the corner. From there, he can distribute good crosses. If the forward or midfielder goes to the corner, he tends to patrol the upper edge of the box, helping create problems for the other team's defense. Please keep us posted and let us know occasionally how he's doing. We are going to miss him very much, both as a player and a person. He is very soft-spoken and friendly and also very visible in community-relations activities for the Quakes. In short - you got a real gem. I hope it helps you at least as much as it is going to hurt us!
Hi All, Thank you for the replies... I think i get this... Sort of... Is this inspired by the American football, or is this a entirely new (new=1994?) concept ? Some things like drafting from universities are the same, right ?? Its a totally different way to do things, but kinda interesting... Is there ever problems with some clubs getting all the stars ? I would guess a guy like Landon Donovan would be a big asset for any club. But thanks again for the replies... I will try and keep you posted on how Wade do for us this season, he looks like a very charismatic guy, so i guess he could be the next Jan Halvor Halvorsen in Aarhus (the other danish guys will know what i mean... But for you americans, we worship our defenders in Aarhus.... Jan Halvor was a Norwegian defender in AGF that everybody wanted as mayor of Aarhus in the nineties. ;-) Regards Kenneth Bojsen / enlight
It is fairly new, but I think it does have influence from American Football - it is just even more centrally controlled than that. In MLS, college players and those playing in lower leagues can make themselves available for the draft. Better players in the lower leagues are sometimes snapped up earler by using the allocation or discovery process. For example, our forward Dwayne DeRosario and our goalie Joe Cannon were both allocations from the A-League (one step below MLS). Because of the hard salary cap, it is hard to have more than a couple stars. There are plenty of accusasions of cheating by fans when teams start to pick up lots of stars, but I think it all evens out in the end.
You asked about Ronnie Ekelund, too -- he's been here for two years and has done a fantastic job in central midfield. The Quakes play a possession style -- quick passes with the ball on the ground, a lot of overlapping runs by the outside backs -- and Ekelund has been a key to that in his two years here. He didn't score much the first year but he did this last September: http://www.mlsnet.com/multimedia/video/02/0907ekelund.html Amazing goal.
I had always been told that it was inspired by the experience of the North American Soccer League (NASL) [ca.1970's and 1980's] in which the league had been killed (at least in part) by the overwhelming amount of money available to one team (the NY Cosmos) and a whole bunch of other teams that had a lot less money and were left sucking hind teat(s).
has Ekelund resigned yet? We should be able to fit him with our salary cap now having a bit more room now that Wade is gone.