Off budget guys are.....? Not top 20 players, didn't play a gm,trialist??? I thought the minimum should be 50k for rookies & 2nd year guys while 3& up should get 60k so this sounds pretty fair but can someone define off budget players please
It also sounds like all 1o off-budget guys can be paid the lower minimum salary (not just 6 apprentices). I'm wondering if the age limit will apply to all 10 off-cap spots now and if the top two homegrowns cap exemption will continue.
Yeah, it will be interesting to see how the roster rules shake out as well. But have to think it is still 30 (or at least 28), we haven't released anyone. Though technically, the new CBA can't go into effect until the vote is taken. FWIW, we had more than 20 guys making $48k+ (the vet min) last year + our two HGs. I'd assume that trend will continue and that not all 10 non-roster guys will be making the min. Bedell and some of the lower drafted rookies = yes. But the 1st round picks and guys who actually may play will likely make more. We'll see. I was dead wrong about the $60k thing already, so what do I know. I guess, I expected soccer reporters to know what minimum means, but oh, well.
Great stuff. I'm shamelessly stealing every bit of it. In your honor I'll add something I left out of that post because it was already way too long: Sepp has been conspiculously absent from the US for the last 18 months, not even visiting the new CONCACAF HQ in Miami (and making those rounds is part of his routine) or attending any matches or meetings. Considering that he used to make the US a regular stop, the presumption is that it's because he's under an FBI sopoena (sp?) over both the Qatar vote (which is known to be the subject of a Justice Dept. probe) and the Jack Warner investigation (which has seen one of his sons put in jail and the other havng his passport seized). They want to depose him on what he knows regarding both topics. Imagine. It's all too delicious.
I also am curious whether there's an exception for guys who end up in USL. You're not on an MLS roster so I don't see how you can demand MLS minimum salary. As somebody pointed out - I wish I could recall because it was terrific - anyone making $36.5k last season in USLPro had to be the highest paid player in the league. The equivalent of DP's on the USL scale. Playing in USL for $60k will have your teammates calling you "Fat Stacks" and making you pick up the diner tab, like, every night.
NBA players sent down to the D-League (don't get me started on the byzantine nature of D-League roster rules) still get NBA minimum, so it's not unheard of.
It completely blows my mind that I can lay in my bed and watch my team play from my phone. I'm someone who remembers the days when you would get a random, often delayed EPL match in the middle of the week (a few times a month). We got what we were given and we liked it. Us older folks know we are going in the right direction. We aren't really worried about the speed because we know we'll get there. The league minimum and I used to be in a tight race. The league's passed me and I doubt it will never look back, and those of use who were there at the beginning know this is a very good thing.
It's both. Let's be real. And you ignore single entity. It's the league that has a lot of say here, which was my original point. Costs are shared and revenues are shared. Where the profit comes in for the owner/investors is in the growth of the value of their investment. Over 20 years the teams have gotten much closer in ticket costs. The Crew have adjusted upward--and the La seems to have adjusted in the other direction.
If the league isn't going to allow for any differences in the cost of living (and thus income levels) in a city, they are going to have a hard time making it in lower cost-of-living markets (good thing the Cleveland expansion never worked out, team would've failed or been kicked out already).
One last bump in order to appreciate how far we've come. I was going through some documents from the 1997 season. Guess the salary cap: Spoiler (Move your mouse to the spoiler area to reveal the content) Show Spoiler Hide Spoiler $1.2 million. David Beckham's salary, per Google: Spoiler (Move your mouse to the spoiler area to reveal the content) Show Spoiler Hide Spoiler $250 million over five years. Another interesting number from the same source: ESPN was available in 63 million households.