Eddie Johnson back at Fulham--guess who got some PT?

What is that yearly?

 

Does he still have the same agent as Adu? If so, I don't see him heading back to Aris after the way that whole situation went down with Freddy.

 

About 1 million pounds or 1.2 million euros.

 

According to Deloitte’s Annual Review of Football Finance, average player in the Championship earned around £275,000 a year or £5,300 a week. EJ is on $1.2 mil a year, so it's reasonable to guess he'd take a haircut of at least $400K per when he drops a level.

 

O/T but what's the average annual earnings for a League One player. Is it on the same level as MLS?

 

http://soccer365.com/english_premiership/story_28410191410.php

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Premier League Salaries Skyrocket!
2010-04-28 19:13:34

English Premier Players are living high on the hog with average EPL salaries up to $2.3 million dollars per year and with top players pulling in over $10 million per year.

These huge football salaries represent a huge pay raise for soccer players over the last four years. In 2006, the average salary was at $999K.

The money train slows down but does not end in the Premier League. The Championship player earns an average of $386K while a League One and League Two players earn roughly $123K and $100K, respectively.
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Which is why I've always argued MLS is much closer to League 1 than the Cola or the B2. MLS imports more than half its talent competing on a similar international market as everyone else and the average sal in the league is less than $150k.

 

Well that's definitely a flawed argument.

It seems like every single player that leaves MLS to go somewhere else gets a pay bump when they do. Some of them get massive pay upgrades: Holden, Beasley, Clark, Altidore, EJ, etc. Even Landon Donovan could get paid more in Europe. Players that go to the USL/NASL can get paid more sometimes because they're so much more important to their lower division teams.

So, in a sense, most players in MLS are underpaid in the international market, especially American MLSers. There is no logical way to compare the salaries for a league full of underpaid players to other leagues, especially the leagues in England where players are notoriously overpaid.

 

MLS salaries are kept artificially low because of trade restrictions (i.e. immigration law) which limit free movement of services (i.e. football talent) across borders. If American players could work freely in European countries, you would see most in the €100k+ MLS bracket trying their luck in League One or wherever because the ceiling is higher if you're successful. Being economically isolated has been great for MLS. A lot of people think Euro salaries skyrocketed because of Bosman, but the introduction of the euro as a common currency made a difference too, improving pay in peripheral countries at the expense of core countries like Germany and Holland. Anyway, the huge EU debt problem could ultimately be a boon for MLS as leverage is killing lots of clubs in Europe. Salaries are set for a huge drop in the next decade.

 

WOOOOW, yea... he'd have to take a serious paycut to go to Aris.

 

True as that is, most American players will always spend a portion of their careers in MLS because the US is home. So the key to MLS's strength is for the US to develop talent.

That's how it works in Argentina. Back when Christian Gomez was at Independiente, he started alongside rising superstars like Forlan and Cambiasso. Not surprisingly, they all eventually went abroad for bigger paychecks, but that didn't stop them from contributing to the league while they were there. After they left, there were more young players waiting to take their place.

 

Immigration laws haven't prevented ~ 10,000 Brazilians from playing outside their home country/league.

Or these guys.

http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/sports/2011/01/01/argentinas-export-football-players/

And the simple reason more Americans don't play in better leagues is because, by and large, they are not good enough.

Which Eddie Johnson's Premiership goal total should have sufficed to explain.

 

That's true, but "good enough" is a slippery term. Many clubs don't import anyone unless they're a lot better than what domestic-based players offer.

As for Eddie Johnson, he's playing in the best and richest league in the world, so if you're talking about American players who can't compete on a higher level, he's a bad example.

 

Eh, maybe. An American player of the same talent level as a Brit in the EPL is actually quite cheaper. Both in transfer value and contract. Work permit issues are more of the reason why American's don't play abroad. Sure there are markets in Scandinavia and Belgium that allow Americans to enter freely. But even slightly higher wages are combated with higher taxes. It just makes more sense for mid-level players in America to stay home given their options abroad.

 

addressing your post and some of the others...

That's the way emmigration works in general across any industry. Aside from refugee issues you leave to get paid more.

An elite Amer baller who isn't returning from the Prem or whatever is typically getting 200k-400k in MLS.

What percentage of American MLSers actually are able to hack it in the higher paying leagues more than doubling those wages?

Why are the salaries of Major League Baseball, the NFL, and NBA so high?

The correct answer is 'because those sports make a lot of money'.

Why are MLS salaries so low? Because MLS makes little money compared to the biggest leagues.

Furthermore if MLS is underpaying these guys, why is it importing 54% of its labor with this number going up? It's not as though there are that many Americans abroad making bank in the better leagues.

 

If an American is the equal of a Brit at the Cola but can't get in do to work permit issues, then he can get into other places. If you're a $600k player there are other places besides the Cola before taking $250 in MLS.

A player in Denmark can go 5 years before the high taxes kick in.

 

Great point. Even small leagues like Sweden or Austria players get like $300,000 and these are pretty much decent players in their league. Even a Hunter Freeman can make that but in MLS he might make 1/4th of that. Makes sense for them to try playing abroad pronto. But I definitely agree, the work permit keeps dozens if not more of Americans from playing in England. If it wasn't so, I think practically all of our NT players and unknown guys would be there.

 

Dare I ask where this number comes from?

 

my bad. my bad. it's 40% and growing.

www.kenn.com/the_blog/?p=2852

 

dozens of mlsers are locked out of england? must be referring to league 2, in which case staying in mls would be better. even john rooney knows that.

a +400k player can find another leagues as buddle has done.

 

But that's only in cases of the strict non-EU player limits.

And even in countries/leagues with such, the US players are competing with the lower tier South Americans and East Europeans.

In other words, AC Milan/Inter/Roma/Juve can absorb the top international players on multi-million dollar salaries but the bottom tier in Italy (5 non-EU limit) is not (relatively speaking) a high paying level.

Most of those players are on $1M/Y gross or lower.

If the US players were any good, the bottom half of Serie A and La Liga would be inundated with the Americans fleeing the subpar MLS pay.

And, if you scan the leagues below the Top 5 (leaving the East European high earners of Russia and Ukraine), there are hundreds of jobs in the Netherlands, Belgium, Turkey, Greece, Portugal, Switzerland, Denmark, Austria, Norway that pay substantially more than MLS.

And yet the American presence in those leagues is negligible (1 player in the Eredivisie and even he is freshly minted, 1 player in Belgium, 1 in Norway, several in Denmark, 1 non-playing in Portugal, no one in Greece, Turkey, Switzerland).

He is not playing for ManCity or Arsenal.

He is at Fulham.

That has to start Clint Dempsey at forward because it has no depth at the position.

Of course, the EPL is top heavy with talent but there are also half a dozen teams (Blackpool, Stoke, West Brom, Bolton, Wigan) that should be on the level of the US international player.

And those teams are largely Yank free.

 

That's 40% foreign-born, meaning that everyone from John Thorrington to Shalrie Joseph is included.

Only maybe 15% were actually imported by MLS.

 

According to http://yanks-abroad.com/get.php?mode=players


There are 12 Americans employed by the top two divisions in Germany.

11 in the top two divisions in England

2 in the top division in France

2 in the top division in Spain

4 in Norway's top division

2 in Scotland's top division

Americans are out there, but MLS seems to be a better spring board for Americans to top leagues than say Norway or Denmark. For every Charlie Davies there scores more Dempseys, Bocanegra,Howards and Eddie Johnsons. Couple that with pay that might be slightly higher few thousand miles from home, it is just easier living in your home country.

 

Imagine in say 20-30 years there could be hundreds of Americans playing abroad, with our best in Spain, Germany and England.

 

But one of them is Rossi and another is glued to the bench.

No Goodson (gone to Denmark), no Freeman (returned to MLS) and Diskerud doesn't count.

So is gold but try to find that without a shovel.

 

A bad example of what? Yes, he got a contract in the EPL, but he's shown repeatedly that he lacks the requisite quality to perform in that league. He's playing, but he isn't competing (by any reasonable definition of that word).