I find the bottom end of this scale embarrasing. I know young players have to pay their dues, but these guys would qualify for food stamps. Consider also with the salaraies that the top guys get - half of that goes to Uncle Sam. If the salary cap is going to be ****************, then perhaps the league should tax top players (or their clubs) based on the amount over the "maximum" and distribute that for the base dev kids. It is just so unhealthy that EJ gets ~53 times what CR gets. At least for Will Johnson that's $14,078.55 Canadian.
Or as I like to call it, "the salary crap". It has always been a way for the league to play favorites. Worse, the "have nots" have to pay the bulk of the excess salary for the "haves", and just to rub salt in the wound, those overpriced players are often brought in with transfer fees earned by the "have nots". Crybaby Donovan would have paid to get flown back to the US so he could play in MLS. Why are we paying him $900,000? After coming crying back from Germany, his career opportunities were pretty much limited to MLS and spokesperson for Rogaine. How much is it worth to Chicago for him to play in LA? Chicago is paying something like $50K for him to play against us twice a year.* That's just stupid. Offering him 900K was some WUSA-level critical thinking by the league FO. And while there is value to the national team in this deal, if the US Soccer Federation sees value in having him play in MLS instead of riding pine in Germany, then they can pony up the extra cash to close the deal. The nats need MLS more than MLS needs the nats. *Assuming LA pays 350K and the rest is split evenly among the other MLS teams.
Considering the salary cap and what the guys listed below are making, the above 3 are grossly overpaid. Armas, Curtin, Marsch and Brown are being outplayed by guys that are near poverty incomes. Arguably our four best players this year, at least Jaqua can afford rent though. I know this pay is not based on how well they've performed this year, but it would be disrespectful for MLS not to up these guys salaries in the offseason and in rewarding players for good performance it might be a good idea to give them a salary adjustment now. Tony Sanneh makes more than 3x the total of what Jaqua/Thiago/Rolfe/Segares make.
Pickens was promoted to the Senior roster, so I suspect he is making about 28-30k (up from 16), and I would suspect that Segares is at least at 16.5(up from 11.7) if not more.
Those guys eat up one-seventh or one-eighth of their teams' salary cap by themselves. The remainder of the roster has to be fit into the remainder of the cap. It's a cap.
The bad news those bottom paid guys are giving Chicago work on the cheap. The good news is if the Fire dont quintuple their salary by next year, I think you can be pretty certain they will be in another city playing for another team. Money talks.
If the other teams have to pay one of your players half a million dollars that doesn't count against your salary total, it aint a cap. Landon Donovan and Eddie Johnson are paid more by other teams than by the team they actually play for.
WOW! Sanneh making $365,000 while Segares is making $11,700? I wonder how he feels about this... Most overpaid Fire players: Sanneh, Reiter, Most underpaid (an understatement): Segares, Rolfe, Thiago Good news is that once we get rid of Sanneh and Reiter at the end of the season (we better), it will clear up $553,000! Then we can pay our boys what they deserve and bring in more talent as well.
I don't really understand your point. LD and EJ aren't cap-exempt, they count as a significant portion of their teams' total salary cap numbers and they don't count against other teams caps.
Follow along. No player counts more toward their team's salary cap than the league maximum salary. The team fielding one of these cap-bending players generates an "extra salary expense" equal to (player total pay - league maximum) above and beyond the expense generated by a team that actually complies with the cap. The league is running in the red and must periodically issue a call for cash to the team owners to stay afloat. Each team "owns" its own salary cap debt because they each spent the same amount up to the salary cap. That expense was created equally by all teams. However, the teams that bend the cap with players paid more than the league maximum are also generating that "extra salary expense" we talked about earlier. They are generating a disproportionately large salary expense compared to the other teams. The league's total debt is larger by that amount because that extra salary expense was not compensated by corresponding decreases to the pay of other players on that team. But... that league debt gets covered by all of the owners. So when the call for cash goes out, that "extra" salary debt is passed on to other teams in the form of a higher call for cash to keep the league afloat. In the case of Landon Donovan and Eddie Johnson, more of their salary is outside the salary cap than in, therefore, more of their salary is passed on to other teams than is actually paid by the team they play for.
Those two players are playing for teams owned by the two entities, AEG and HSG, that own two-thirds of the league's teams. Besides, it's not necessarily a given that all the owners are paying the extra amount above and beyond what their cap numbers are. In other words, depending on how the league's ownership has worked it out, AEG might be paying for Landycakes' additional salary out of their pockets and HSG might be paying for EJ's additional salary out of their pockets. We just don't know in MLS' single entity world. What I'm saying is that they do represent a significant burden on their teams in terms of their salary cap numbers (so it's not such a great competitive advantage) and if AEG and HSG are cool with spending the money, why should we care? However, here's some food for thought: Those two players play for the teams that have the two best stadium situations in the league. So while it might not currently make sense for AEG to spend that coin on a player in Chicago, it might starting next year.
I'm referencing Mr. Wilt's post from another thread here concerning this topic and adding emphasis on one particular point.
I'll grant that how exactly that debt is allocated is somewhat murky because of the single entity system, but there are teams being allowed to generate a significantly higher salary budget than the salary budget allowed to other teams. What's the difference between LA paying one player $900K and Chicago or Dallas paying nine players $100K? Why should it have a different impact on the salary cap? If stadium situation had anything to do with it, LA's string of mexican "super strikers" would have gone to Columbus and Slothar Mattheus would never have been in this league, because the Mutts piss away more money than any two teams in this league, and if we are to believe AEG, it's all because of their lousy stadium situation, not their piss-poor FO. Why should we care? Because some pigs are more equal than others. There are teams in this league that get to exceed the salary cap year after year while other teams are dismantled to fall under this fictional salary cap. Peter Nowak's career was cut short because we had to trade him to New England to stay under the salary cap, while other teams were allowed to bend the rules. He retired early rather than play for another team. Lubos Kubik wanted to retire in Chicago, but he got traded to Dallas so we could be cap compliant while LA was being gifted with hugely expensive players that came with outrageous transfer fees and mediocre talent. Players get cut because of salary cap issues. When two teams are spending $500K or $600K more per year than every body else, we should care. When some players aren't getting paid a living wage for the city they play in because of the salary cap, and other teams have half a million extra dollars in their salary budget, we should care.
If I have that choice, I'd go with the nine players. One guy can only do so much. Things have changed subtly in the past few years. Why do you think that AEG spent the money in March to have Landon Donovan to play for their LA team that they wouldn't spend in November to have him play for their San Jose team? Why does FC Dallas currently have a higher salary bill than the MetroStars? Those teams have that half million of salary wrapped up in one player. Eddie Johnson will be making $875,000 a year, about $600,000 of which will not count against the cap. That's nice, but it's not as if FCD would have another $600,000 to spend on other players if EJ was only making $275,000. Nowak and Kubik had to be traded away because even their $275,000/year salaries (or whatever they were) were untenable. Meanwhile, LA might've been spending hundreds of thousands more, but those hundreds of thousands were wrapped up in Carlos Hermosillo or Luis Hernandez or whomever. And how much good did those single players do them?
Missed Thorrington and Herron in the full-list: CHI Herron Andy F $102,000.00 $110,750.00 CHI Thorrington John M $60,000.00 $66,250.00
Absolutely. So would I. Your point that one guy can only do so much is at the center of what is so wrong with this. How many great teams have been broken up to fit under the cap? If those teams had been able to blow the salary cap by half a million dollars a year, there would have been no need to break them up. Those teams would have continued playing together, built on their team chemistry, and put a better product on the field. Dallas wouldn't have an extra 600K, but everybody could have an extra $50K. Let's put it another way. The league is paying an extra $1,225,000 per year to support those two players' bloated salaries. Let's split that evenly between the teams and raise the salary cap by $100K per team. You can pay players whatever you want, but you have an actual cap, no exceptions for any team. I've got to tell you, as a Chicago fan, I would jump at that deal. If you still think EJ is worth $875K, knock yourself out. You may need to make some cuts elsewhere. Debt is debt. If the league wasn't letting those two teams abuse the cap system, they could spend the exact same amount on salaries and give every team an extra $100K. In a league where some guys can't pay the rent, that's a big deal. LA has been nothing but a sinkhole for salary cash since they started. They've pissed away millions of dollars on poorly chosen internationals' salaries and transfer fees, and they're still being given a Get Out Of Salary Cap Free card to the tune of at least $600K a year. That money could be better spent elsewhere. (Not to mention the fact that offering Landon Donovan a $900K contract was just stupid. He bailed on an international gig and came crying home twice. Where the hell else is he going to go? That was, as they say, a buyer's market. All we had to do was outbid the Hair Club For Men.) Their salaries were not untenable. They were under contract with the league. Remember single entity? They played in Chicago, but their contract was with MLS. The league pays the same amount for them to play no matter what city they're in. The league was going to pay the salary regardless. The league just wouldn't let them play in Chicago because it would have put us over the salary cap, the very same cap that other teams were violating by hundreds of thousands of dollars. Even if Kubik and Nowak were getting paid the max, we could have carried them both until they retired and still been closer to meeting the cap than either LA or Dallas. If LA can throw hundreds of thousands of dollars down a toilet on a player who isn't doing them any good, why can't Chicago have afraction of that in cap relief to let a hero play his last year where he wants to? Why can't we reward the loyalty of a player who spent their whole MLS career with one team and just wants to play his last year with them? I used Chicago players, but this happens all over the league every year. I bet you could name Dallas players that you would have kept if it weren't for salary cap issues.