Futsal and USMNT

Most of the US Futsal team are players from MISL, the indoor league that plays in the winter. The MISL plays with boards and different rules, but the players seem to adapt to futsal fairly easily. Quite a few of them play in the 2nd division A League outdoors in the summer. And there are some (Jamal Beasley, Johnny Torrres...) who have played in MLS at sometime in their careers. My guess is that indoor players make ahywhere from $25k to $80k per season, roughly equivalent to the A league and the pay for journeyman players in MLS. Did that answer your questions?

 

That is a very accurate response...being from Buffalo, NY I am well aware of the MISL and indoor pro soccer as that is all Buffalo has ever had. Top, top players, like one per team, in the MISL, make $60,000 to $70,000 per year...but this is a half-season salary. They often play in the A-league the rest of the season, but I'm not sure of how much A-league players make.

One of the players on the US Futsal team, Steve Butcher, is from my area and grew up in the town where most of the indoor youth soccer happens, and I've played with him a number of times as he played for the same club I did, but was quite a few years older (maybe 5 or so). He has played for a few A-league teams, and is basically very talented with his feet especially in indoor and has a rocket shot. He is the quintessential journeyman, having moved wherever he was wanted around the A-league and MISL. He now plays for the San Diego Gauchos for indoor (a team I know pretty well as a friend of mine is a practice player and I've seen them play a bit), but was somewhere else last year, and somewhere else the year before. I think he has played for Rochester and Toronto, at least, in the A-league.

Basically these Futsal guys aren't good enough for MLS and are part of that weird indoor soccer culture that somehow still remains in the US and is totally, completely irrelevant to outdoor as only foot skills and a good first touch remain common requirements for success. Other than that, indoor soccer is basically hockey, and futsal, which has no boards, and a weird small, heavy ball, is even weirder. I think the US Futsal team is basically a bunch of more or less second-rate players who aren't even playing the same sport they are best at, as I know from personal experience, futsal is very very different than indoor soccer.

 

I'd guess they make less. But I really don't know. I'm pretty sure they only get paid inseason and need other jobs (sometimes just A-League and random soccer jobs like coaching, clinics, etc) to get by. That estimate seems high? That would cover half of MLS players I think.

 

Yeah, sorry I forgot to mention in my post...I think the average MISL salary is more like 10-20K/year...it is usually not enough to live off by itself and most players do other things in the offseason like you said. It is far, far below MLS in terms of salary (what is the MLS average? 40K???), but the reason they can offer ~ 15K for an average player is because the indoor rosters are about half the size of an MLS roster, if that. Also, MISL teams really use developmental players as a cheap source of labor...they can be paid by the game I believe and really could make only a couple hundred dollars per game they play in...i.e. not a real job.

 

The salary cap is 1.7 million for 18 players though the exact salary isn't always the cap amount (some make more, some less, but generally close). So that's about 90-100k/yr. The median probably ranges 50-90k though I haven't calculated it (salaries for 2004 for returning players was published by socceramerica, available by searching their site). MLS uses developmental players too.

 

I would guess that if the United States - or any country, for that matter - wanted to make some noise in the Futal World Championship that they would stock their team with some of their better players from their national team.

I mean, indoor and futsal may be somewhat foreign to Landon Donovan and Eddie Johnson, etc... but I bet if you took the team that's competing in the current world championship and had them play futsal against the team Arena had in for the Jamaica game, the outdoor team would win.

And, our better players playing indoors against other nations futsal players would have similar results.

History backs this up. In the first two editions of the Futsal World Championship, which at the time was called the Five-A-Side World Championship, the US came in the US came in third in 1989 and second in 1992. Many of the players on the team were regulars on our outdoor team including Tab Ramos, Bruce Murray, Peter Vermes, Brent Goulet, Jeff Agoos, Fernando Clavijo, Mike Windischmann, Steve Trittschuh, David Vanole, Jim Gabarra, Chico Borja and Ted Eck. (Yes, grasshoppers, there was a time when Ted Eck, David Vanole and Jim Gabarra were regulars on our outdoor full national team.)

So, if many of our better outdoor players were able to get good results in this event in the late 80s and early 90s when our player pool wasn't nearly as talented, I think it's fair to assume that today's outdoor team, which is ranked in FIFA's Top Ten and made the quarterfinals of an OUTDOOR World Cup and has players in many of the top league's in Europe, could do very well playing futsal.

The point is, if not all, of the players playing for their countries in this event are second-tier pros in their own country. If they weren't they'd be playing outdoors and in first divisions and making a lot more money and the clubs paying them said money wouldn't be releasing them for what they view is a silly indoor tournament. And this includes the US.

Having said all that, I want to take nothing away from the US team. I think it's great they've advanced and am happy for the players and for the MISL, which is well represented in this. These guys have busted their asses to learn a different game - and make no mistake, futsal is much different than indoors even though both are played under a roof - to enable them to compete with any team in the world. The US may not beat Brazil or Spain or Italy, but they've shown they can hang with any of the Futsal powers and that in itself is something to be proud of.