Exactly, and that was my point. He was arguing that Donovan doesn't justify his salary. And I was saying, who does, really, in this world? Everything is inflated. I mean, Gerard was griping at being offered, what, 100,000 a week! It's not breaking the league; it's giving an air of legitimacy; it's letting me watch good, exciting, young players week in and week out instead of having to follow some matchtracker or game report from someone "over there." In short, I'm happy with what MLS is doing to keep our players here and giving them options.
Are you implying that most soccer players in MLS hate their jobs after spending a considerable amout of their lives to play a sport professionally? I doubt it. They might hate the pay, but if they hated the job, why do it? Bills? With what the base MLS player makes they couldn't even pay a car note! It has to be something more then that.
I agree - as I said, these guys are happy because they are getting a chance. I just wanted to clarify the misstatements about what they earn and how they live (they don't drive SUV's, unless they were bought by their parents). In response to your other question, when I was 21 I graduated college with an engineering degree and was able to more than scrape by (I made about 3 times what these guys make, and that was quite a while ago). Many of these guys on developmental contracts don't have college degrees, but several do. If/when they decide to go that route, they will definitely make more money.
I should have studied harder in school. And I didn't mean to say that they all do drive SUVs, but that considering that seems to be one of the accoutrements of youth these days, that they'd aspire to. It's realistic if you can get out of college with an engineering degree. It's not so realistic if you leave college early to play professional soccer.
Maybe. But in this case he is right. Landon is a trophy for AEG. He is not in any way draw. He is simply not a charismatic personality at all. Maybe to youth clubs and teenage girls and such but not among adults. And thats just off the field. He is not even the best player in this league anymore (hasn't been for two years at least). He is not dominating player. He DOES disappear from games. How often do you see this guys just put his stamp on a game the way ROB Amado Clint Ruiz or even Jaime has? He is simply not that type of player. He doesn't like to have that load on his shoulders. He prefers to dish the ball off so thers can take the high pressure shot. Other might see this as "wanting to make his teammates better" I see it as a lack of courage and unwillingness to handle pressure. The players I named above will never have that as a mark against them. Lando will. Am I glad he is getting paid? Yes.
Actually landon was reported to have been offered about a million a year to stay before he even went back.
And that's a valid criticism. But you have to admit that there's a segment of the criticism of Landon that has nothing to do with that - it has to do with his golden boy status, the whole Europe thing, the did-he-orchestrate-his-move-from-SJ-to-LA thing, and the perception that he's not tough enough. There are lots of folks who simply can't stand the guy, and wouldn't be able to if he was head-and-shoulders the best player in the league, scored 30 goals a year and got great TV ratings whenever he was on. A lot of those same folks are just fine and dandy with him when he's playing for the Nats, though.
No I am saying that the vast majority of people in this world make professional decisions that have absolutely nothing to do with love na dverything to do with the bills they have to pay. The fact that it may take a soccer player til the age of 25 doesn't really change any of that.
I agree. I am one of those people (not the goldenboy thing more the hes too soft thing). But does that make these peoples valid observations any less true?
Typically, people are are paying for luxury not necessity. Paying for a lifestyle, not for sustinence. The bills they incur are bills they took on outside of the necessities like utilities, etc. So spending $$$ for stars is to perpetuate their lifestyle. And if that is what it takes to get the best, I'm for it if MLS PTB want to pay for it. On that point, I agree with you. But if you are trying to make sustinance, as so many younger players cannot make on that salary, why do they continue to play soccer here? If it was simple economics as you have inferred, they would simply stop playing and get another job, because they barely earn the necessities for survival. And that is why I disagree with you. They have to be playing for another reason, because there is no way they know if they will be a superstar. I tend to postulate they love the game. If not, they wouldn't waste their time. But if they can't make any money at soccer to have the necessities, there is no doubt they'd have to leave to pay the bills. And that is the job they'd probably hate, not soccer
Heres Tino's opinion http://www.mlsnet.com/MLS/news/mls_news.jsp?ymd=20050707&content_id=35735&vkey=news_mls&fext=.jsp
I disagree with your assertion of Landon. Does he drift in and out of games? yes. does he seem bored at times with MLS? yes. But he won 2 championships in 4 years in the league and is easily the player every coach in the league would pick first come playoff time. As for the load on his shoulders, I actually think he is starting to take up that role on the national team now. He is pretty much the face of the national team right now.
Some of it's true. Some of it's jealousy, it would appear. Some of it's just people being small. Some of the criticisms seem to be valid, others seem to exaggerate the importance of a perceived shortcoming or to extrapolate that because he exhibits this behavior, it means this. And none of us know the guy at all, and none of us have ever played with him. I don't know if he's a tough competitor or a good teammate or bad teammate or any of that. I figure it's counterproductive to just bash a guy for the sake of bashing him, which happens with popular people, especially talented athletes. He's performing well for the Nats and they're winning and on their way to qualifying. If he's not on your favorite club team, I could see how you might not care how he does in MLS or you might dislike him just for the fact that he doesn't play for your team. But the fact that he's not a perfect player doesn't mean he's not a quality player.
On personality, Joe Montana and Michael Jordan are among the most boring people on the face of the planet. Sporting "charisma" is contrived from scratch every day. As to how good Lando is, at the time of his contract signing, he was the best player MLS could have reasonably hoped to keep for a whole career. Valderrama didn't shoot the ball, either. All that team needs is a solid poacher and everyone comes out looking brilliant. Guy got two championships, a Cup Final MVP, and is already climbing the all-time playoff scoring charts, before his 23rd birthday. He has a solid shot at being this league's answer to Wayne Gretzky. The decision to adjust the pay scale enough to give a guy almost a million bucks was hard. The decision to make it Landon Donovan is comparatively easy.
You continue to miss my point. You said if people were playing the game all your life and were given the chance to do it professionally one might take (presumably for the love). I said this is in stark contrast to overwhelming majority of people who might be able to do something they love but instead choose to do something they might hate because they get paid more to do it. Bottom line they gop where the money is. Most of these guys are simply in lvivng the dream mode as "MLS players" now. Lets see what happens when they turn 25 and the choices are USL and getting a real job that will alow them to save some money to plan for the rest of life.
But they performed brilliantly in popular sports. Those old enough to remember when Gretzky was actually a well-kept secret (before hockey was popular, which is before it became unpopular again) remember that you can dominate a niche sport, and if you're lucky you might transcend that sport. But a soccer player has a tougher hill to climb in that regard just because of soccer's place in the hierarchy in this country. Who's the most popular American soccer player ever? Debateable, I guess. But I hardly ever saw the name "Alexi Lalas" without "most recognizable soccer player" near it. Didn't mean he was the best --- far from it. But he was the one that if you stopped 100 people on the street, at least some folks would have heard of. That's worth something. How much it's worth is up to you, I guess.
But I see this as simply being dismissive of people opinions. I could just as easily say the only reason you are saying these nice things about him is because you like the kid. People have legitimate and numerous crit iques of this playuer and if he was not and american there wouldn't be anywhere near the level of defensiveness we see surrounding this player. He is talented but he is also not the player people make him out to be. All the germany episode did was expose that.
No, I don't care one way or the other. But I guess I've been conditioned by years of Bigsoccer where nothing is any good, no player is any good, and it's just getting tiresome. Everybody sucks, every coach sucks, every front office sucks, repeat ad nauseum. Some people have legitimate and numerous critiques of this player. Some people just don't like him. I'm not going to dissect each person's criticism and say which side each particular person falls on, but I feel reasonably safe in saying that there are some who just shout to hear themselves shout. And at the end of the day, WTF is the difference? If he's good or not good, overrated or underrated, how does that affect our lives? How does that affect US Soccer? How does that affect MLS? Who cares? It's sound and fury, signifying nothing. IF he continues to score goals for the US Nats and they qualify and do well in Germany, well then he's served my purposes, narrow as they are. What you think of him or what Joe Blow thinks of him is of little consequence in the grand scheme of things. I'm guessing it's of even less consequence to the player in question.
How exciting a personality is Mia Hamm, and how popular was women's soccer before she came around? I'm perfectly willing to acknowledge that previously popular sports do have it easier when it comes to the 'creation of superstars', but that doesn't mean they have a monopoly on it, and while Lalas's personality was obviously a major factor in his quasi-celebrity status (his going from Rutgers to the Serie A in what seemed like a bewilderingly short period of time also played a role), that doesn't necessarily say it doesn't work the other way around. It did to a degree in Gretzky's case. You put a talented player in a big market and it lifts the entire sport.
Not at all. She's a drip. But for all her popularity among PTHs and the soccer community, I remember one Pert commercial while she was at the peak of her career, one Gatorade commercial towards the end and the "Thank You" Nike commercial when she retired. Recognizable? Yeah. Transcendant? Sorta, I guess. But I wouldn't put her in the Jordan/Montana/Gretzky pantheon. She's still a soccer player, and a women's soccer player to boot. And where is women's soccer now? Didn't last, did it? Women's league soccer, that is.
But that's essentially my point. Hamm:Women's Soccer::Greztky:Hockey (if not greater). Women's Soccer is nothing like the NBA, and yet there was still an unmistakable 'Mia Hamm effect.' I can only imagine what it would have been like had she been about 6 years younger and still a dominant goalscorer (Mia in her prime owns that league). Well, no, but it was pretty good in DC while it lasted. http://kenn.com/soccer/wusa.html And we're not talking about paying LD the kind of salary where his launching an entire sport would be the only justification. He's getting paid 1/30th of what Jordan made at his peak, and we're talking about a guy who's got a real good shot at this point at becoming MLS's all time leading scorer, the playoffs all-time leading scorer, the National Team's all-time leading scorer, and possibly MLS's all-time leading assister as well, if he has a decently long career. He has a reasonable shot at walking out with a half dozen championships or more. There was a lot of upside to this deal that made it a relatively easy call, IMO. He's young, he's good, reasonably good looking (minus the receding hairline), he's American, he's an attacker. Until EJ came around, there was nobody else the league could have found that would meet those qualifications. Now that EJ has come around, we're paying him similar dough.
Total BS. Everything is not inflated. Many many performers and athletes earn their salaries. https://www.bigsoccer.com/forum/showthread.php?p=5451484#post5451484 Yah but he disappeared in a game 2 seasons ago so that makes everything you wrote null and void. Andy
No, I get it. But you are only focusing on the inevitibility that I agree with. But I am saying.... "Why do they even try in the first place?" They know they'll be paid squat. But they still try, for a most likely "normal person" salary in MLS? Not millions of dollars. Why? For a "future" payoff? That is most likely not going to happen (as we both have said)... so why not get the good job NOW? Why go through the heartbreak? The love of the game. Because it is irrational to play otherwise knowing the exactly what conditions you will end up in... and who cares at 25? Another kid will be more then glad they'll take their place and go through the same abuse and take the same crappy pay. And for what purpose? It has to be for the love of the game.