I am not a fan of the revs, I am a fan of the Fire and the USMNT. If I remember correctly Dempsey was good at the start of his college career, figured out he was head and shoulders better than his opponents and then mailed it in and that's why he got drafted where he did. I think it's going to take him six months to a year to adjust to a higher level of play in Europe and succeed, like Convey but bigger. If he stays in MLS he'll mail it in, leave on a free to probably a relegation bound team and be barely hitting his stride by 2010. As far as Dempsey goes, I care about him reaching his potential for the USMNT, I don't think he will in MLS. If he leaves in the january window that's fine with me, but if he has to play out his contract welcome to talent stagnation and pray for Freddy.
That would be kinda sad, but that will be a telltale sign of his worth to the USMNT. But hey, it worked so well for the other guy named Clint. In the meantime, other MLS players will make their name by saying they ran circles over Dempsey, and the man who was undervalued at $1.5 million will draw three or four bigger offers for those other guys, because if Europe thought they were getting a star for a bargain, they may be compelled to look at brighter stars that outshone and may have to own up and pay something closer to fair value. Maybe MLS will take up one of those offers, and that's fine with me so long as they don't take up all of them. The rest will stay, maybe worst case one of them will "mail it in," and he'll get schooled, and perhaps those guys will draw bigger offers, etc. etc. It's really not my ideal vision of building a league, and I try to be more bullish on MLS' future than most other fans, but if YA advocates are so hellbent on pushing the worst-case scenario for player X in MLS, then I have no problem with looking at it and saying it's not so bad. So if Dempsey plays out his contract, really, that's cool with me. It'll be worth a lot more than $1.5 million in the long run, whether you go down this road or happen upon any of the cheerier scenarios that I'm happy to envision.
Actually, it did sell Convey (and McBride) for about $1.5M each and it agreed to loan/sell Eddie Johnson to Real Sociedad for that amount. It also sold Josh Wolff to Derby County for $500K. Cars as assets have intrinsic values besides purely speculative. Football players, on the other hand, are perishable assets whose value decline until they hit zero when the player becomes a free agent ... and their value is largely subjective to begin with. However, as Autogolazo mentioned Charlton's transactions, Downie was looking at Dempsey as a possible replacement for Dennis Rommedahl, who was thought to be going to Zenit St. Petersburg. When Dempsey's deal wasn't made, Rommedahl decided to stay. The point being here is that if the only interest an MLS player going to get is from a lower-tier Premiership squad as a roster/back-up flanker, then the size of offers isn't likely to exceed the level offered by Charlton for Dempsey. In other words, Charlton is going to pay only so much for a non-striker roster player. If Gadzidis wants to be less "insulted", MLS need to interest the likes of Tottenham and Newcastle 'cos it got as much from Charlton as it could reasonably expect. PS. Andy Reid was bought last year for $8M by Tottenham from Nottingham Forest. Getting him for $5M is a decent/discount buy. Dempsey didn't exactly establish his value yet.
They aren't MLS fans. It's pretty clear there's a coterie of posters who spend aLOT of time on the MLS boards who aren't MLS fans. ******** 'em.
Because there's no tangible proof that Dempsey - or pretty much any MLS player - has any value over $300-400K. If there is, I'd like to see the accountant who can put his numbers together and show how a money losing league where an average player makes ~ $100K, can forego $1.5M transfer fee. In fact, those who argue what MLS may feel about his value are probably correct - MLS feels he's worth it but they can not reasonably justify it, so they revert to the childish "we don't get no respect" line (and I love Jacob Cohen as much as the next guy) Now you're assuming that there's a conversion in Dempsey's case. The common sense will tell you just the opposite - with his contract expiring, Dempsey's transfer value is diminishing until it hits practical zero July, 1, 2007, the moment at which he'll be able to sign a pre-contract with anyone without any transfer going to MLS. And, continuing with common sense, if Charlton walked away from the deal now, it can surely wait for another half a year because Clint Dempsey ain't gonna decide whether or not Charlton stays in the Prem or gets demoted.
This statement proves what a biased little prick you are when it comes to MLS.Tell us when will he establish his value.When he steps foot in EUROPE.We all know what he can do and he proved it against the best in the world just this past summer.You're so ********in biased you've got it coming out of your ass.
This was a good article by Greg. You can nitpick all the little nuancies and analogies if you feel like it, but for the most part this situation was fairly delivered by Greg in the piece. Europe=Better Players This is perhaps the greatest myth ever slammed down the throats of the fans on these boards. And it inevadably leads to a false belief that a player becomes a better player by moving to Europe to play. Truth is that players from every corner of the world can only take with them what they have. Its not the fact players are in Europe playing for bigger clubs that make them better. In fact it is simply that they are good players as to why they are in Europe as foreign players to begin with. What Europe DOES do better is identify and groom players from a very young level to intergrate into the professional game. Because of this wide network and long established system of youth development in place these clubs are able to find more players with uber talent. Lets not forget for every great prospect that comes out of say Ajax there are hundreds of kids that never make the grade. Its not so much that they do things so much better, its that they have a very wide net and proven methods of finding then grooming the cream of the crop for youngsters. Bottom line- Europe does not improve a player, it simply vindicates their abilities that they already have. Money Money rules the world. The valuation of American players by international clubs is directly linked to 1) the finacial abilities of the bidding club, 2) the established market rates and 3) the valuation of the current club (contract, age, importance) For example, is Carrick really worth 50 million? Probably not. But the fact ManU had so much finacial ability enabled them to pay above market price to land him. The market rates for a player of Carrick's quality is signifigantly lower that the final price. Big clubs will pay a premium on talent. Smaller clubs tend to look for bargains. As for Dempsey, there are no big clubs attempting to drive his market rate upwards. What we have is a smaller club Charlton with little finacial resources attempting to find a bargain. The current market rates on American MLS players is still low so Charlton came in and made an offer in line with the current market rates. MLS values Dempsey more than what Charlton is willing to pay. If a club really wants him and feels he is a top level player they have to match. MLS isn't setting unreasonable fees. It is simply valuating Dempsey above what a club like Charlton is willing to pay. It happens all the time allover the world. History is filled with failed bids for players, Team X wants a player and Team Y sets a price, Team x decides it won't match it. MLS MLS finds itself in a classic growing pains era. They have focused intesnsly on the building of the finacial side of the game here through expansion, stadiums, and sponsership investments. With this growth comes some tough issues. Namely salary and dealing with exposure. The vast majority of MLS players are paid well below their peers across the globe, even in some depressed market countries. This leads to the drive in players to want to move to places where better finacial opportunity exists. For the very bottom of the league this isnt a reality. Most the players in that pay scale do not have the abiltity to secure international transfers and instead trudge through the league. The very top are paid enough to reduce the desire to want to move. Its the middle tier player that has the strongest motivation. Because they are paid between 40-100K per year and DO have the ability to find outside options. (The great scandanavian exodus for example) Sooner rather than later MLS is going to have to offer a salary structure that is comparable with that of leagues around the world in their peer group, in fact they may have to offer more because of the market forces within the US. A player that feels he is faily compensated is less likely to search for other employers. Over the next several years as MLS moves toward its stabilazation goals of 16 clubs all SSS venues they are going to have to have a real dogfight on the labor side. The transfer market saga is really only a very small issue in a much larger issue.
What exactly is my agenda? Impartiality? Objectivity? Just because you don't like what I say doesn't make me wrong, or that I have some kind of agenda. Quite the contrary.... You throw around 'facts' and 'reality' whilst ignorning what's right in front of your face. You always seem to beat a retreat as soon as someone has your number and, should you hang around, you make smart ass remark like that without ever substantiating anything. Tell me how my housing market value or the NBA analagoy is inaccurate? I notice you didn't repsond to that part at all. Market value is set by trend of completed sales of comparable players within a reasonable time period.
Greg Lalas does have a point about a few MLS players showing up at the world cup whilst european players struggled. Its important to differntiate between "making up the numbers" in europe and playing. Beasley doesn't get in everygame. Don't get in every game. Reyna, Convey, McBride, and Gooch are getting ther games in. If there weren't American keeps up the ying yang a on the bench keeper at man united could be 2nd choice to an inform Troy Perkins anyday of the week. Where a player plays should be irrelavent when it comes to selecting a squad for a tournament and a starting 11. It is the job of the player to get themselves to the top of their game, by playing where ever helps them do it. I think MLS players are going to ahve the same problems as English players. As in, simply being English and being owned by an English club makes the cost of the player more of say a French, Dutch, or whatever player. I want Americans to go to to Europe I want the MLS to be great. Solution: More American players, so it will take time.
Apparently you (and others) missed my 'I was being facetous' post. Roehl was basking in his usual self-love ambiance without challenging any of Lalas' assumptions. Like this glaring oversight..."The European-based players were the ones who didn't show up at this past summer's World Cup, while MLSers like Dempsey and Jimmy Conrad shone brightly." Yet he makes no mention of the US's #1 flop - Landycakes. A very convenient oversight when you're trying to make a point but the facts don't balance. I like Lalas' stuff, more than most actually, but this wasn't one of his better pieces. I also don't like the way certain posters take inaccuracies like this , twist them, and then mount them on a flag and parade them around BS like it actually means something.
Well thats a pretty basic definition of market value. Also when we are talking about vaulation, the parties involved do buy and sell above or below market rates depending upon the intentions of those parties. With housing there is an objective market, and appraisals are set baseed on objective criteria. Player markets are more subjective, where the apprasial of a player's value is often dependant on many other factors such as the needs of the bidder, needs of the seller, and the subjective determination of a player's value to that club as opposed to the market itself.
There is almost never "tangible" proof. Determining value of any athlete is a bit of guesstimation, and it doesn't only become so because we are talking about American players. I find it funny that you are willing to accept that other leagues valuation of their players is legit, but that MLS suits are making their decisions after taking puffs on a bong. I'll remember to ask you for TANGIBLE proof every time I see a European transfer, and I'll await how you can justify each one. Hint: You won't be able to. Secondly, why do you assume there is no convergence. Of course there is. Just because MLS doesn't agree with you on where the lines converge, you have once again assumed that they haven't even thought about it. And again, that is where you go horribly awry. Also, you continue to base MLS' valuation of a player solely on how much they can get from a European team. There is a "value" to what he (in this case Dempsey) brings to his team specifically and to the league as a whole. Discounting that part of the valuation leads you down the wrong path.
Aside from being hardly able to read this....Tim Howard is now starting for Everton during his year long loan. I hate to break this to you, but Perkins isn't remotely good enough for the USMNT. I suspect strongly that his 'form' is much more a reflection of the superb team in front of him. Of course, he's certainly an upgrade over Rimando, but Perkins is probably lucky to be top 5 in MLS goalkeepers based on talent alone. I think he has excellent upside, but he's hardly challengin for KK's starting space. The point of players going abroad is that they get to play against the top players week in week out, that they can get into top continental competitions like the CL and not the CONCACAF Champions Cup. Of course, this theory only works if a player is at a decent club, and most of them aren't. They have to take steps by joining a smaller club and proving their worth. One of the recent trends - and this is very much a positive - is that bigger clubs are coming in for MLS players straight off the bat. I think that this validates the progress MLS is making in terms of developing players, but just because a big name team comes calling doesn't mean the market price goes through the roof. That will still take time to establish as I, and others, have already stated.
That would also apply to housing....it may be objective measures but there are plenty of subjective influencing factors on what motivates a home owner to sell a property - new job, financial troubles, downsizing, upsizing, relocating. Any of these could affect the price the same way it would with a player. I know it was a simple analogy, but that doens't make it wrong.
The economic jibberish being spouted in this thread would make most economics or business professors cringe. At least GalaxyOne and Onefinesq are on the right track by pointing out that the ONLY price for a player is what the seller and buyer agree to. It does not matter what one asks or what one is willing to pay. As in Real Estate you can get a sense of what someone might be worth by looking at what similiar players have obtained in the past as comps, and as such provide some framework for bargining but nothing more.
Absolutely and totally wrong. In France we have seen the terrific consequences of selling french players in better european leagues through the past 10 years, french national team has turned from a losing team to the most dominant european national team, and everybody knows why. France has since the 70's one of the best youth system but the low level of play in the French league didn't help those talents to become dominant players and worldclass players. After 1995 and the Bosman rule, all the best french players were sold to the best Italian clubs. Since then France has become a terrific national team. The high level of play in Spain, Italy, England and German improved dramatically the level of the French players like never seen before. They learned everything. It shows that fundamentals are nothing if you don't improve them by playing in a high league. And This is what we see with basketball players when they come in NBA.
I guess those back to back World Cup semi finalists teams of 1982 and 1986 as well as the 1984 European Championships and the 1984 Olympics champions were just hamstrung by that terrible french league huh? France has enjoyed its best position in world football since 1998, but to say their sucsess is directly atrributed to selling players to better leagues says nothing about the quality of player they had. How do you qualify those great French teams of the 1980's? This idea that great players morph into uber players simply by switching shirts is false. Their profile may increase and they may gain some level of experiance they may not have otherwise developed, but that in and of itself does not make them a world class player. Also you fail to mention the effect the resurgance of Ligue 1 as well as the increased exploitation of the colonial french player (remeber that the national coach was widely critisized in the 98 run up for having a team that didnt look "french enough") and their increased wealth at the league and club level has attributed to the rise of french football on the international stage. Your analysis is so grossly over simplifed it barely merits a response.
There's your agenda right there. The #1 flop was Beasley. But he plays in Europe, which to you is unpossible.
Europhilia. ??? I didn't have anything much to add to El Jefe busting you. Cap-driven trades are part of American sports. The housing market analogy is simple. Let's say my wife and I find the perfect house on St. Mary's Street. (The kids will have obviously moved out.) It's been my dream since I was a child to live in that section south of Glenwood. So we do our market research and figure the house is worth $400K. We offer $450K. But guess what? The people who live there, it's THEIR perfect house too. They won't sell for $450, they won't sell for $550. They don't need the money, they love living there. Or the guy got $800K recently in Raleigh for a house worth less than 1/4 that, because the land was needed by a developer. The seller knew he had the buyer over a barrel and extracted a 300+% premium. Etc. What was your NBA analogy??? If you want to start ordering me around, hire me and pay me to post. Is it based on the league/market of the buyer, or of the seller? The thing is, you're having a hard time understanding that Dempsey might be worth $1.5M to Charlton, worth more than that to MLS in midseason, and worth more than that to, I dunno, Rovers. They probably could use a central mid with his flair and scoring ability.
Another problem with the housing analogy is that housing costs have so many objective things that go into it...square footage, lot size, nearness to major roads or the city center, etc. Soccer players, not so much. Baseball players are the easiest to measure because baseball is so stat driven and most important stats are not team-dependent. Football is at the other end, tougher...how does even a high-interest fan really know who the best O-linemen are? But football is hella easier than soccer.
Well that's a matter of opinion....LD is america's go-to guy, the playmaker and the goal scorer. He choked big time in Germany (and not for the first time either). His absence had a more direct effect on the team than anyones. Also, Beasley was played on the right a fair bit to accommodate Convey if I'm not mistaken, which was a terrible idea. I admit DMB was a huge let down, his slump had been coming and was evident by all accounts on his late season (lack of) form for PSV. I thought that Conrad was excellent, and is one of my favourite players in MLS - he also writes a good column. Dempsey is my absolute favourite player in MLS, and they were both good. This isn't about MLS vs Euro at the WC, it was about the fact that Lalas 'forgot' to mention LD when eulogizing about MLS players at the WC....and that's a hell of an ommission.
Really? So how many of the Greek players are in the NBA? How many of the Spanish players are in the NBA? How many of the Argentine players are in the NBA? Puerto Rico? All of those teams have beaten the US recently, and not one of them has more than a handful of players in the NBA. The NBA analogy does not support your argument. Each of the countries that challenges the US has a couple of decent NBA players and then a host of players that ply their trade in an "inferior" league. They win with fundamentals.
There's plenty of stats available for soccer - not least goals and assists, plus international caps/goals/assists. There's plenty of these indicators in place that this is a manageable analogy. I agree baseball is easier to quantify, but that doesn't mean that soccer is impossible. Like most things it takes a trained eye and opinions will vary wildly. That's when we come back to comparables - Convey and DMB are probably the two nearest exports to Dempsey. Take their value and extrapolate the rest. I'm not saying $1.5m makes sense for MLS, especially midseason. What I am saying is that the offer was not an 'insult'. It was the going rate for MLS players....both in deals that have concluded, and deals that were either rejected, or fell through. And nothing anyone has countered with has changed that.
I think all reasonable people can agree that 1.5 million was a reasonable offer from a club like Charlton. I think we can all agree MLS gets to make the decision on whether or not that offer is acceptable to them as the current contract holder. The rest of this discussion is just fodder and hyperbole.