It's not possible with the way teams have "rights" to players, but in the case of RSL - to have been able to start with an open salary cap, if they'd been able to entice away some under paid performers... It would have been nice to be able to take advantage of underpaid players on some teams (but they teams could "protect" them - essentially restrict price competition within the league for them). In Economics 101 (well perhaps more like 300 or 400 level) you become instantly aware that the effect of trade barriers (even within a closed semi-closed system like MLS) will actually hurt both sides of the economic question the avg buyer (owner) and the avg seller (player). It's really only the players on the margin that benefit (i.e. the top 10 players or so... or the luck of the draw on some teams).
Amen. all of the above. BUT Landon also was desperate to get back to MLS. They were definitely in a position to negotiate harder...
Metro fans of course are not happy about his wage bill. However his play this season has been great, not worth that amount of coin... but good. If he would re-sign next season for what Gaven makes i would love to have him back.
So much for the argument that MLS is biased towards the MetroStars, huh? Right now, the only guy who is giving his team (or MLS) their monies worth is Amado Guevara.
Totally agree. At one point Metro was paying max salary to Tim Howard and Eddie Pope. People dont pay to watch goalkeepers and central defenders. With the salary cap so low, it really makes it tough to get anyone of quality on the attacking side of the ball when you do that.
Star players for the national team also have a pretty high drawing power. Marvell Wynne is definitely worth my entertainment dollars.
Nah... Donovan is past it-- he clearly, by his disappearing act, deserves to be grouped with those other guys. I think it's all downhill for his play from here on out.
And how do you know that they didn't negotiate harder and this was the result? This figure also does not include his performance-based incentives which Grant Wahl talked about.
Look, its real simple.......marketable names in US soccer aren't exactley a dime a dozen. Its an extremely limited supply. There's Freddy Adu, Landon Donovan, Mia Hamm...and maybe Eddie Johnson....and that's it. It isn't like MLS could just tell Landon to F off and take the money and spend it on a different, but equally strong player who would be as marketable. Landon and his agent know that. End of discussion.
Yeah, I think I'm agreeing with you. It was the other guy saying they should have negotiated harder...and thus lowered the pay. And I'm saying maybe that's as low as they could get it.
I like the sarcasm but he is not a player who can be considered a draw. No matter how highly people think of him.
Yeah, your point applies even better to goalkeepers, who can make the highlight reels just as easily as forwards can. A better argument would be that people don't pay to watch defensive midfielders. In 90% of cases they don't. Defenders are a more mixed case, I'd say. Some of them are the kind that the less they're mentioned in the match report, the better they were. Others are more like Wynne, that can actually be entertaining to watch in and of themselves. Well, they only had three days to make the deal, else they be forced to wait until the next window. And color me less than certain at this point that Donovan was so desperate that he would have accepted a totally non-comparable contract to what he could fetch in Europe. Anyway, whether they 'overpaid' in the sense that they could have gotten him for a little less money is a trivial question compared to whether he has any hope of recouping the money MLS paid for him. I happen to believe has a good chance to do so. Others disagree.
... then they don't know how to negotiate. Landon want back to mom and girlfirend - there was only one league and one team offereing that? what choice did Landon have that HE was willing to make? (go to Europe and be miserable somewhere else - if you gotta have mom and the girlfriend close by and they won't relocate... then your options are pretty limited)
Yeah, but Landon went to the market that is ALREADY drawing well... Did LAG attendance numbers shoot up as a result of Landon? Does MLS see higher attendance in other cities because of him? Does MLS get royalties from his endorsements? ... if not, then in terms of the NEGOTIATION on compensation his marketability is unrealized value. Don't get me wrong, I like that Landon is in MLS. I like that he has a thing were he can't be happy playing if he isn't living in California... but from a pure negotiating standpoint that is more power to MLS. Obviously, Bayer Leverkusen understood the flip side of his weakness - the let him out of his contract on a sweet deal because they could not realize the potential of value without letting him go home to play in California...
Again, there is a total of about 4-5 players in US Soccer that you can consider "marketable"....Landon is one of them. He's worth more to MLS then 95% of the other players in the league. As much as you think the league had him by the short and hairies, I don't think they see it the same way.
Oh, I don't know - a couple of 200-300k less could help offset the purchase cost... Landon, the individual, has more opportunity to make money on endorsements in the US than he did in Germany. The beauty of it, was that Landon is worth more to himself (ala endorsements) probably in the US than in Germany and he himself has said quality of life was of utmost importance to him... My feeling is that MLS probably was trying to be "fair", but I'll bet you if it was Steinbrenner or Trump negotiating for MLS... Landon might have gone for the bottle of tums. Remember, he told everyone how miserable he was over there and money wasn't everything... I wouldn't be surprised if he had this kind of a conversation with is agent, "... I don't care what you have to do, just get me out here and back home..." Me thinks, Landon has a good agent.
Ok, I agree with you about his marketability and name recognition - I'm just wondering HOW does MLS actually benefit from it? They've said attendance is the vast majority of their revenue stream, so has Landon put more buts in chairs, sold more merchandise, etc? I don't hate Landon and I like him in the league - I just think in "honoring" the great hope of US soccer... perhaps there are emotional assumptions about his practical worth that are hard to realize, and thus, a hard negotiator could have taken him to the woodshed (figuratively speaking)... that's all.
Intagible benefits of having the biggest name US soccer player at home. Its hard to judge exactly what effect Landon has on attendance, there are too many variables to factor in and out. In addition, there is the perception that all the best, young Americans are going overseas. Here is a way for the league to counter that.
It's very difficult, though, to determine when someone's been taken to the woodshed when (a) you're an outside party, (b) the asset you're fighting over is hard to value, and (c) you're expecting future benefits out of that asset for a long time to come. What I know is that most of the best players in the Eriedivisie top out at around $1m. While we all know that Donovan flopped in the BL, I think we can agree that-- but for his unwillingness to fight-- he probably had the talent to at least be a squad player over there, or perhaps a good player in a slightly less competitive league. And maybe that's worth about $1m, or so. Now, you can go ahead and blow holes in everything I just said-- but if you do, you're just underscoring how difficult it is to value talent.
Good point, kpaulson. I think many of us would consider Beas and Landon on an equal plane, talent-wise. Considering how DMB has performed in the Eredivisie, you would have to think that Landon falls into that comparison.
Ha! Good luck getting any sort of consensus on that one. Thanks for the chuckle. At any rate....repped.
Remember that when Landon originally ended his loan and transfer back to Bayer, he said that he turned down (to paraphrase) "a real good offer" from MLS to stay here. Of course, since none of us know the original number that MLS put up to keep Landon at San Jose, there's a possibility that the contract Landon signed to return to MLS and go to Los Angelese was a somewhat lower number than what MLS originally offered, adjusted for his desperation to leave Germany. *shrug*
I seem to recall that an offer was not even made by MLS to keep Donovan in MLS out of respect for Landon's wish to fulfill his obligation to BL. This was brought up during the press conference announcing his departure and left some Quake fans wondering whether MLS/AEG/Quakes should have done more to try to convince him to stay in the league. IIRC.
Last time the salaries of players in contract during the off season was released. It actually missed a lot of players who were in re-negotiation or were signed to one year contracts.