SJMN (1/15/03): Potentially Spejic's Dream Personnel Decision: Ekelund May Be Gone

ooh.. what is that appearing on my face? Could it be.. a smile? We'll have to wait and see..

 

Sounds like a last ditch effort to clear more money for Wade and/or Joe.

 

I've got a question for you brilliant pebbles:

If the expressed reason for Graziani's loan was to make salary cap room and the Quakes have made an (apparently) insulting offer to Barrett and now to Ekelund, wtf are they saving cap room for, the second coming of Yves?! I believe right down to my x-file issue consipiracy theory shoes that the Quakes organization, having lost SVSME has been told in no uncertain terms that they have to cut expenses to the bone, and that we're going to end up with a team that has exactly ONE marquee player with a bunch of has-beens and never-weres, thus saving uncle Phil a bundle. I am extremely nervous, and nothing other than an announcement of the signing of one of the three (cannon-barrett-ekelund) along with a new signing (proven, quality player, not a P-40 or collegiate shake-of-the-die) will convince me otherwise.

Until that happens, I believe we may be witnessing the E-quakes deathmarch toward either contraction or moving the team.

Convince me I'm wrong - go ahead, make my day!

 

Now that's what I like to hear bsman. You are the ultimate Quakes fan! Such pessimism and dispair ought to get you the trophy as Numero Uno. I do like the idea about the second coming of Yves.

 

okay...now, i worry...

 

Of course, you're wrong, BS. Remember, they released Zak!

 

Yeah, I just had to go change my underwear.

 

You have to remember that last year the Burn were paying a big chunk of Graziani's salary. If they hadn't been then the team probably would have been close to or gone over the cap.

Just because he is gone, it doesn't mean that the Quakes could offer Cannon or Barrett what they wanted. It means they were probably offering what they could.

I see the restructure offer to Ekelund as a way of cutting back on money to an older player (I wish they would ask Agoos though) and freeing up more to offer Wade or Joe.

 

We ditched our MVP.....we insulted our best defender aaaaaaand our goal keeper, who bleeds Quake blue. Might as well slap the Dane in the face too......he only helped change the face of Quake soccer. No biggie.



PS- spejic, you have a wet spot on the front of your trousers.

 

I spilled the orange juice I was drinking when I saw the title of the thread.

 

uh-huh.

 

Nothing to worry about, folks. Perhaps AEG is merely preparing to drop the Quakes down to the A-League or PDL. No biggie.

 

OK, you are scaring me! I had the same paranoid thought!

Also, I would like to hear on the health of Dayak and Agoos. We need depth to be even semi-competitive in the CONCACAF (?) Tournament this year. I hate losing to foreign teams more than losing to LA. Well, may be not as much...

It looks like Devon is going to get his wish with more playing time...

 

While they're at it, they should also try to unload Mulronney. Why keep anyone decent on the team?

Sorry, I'm having one of those days....

 

Rumor has it that they shopped Richie around but no one wanted to take a chance on him because of his injury. All right, I'm making that up, but I wouldn't be surprised if it were true...

 

I heard that the Quakes tried to trade L-Do to NY/NJ for Petke.

 

With Landon's re-signing it seems obvious (well it apparently wasn't obvious) that the league and St. Phil are not going to dismantle the team. How do any of you know (exact figures) how much Barret and Cannon were offered? If there's anything this league is silent about, it's money. Hell, we never even know player's salaries until they get dumped (for salary cap room of course.) All we can do is assume. Let's assume they know what they're doing, and until we pass judgment on the league and the organization, let's wait till after draft day.

 

Well one thing we know is that the league salary policy is pretty bad. What kind of quality can you expect for $1.7 million a year? Guys like Wade can go the Kirovski route and play in Europe, even on the bench in England, Spain or Germany, and assure his future financially.

The quality we've had for two years has been amazing beyond all hope. I'm afraid that we're going to have to expect something far less unless we get a couple of unforseen gems via the draft, Pro-40 or discovery.

All that said... I don't have any suggestions. Maybe the league is doing the best that can be expected, until such time as we average 25K attendence per game and tv networks are fighting over the broadcast rights.

In the meantime, say a prayer for Frank's success in Europe.

 

Call it a hunch but for the level of play Barrett brings to the table, I'm gonna assume their offer was insulting.

 

There is no quick fix solution to the salary cap problem. Soccer specific stadiums have to be built before attendance gets up into the 20K range IMHO. We're looking at the reality of the league for at least four more years, and a good 10-15 to get closer to European big four league type pay.

Cherundolo made like 340K in the 2nd Bundesliga before they got promoted FWIW(650K now that they've promoted, will easily become a million dollar earner after his current contract is up). The worst part--since the depressed transfer market, the offers for players have been low, and MLS has turned them down. If it continues that way in Europe, expect young MLS players to play out their original contracts without renegotiating so they can jump to Europe easier(i.e., no hang ups with transfer fees). Sanneh made over 1 million dollars last year in the Bundesliga including incentives.

Short term the league needs to be aggressive at signing the best young American players U17, U18, U20,U23 like they were this year. MLS will only be a developmental league until they can start offering the type of pay that the big four European leagues offer--hell, even the better teams in Holland(JOB's around 900K I believe), Scotland, France and Portugal pay significantly more than MLS' max. Even with European countries' high tax rates, it's still better than MLS max.

 

It seems like even with the removal of Ariel's salary from the 1.7 million cap it's not enough to keep the team under the cap. The players that are not currently under contract (i.e. Ekelund, Wade and Joe) do not count against the cap until their contracts are renegotiated. I say this because why would you otherwise ask a player to take a paycut??? You want to try to keep players happy (i.e. pay them their salary).
So, every year each player pretty much gets a small increase in their salary(that is if their contracts are not up), and some players get larger increases.
It seems that when it became clear that Landon was a keeper (which is good) other players need to go or negotiate down in order to stay under the cap.
Here is the problem, no player willingly takes a paycut(duh!).
And e.g. Joe who had a good year last year is probably asking for a considerable pay increase.
In confusion (or conclusion).
There is still going to be some player movement (if certain players don't accept the reduced salaries or new contracts).
And the only new players the team can add at this point are a couple of minimum salary players from the draft.
SJ is not the only team that has to go thru this. Every team faces it at some point or another. It's just been very quiet until now that there is some type of a problem with the cap. (I heard about it a month ago or so that is was a problem - from an agent).

 

It's not all about money

I think this is a very pessimistic and, frankly, false assumption. Professional soccer players are still people with a variety of considerations. It's not always about money. How many of you would move to Spain or Italy or Denmark if you were offered a job that doubled or tripled your salary? Sure, some of you would, but many of you wouldn't. I've had offers to more than double my salary if I wanted to move to Boston, Minneapolis or southern California. I've also had similar offers in Germany. But the fact is, I don't want to live in those places. I want to live here. There will always be some people for whom the money is the most important factor, but then there are those like me (and Donovan and Mariucci) who are making a comfortable living and are very happy where they are.

There's always the argument about "testing yourself against the world's best" or going to a place where you can "improve your game", but again, what's so different about any of us? Don't most of us want jobs where we are challenged and feel that we are constantly improving our skills and knowledge base? Somehow we look at professional athletes through a different perspective than we do ourselves. In the end, they are still people with jobs, families, hobbies, etc. and have many of the same issues we all do.

To conclude this tirade, there will always be a subset of people who bolt for the money, but as the years go on, the pool of talented American players will continue to grow and there will be a percentage of talented players that will want to continue to ply their trade in the good old U S of A. We will always lose some, but I am confident that we will maintain a core group of talented, marketable American players that will continue to help the league grow and thrive.

Switching gears to the Ekelund situation, my understanding is that Graziani was hitting the Quakes cap with about $150K in salary last year. By letting him go, we have freed up that much in cap room. Making the assumption that Donovan was already at the league max, his new deal didn't impact the numbers significantly one way or another. By cutting Ibsen and signing Waibel we probably didn't save much. For the purposes of argument, let's call it $25K in savings. Therefore we have $175K extra this year to pay for all raises and sign new players. Some numbers that have been thrown around for Cannon and Barrett have them both making about $50K last year. The best estimates have them both being offered about $100K, meaning a $50K increase per player. That leaves $75K left of the Graziani/Ibsen savings to give Ekelund a raise and sign any new players. This is not really enough for adding any new players of any kind of real experience or quality. Basically we are stuck with signing development players or P40 players who don't count against the cap. I hate to say it, but Cannon's the most dispensable. Decent keepers are a heck of a lot easier to find than quality left backs and good central midfielders. Resign Barrett and Ekelund, let Cannon go, and now maybe there's some money left over for a new player of decent quality. These are the difficult decisions that Johnny, Frank and Dominic have to make. Even if my numbers are off a bit, the point still remains that we are very limited in what we can do if we resign all these guys.

 

Re: It's not all about money

If it comes down to that, I agree that they just let Cannon go. I think Conway can be a good goalie in MLS if given the chance, plus the Quakes can pick up a goalie on the cheap in the draft or from the A-League.

 

I think for the most part you're kinda right. But there's a huge difference between Lando and Wade and Joey. Lando is the "poster boy" for soccer in this country. His career and his pocketbook probably stand to gain more by his staying than his leaving. Most sports fans, even if they don't know soccer, know Landon Donovan! Heck, my mom doesn't even know sports, but she tells ME about Landon Donovan all the time!!! Landon's living stands to be much more "comfortable" than Wade's or Joey's ever will be.