According to the Guardian: "Clubs can also trade for a second "overpaid" designated player, and now they are about to change the rules to allow for a third." http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2009/nov/22/david-beckham-football-america I hadn't heard this rumor before. Does anyone know if its seriously being discussed or if this guys is just making stuff up? Overall it was a generally positive article about MLS too.
I don't see the point. Have fun fitting three DP's under the salary cap. The only way this happens is if the DP's don't count against the cap at all.
You wouldn't have to go that far. One possible compromise that I'd thought of is to pay DPs the salary of the average non-DP starter (set a minutes cutoff, say 2000 minutes or something) from the previous season. My guess is that would be somewhere in the high 100s, or possibly low 200s. I should say, though, that the info seems to come from Tim Lieweke, who has been known to get ahead of himself before.
Didn't LA have three DP's at one point? Beckham........and the grandfathered Donovan and Ruiz? In 2008? The outcome was one of the worst teams in recent MLS memory. Two good players, one fat-overpaid crybaby......and no defenders. They'd have to change the salary cap to make it work.....which is possible.
If they do this, it might force every team to have at least one DP out of competitive necessity. Assuming teams don't squander their DP's, which is just as likely.
Which is what I had assumed most of the small, and even frankly midsize, markets didn't want. Lieweke speaks from the point of view of a big-market team, and although he might have the votes of NY, Seattle, and Toronto with him, I'm not sure on this issue if he has anyone else.
Robert Kraft would cry if this happens. It says a lot of players will be coming after the World Cup. oh the suspense
Grant Wahl mentioned it in his twitter page: http://twitter.com/Grantwahl Leiweke to Guardian: Beckham Rule changing to allow 3 DPs per MLS team. Big-name stars coming after World Cup. http://tinyurl.com/y9unfak about 5 hours ago from web I am cautiously optimistic that if used properly, this will allow MLS teams to make a dent in the concacaf champions league sooner rather than later (the competition that I value most)
Good, so MLS team wont need to spend money and scout 3rd division 27-year olds who only have "expierance"..and instead give more minutes to American 18-19 year olds. Since, with more better players on the team..........you can afford to test out a few optimistic American Youth.
As a compromise, it might make some sense though. If there is some hesitiancy to simply spend more money on the entire roster, allowing more targeted investment on star players which is voluntary could avoid a showdown between owners on the larger cap. Besides, we don't really know how many slots they will approve -- if this report is accurate my guess is each team will be give 2 slots and they can trade for a 3rd -- so we might not see that much change in competitive balance. A fair number of slots could still go unused. As further evidience that "star power" is on the radar, Garber's response in the recent Wahl interview about increasing the cap was interesting: "The only way the salary cap could go up would be in the context of a renewed CBA. And there's no doubt in anyone's mind that in order to grow the popularity of this league we need to improve our quality, we need to have more star players." Again, that sounds like more DPs to me. Link: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2009/writers/grant_wahl/11/19/garber.qa/1.html#ixzz0XdCjZALI
"Outside of South Africa, No 1 ticket buyer in the world for the World Cup? United States. Bigger than England and Germany combined. No 1 rights payment for the World Cup? United States. More registered players than anywhere in the world? United States. We don't get ratings or rights payments for our league or national team that Man United or the Premier League get. But it will take some time and I think it will make some progress."
How many DPs total per team do we have to get to before "designated" losses all (or most of) its meaning. because, imo, that's were the league should be going with this (in the many years to come).
Does anybody else feeling like this league is going to explode in popularity in a few years? I can't help but noticel a buzz about the league in the MSM that I haven't felt before. If this 3 dp thing is true we might see a big bump in attendance and ratings in the next few years.
thats what i assume it might be too Triplet1. 2 slots +1 acquired via trade. if thats the case NY will have 3 since they have Chivas' Dp from the Amado trade a few years back. personally i dont think this will piss off Kraft or Kronkie (sp) since they dont care about winning championships. When NY, Toronto, LA, Chivas, Seattle come to town they'll sell that many more tickets for the smaller teams. When the revenue sharing from the new TV contracts are paid out... the smaller teams will see greater returns b/c more ppl will tune in for better quality. Dp's dont have to be 5 million dollar players ....they could be 600-700k too ya know.
I am becoming more convinced that this will be the compromise between the owners that want to spend more and those that don't. If you make a significant hike in the salary cap, then Kraft, the Hunts, etc. have to spend more, which they don't want to do. If you allow an extra DP per team (with some sort of salary cap allowance to allow teams to actually use them - for example making the 2nd or 3rd DP only count as $200K against the cap or something similar), then they don't have to spend anything more while the freer spending teams can. That could affect the competitive balance, of course, so why would the cheaper owners agree? Besides the fact that the owners will have to find some compromise that they can all live with, as mentioned the cheap owners will make money when those other team DPs come to their stadium. I don't recall Kraft being upset when crowds came to see Beckham or Blanco at Gillette. He also would make more money if Henry/Viera/Palermo/etc. came to town a couple of times per year. They could also trade those extra DP slots if they didn't plan to use them, of course. There is another reason that extra DPs might make more sense to the owners rather than a large hike to the cap. The logic behind raising the cap is the theory that improving the quality of play will make the league more popular (I strongly agree, but it is a debatable point). Well, if you double the salary cap but just end up doubling everyone's salary, all the owners will have done is given money away to the players without improving the league. A smaller hike to the cap with up to 16 new DPs could keep the existing salaries close to where they are while still raising the quality of play and the "star power" of the league. My own preference would be to just raise the cap and be more transparent, but I think this would still be a step in the right direction.
I might be alone in this, but I still think that experiment in LA could have worked if LA hadn't wasted money on Pires, Vanney and Xavier, and if Ciaran O'Brien (god bless him) hadn't cracked Ruiz in the first game of the year. I mean, I don't know how the salary cap numbers work at the moment, but aren't Gonzalez, DeLaGarza and Berhalter making significantly less than Pires, Xavier, and Vanney? Enough that LA could have still afforded Ruiz? To admit, it's pure idle speculation, because without finishing as poorly as they did the last two years, LA could have never picked Omar or DeLaGarza, or likely been high enough on the allocation list to get Berhalter.
One of the thoughts I had was that part of the idea here would be keeping Donovan, who was always the closest thing we had to a legit home-grown 'star' and whose profile has only been growing over the last year or two.
But do we know if thats all Americans? If its at least half. thats oustanding considering we could have 40,000- 50,000 US fans togther if we do happen to play in the bigger stadiums.
This was also my first thought. Didn't Garber say something the other day about hoping that Donovan has an important connection to the league in the coming years? AS much as Donovan might want to go elsewhere, I also think that part of his desire comes from the desire to be treated on par with his performance, which has had a far more significant impact than just about any DP in the league.
Another reason that allowing for another DP is that it addresses the problem of quality, specifically "star" quality, on the field, without getting caught up in non-beneficial wage inflation that might occur with any significant increase to the salary cap. The owners are, to some extent, right - there is no sense paying more for the same product they already have. Any reasonable increment is not going to substantially impact actual performance on the field, outside of some ancillary benefit that might accrue from having players who are slightly more content with their 5-15% increase in pay. Doubling the salary cap might have some impact, but you'll still end up just acquiring slightly better South Americans than the ones we're getting now. But by allowing for a DP owners are free to go out and get a star who can really have an effect on the gates. I think MLS might be learning something from the "Summer of Soccer" - there is a massive audience that is out there waiting for quality soccer. If each team is able to field two or three Schelottos or Blancos or Beckhams or Henrys, it will really make a huge difference. Now, if their salaries count substantially against the cap, that will be a huge problem, because a team with two or three DPs will be left with only about $1M to pay the entire remainder of the team, which would be disastrous. So, yes, I think there should be some hit on the salary cap, but $415/$350 is probably too much.
I think they meant if they are all fans of the US National team. Also, people can have addresses in the US and not be Americans.
I think that's exactly right. Even if the cap jumped significantly, it would take awhile to find a league full of better players worthy of those higher salaries -- or they'd just end up paying the current guys a lot more. This would allow them to target the money more specifically.