Wages of the top 13 MLS players vs. wages of the top 15 Liga MX players

When I saw the thread title, I someone knew without looking who started the thread.

Huh.

 

*yawn*

 

It's unhealthy if it is a permanent condition. But a move toward more parity should happen gradually. Loosening Controls on the low end of the pay scale too much too fast just gets you overpriced mediocre players and less return on selling talent MLS develops.

 

Hey mods, can we go ahead and just merge this with the Gringo's Wall of Shame and cut out the middlemen?

 

If the league and/or its teams gain the value they are looking for out of those signings, then yes, it's fine. You can't just look at costs. You need to look at benefits.

 

Healthy for the league? Probably ... They get a lot of mileage by pimping the top 12 or so names in the league ...

Healthy for quality of soccer? No way ... In order to fit these fat cats under the cap we still have to endure too many mediocre players in any given MLS match who could easily be upgraded with a little more even distribution of wages ...

 

With all due respect, if I had thought this appropriate for N&A I would have posted it here myself. Keep in mind, without any analysis, it's just a data point -- and a 2013 data point at that. We're talking about the analysis in "The Road From Here", and Mods, if you are willing, I would prefer to keep the conversation in the existing thread rather than duplicate it here.

It's an interesting point, one I think that is worth discussing, but it isn't "news" IMO and shouldn't be in N&A.

 

Well, not so easily, unless you increase the number of imports. But you don't want to overdo that and kill incentive to develop homegrowns, which I think is the best long term strategy for improvement in quality and marketability.

 

Not necessarily. While DPs do eat up a fairly healthy percentage of the cap it does seem like teams have figured out how to work in DPs while still maintaining a quality team. It's gotten to the point that a team that doesn't have a DP is thought of as not even trying for a championship. I'm also not sure how an increase of about $40k in average salary* is going to have that big of an impact on quality..

* $3,100,000 salary budget / 20 on-budget players = $155k average salary, $1,970,000 non-DP salary budget / 17 players = $115k

 

You're measuring teams with an internal measuring stick. Sure some MLS teams are going to look great relative to other weaker MLS teams.

What I'm talking about is the quality of soccer in general ... If you went to any of the 99% of managers around the world in any league that aren't subject to MLS rules and gave them $15,000,000 budget almost none of them would decide that the most effective way to build the best team is to sink $12-13,000,000 of that into 2 players ... It just makes no sense from a competitive POV ... Sure most of those managers will skew their wage scale towards a handful of game changer attackers, but they're not going to pay one starter 50X more than another starter ...

 

$15m isn't the measuring stick you should be using. $15m is not MLS's salary budget, $3.1m is and certain teams use DPs to go above that with $387k of their salary counting against the budget.

 

How many international spots do we have these days ... 8? Imagine if all 8 of those were actual valuable players worth $200,000+ instead of what we have now where there are several international spots are essentially wasted on mediocrity ... And it's not like there isn't a pool of non MLS American/Canadian/green card holder players out there too that could be targeted ...

I understand this is a pointless argument. I get the concept of the DP. It's an arrangement meant to free up the big spending rich owners while still protecting the interests of the cheap K-Mart owners ... Personally I think this is an interim arrangement ... Eventually the salary cap in this league will be high enough that we won't need loopholes to sign top global talent ... Maybe not James Rodriguez type players but I envision a league in my lifetime where an average MLS team can make a play for a $3,000,000/year player within the salary cap ...

 

Then what are we talking about exactly? ... If we're ignoring the extra spending outside the salary cap then we're talking about something different ... not what I thought the opening poster was talking about ... I thought we were specifically talking about the top DPs and the wage imbalance ...


Talking about this issue amounts to basically criticizing the DP rule and its application ... so explaining how the rule works is not exactly an argument for it ... Not to say that there aren't valid arguments for it ... but there's definitely valid arguments against ...

 

The problem with your line of thinking is that if the DP rule is eliminated, then that money does not become available to use on other players, that money just goes away and you are left with pre-DP MLS. Now, if you're arguing that MLS should increase the salary budget, that's an entirely different subject..

The wage disparity in MLS is an issue and it is a cause for tension within MLS lockerrooms, so that's a valid criticism, but if you're argument is that the DP rule is holding back MLS from increasing the salary budget, I'm not sure that is true.

 

That's exactly what I'm arguing ... I've been around MLS since '96 so I know better than to expect a salary cap tripling overnight ... but I would hope that in the league FO their long term goal would be to raise the cap as aggressively as possible because soccer is a team sport and the quality of the product is only as good as your weakest links in the chain. 12 mega stars won't gloss over the quality of the other 99% of players in the league ... I recognize how far MLS has come in quality and I appreciate the hard work ... but it's hard not to wonder what else those tens of millions could have been spent on ... I'm entertained by the likes of Dempsey and Bradley being in MLS but I could easily do without them if it meant 10 more Higuains and 10 more Valeris and 10 more Mauro Diazes.

 

MLS is a $100-$200k a year league. The DPs are there to appeal to the 90% of Americans who know as much about soccer as an apple does. There are more and more cases where they're being used as a loophole around the salary cap, but it's still a $100-$200k a year league with some names that the average Joe knows.

Liga MX is a $500k a year league. They don't need DPs to sell tickets (unless maybe you're Puebla). They put teams together that can win with budgets in the $20-30M range. They don't have the issue of the average Jose in Guadalajara not knowing jack about soccer so they need to bring in Cheech to sell tickets and get headlines.

Up until very recently the only MLS that you saw on ESPN had to do with the DPs, Beckham in particular. MLS needs DPs because on a scale of 1-10, American soccer awareness is like a 2 or 3. So yeah, they are healthy for the league.

 

And therein lies the problem.. While Seattle, Toronto, New York, and LA might be able to afford $15m in salary, the rest of the league cannot.

 

@Ismitje @KCbus @edwardgr ,

Can one of you move this to the you be the don forum?

Thanks!

 

To be clear even though I'm a critic of the DP rule, I'm a firm believer in protecting parity ... How big Columbus's potential is in their specific market is not totally relevant because I think the cap will rise and fall relative to the league wide revenue which will be primarily tied to TV and national sponsors.

That's why I'm tolerant of the DP rule as it exists today because I feel it serves a purpose considering the realities of the league. My beef is more the fans who are hoping to expand this system going forward. I think the new CBA and new TV deals are a great opportunity to begin rolling back the DP system gradually to where 10-15 years from now there will be no DPs left at all. The league will be simply strong enough to get top players within their cap ...

 

Man, why do you guys always throw this shit on us?