An article in the WashPost today describes the journey of Taylor Twellman from his hometown of St. Louis, to being a YA, and returning to MLS. The Boston Globe article of a few weeks back was more detailed, but this one points out one interesting fact: Twellman is making the league minimum of $24,000 (That's $1,200 a game so far, or $1,600 a goal.) Seems that 1860 or some other enterprising team would have a little more than 25K euros, or even the MLS league "maximum" for the guy by the time the season is over. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A28648-2002Jul31.html
Except he's under contract for another three years. So any team would have to agree with MLS a transfer free for Twellman.
I guess I glossed over that fact by jumping into the next paragraph talking about how he might exect a large raise next year (either from MLS or by signing abroad, one assumes). He must have been really down in the dumps -- or severly undesired in Europe -- to sign a four year contract at 24K/per with just 10K in bonuses.
is he allowed to hold out for more money? like NFL players do? I think this is where they got that idea. Secrataries make more money than he does. ANd he brings in a ton more money to his employer (MLS) than a secratary ever will.
Damn, *I* make more money than he does. Of course I have no hope of a future job, paying 10x or more, in Europe, but still....
Well, hopefully he'll be able to get some endorsements and raise his earnings. It certainly makes MLS look really good for signing him.
Like the saying goes, put a billion monkeys in front of a billion typewriters, one of them, mathematically, is bound to type Hamlet.
The MLS needs to be proactive and sign Taylor to a better contract. If it is possible transfer him back to Europe because he doesn't have the name recognition of some of the other high profile MLS players.