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No right answers without the right questions
Jamie Trecker / Fox Soccer Channel
Some questions this week for American soccer fans:
Why is it that this coming week, Canada, Mexico, T&T, Jamaica, Costa Rica, Guatemala and Panama (among others in the CONCACAF region) will play matches on the international dates while the USA remains idle?
It can't be that the Federation doesn't want to "disturb" a season in progress — after all, Mexico is deep into their season too and it's not like that's ever stopped anyone anyway. Club have to release their players, so there can't be any arguments from the foreign clubs, either.
This is now the third international date that U.S. Soccer has missed since Bruce Arena's departure, and with such dates becoming scarcer and scarcer, why aren't the men taking advantage of the opportunity to get together? Arena constantly told all of us that coming into national team camps only made players better, and new USSF president Sunil Gulati says he wants the U.S. men to be able to take on the world. If you believe Gulati, then ask: Why isn't the USA playing?
Do American soccer fans know that MLS Commissioner Don Garber's annual salary now exceeds that of all but one MLS player? Yep. According to the SportsBusiness Journal, Don Garber's new contract — which carries him through the 2010 World Cup has a base pay of $1.3 million annually, with incentives that could take him above $2 million a year.
The only player in MLS whose base pay comes close to that is the salary of Juan Francisco Palencia, who has a guaranteed base of $1,360,000 at Chivas USA (figures according to those leaked by the MLSPA to the Washington Post earlier this year).
Yep, your faves Landon Donovan ($900,000), Freddy Adu ($550,000), Clint Dempsey ($86,488) and Bill Gaudette ($11,700) don't match the main man.
Speaking of cash, why is MLS so hesitant to sell players when it has good offers for them?
In the past year, MLS has turned down $3 million for Clint Dempsey from Charlton Athletic and $5 million for Eddie Johnson from Benfica (to say nothing of a reported $2 million offer from English 2nd division side West Bromwich Albion).
Now, Johnson is earning some $875,500 this season in K.C., which works out to about $55K a game to date (or $437,750 a goal — not bad if you can get it), so a change of scenery wouldn't necessarily put more cash in his pocket. But Dempsey, who earns just about $6,600 a game (all figures are arrived at by dividing salaries by games played to date) would stand to make a sizable chunk of cash if he moved — his cut of the transfer fee alone would be about 4 times what MLS pays him in a single season!
Three seasons ago, there was another guy who wanted to leave the league badly, and his game suffered as his transfer saga dragged on. That guy was DaMarcus Beasley (who, shockingly, is now unhappy at PSV Eindhoven), and the club was the Chicago Fire. The situation hurt both the player and the club.
Dempsey is in the same boat, and the fact is that MLS will lose his services after the 2007 season anyway, so why not get cash for him now while an offer is on the table? And Johnson, who hasn't been burning up the league either, can only see his stock go down the longer he remains in Kansas City.
MLS likes to pretend that its players are widely sought after, and that they are, in the words of Garber, under-appreciated stars. Unfortunately, neither of these suppositions is correct. Dempsey is a great guy, but even he'd admit that he isn't driving ticket sales to New England home games. That isn't his fault — there isn't a single player in the league who does.
We disagree with Arena (who reportedly earns $1.4 million at RBNY, in case you're curious) on many things, but he is correct when he says the league was better a few years back when players such as Carlos Valderrama and Marco Etcheverry were on the rosters. Those guys were genuine world stars and the lack of men like them today poin
Jamie Trecker / Fox Soccer Channel
Some questions this week for American soccer fans:
Why is it that this coming week, Canada, Mexico, T&T, Jamaica, Costa Rica, Guatemala and Panama (among others in the CONCACAF region) will play matches on the international dates while the USA remains idle?
It can't be that the Federation doesn't want to "disturb" a season in progress — after all, Mexico is deep into their season too and it's not like that's ever stopped anyone anyway. Club have to release their players, so there can't be any arguments from the foreign clubs, either.
This is now the third international date that U.S. Soccer has missed since Bruce Arena's departure, and with such dates becoming scarcer and scarcer, why aren't the men taking advantage of the opportunity to get together? Arena constantly told all of us that coming into national team camps only made players better, and new USSF president Sunil Gulati says he wants the U.S. men to be able to take on the world. If you believe Gulati, then ask: Why isn't the USA playing?
Do American soccer fans know that MLS Commissioner Don Garber's annual salary now exceeds that of all but one MLS player? Yep. According to the SportsBusiness Journal, Don Garber's new contract — which carries him through the 2010 World Cup has a base pay of $1.3 million annually, with incentives that could take him above $2 million a year.
The only player in MLS whose base pay comes close to that is the salary of Juan Francisco Palencia, who has a guaranteed base of $1,360,000 at Chivas USA (figures according to those leaked by the MLSPA to the Washington Post earlier this year).
Yep, your faves Landon Donovan ($900,000), Freddy Adu ($550,000), Clint Dempsey ($86,488) and Bill Gaudette ($11,700) don't match the main man.
Speaking of cash, why is MLS so hesitant to sell players when it has good offers for them?
In the past year, MLS has turned down $3 million for Clint Dempsey from Charlton Athletic and $5 million for Eddie Johnson from Benfica (to say nothing of a reported $2 million offer from English 2nd division side West Bromwich Albion).
Now, Johnson is earning some $875,500 this season in K.C., which works out to about $55K a game to date (or $437,750 a goal — not bad if you can get it), so a change of scenery wouldn't necessarily put more cash in his pocket. But Dempsey, who earns just about $6,600 a game (all figures are arrived at by dividing salaries by games played to date) would stand to make a sizable chunk of cash if he moved — his cut of the transfer fee alone would be about 4 times what MLS pays him in a single season!
Three seasons ago, there was another guy who wanted to leave the league badly, and his game suffered as his transfer saga dragged on. That guy was DaMarcus Beasley (who, shockingly, is now unhappy at PSV Eindhoven), and the club was the Chicago Fire. The situation hurt both the player and the club.
Dempsey is in the same boat, and the fact is that MLS will lose his services after the 2007 season anyway, so why not get cash for him now while an offer is on the table? And Johnson, who hasn't been burning up the league either, can only see his stock go down the longer he remains in Kansas City.
MLS likes to pretend that its players are widely sought after, and that they are, in the words of Garber, under-appreciated stars. Unfortunately, neither of these suppositions is correct. Dempsey is a great guy, but even he'd admit that he isn't driving ticket sales to New England home games. That isn't his fault — there isn't a single player in the league who does.
We disagree with Arena (who reportedly earns $1.4 million at RBNY, in case you're curious) on many things, but he is correct when he says the league was better a few years back when players such as Carlos Valderrama and Marco Etcheverry were on the rosters. Those guys were genuine world stars and the lack of men like them today poin
- T.K.
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