MLS Players Going Hungry

April 28th, 2006 | by: Daryl |

The Washington Post published the full salaries of every MLS player recently. Seeing professional athletes salaries usually makes working class types likes me gag on my off-brand generic cola-drink, but not so with some of the MLS roster fillers.

Top earner Landon Donovan won’t go hungry with his $900,000 a year base salary, but at least one player on every roster is having to make ends meet with just $11,700 annually. To put this in perspective poverty is currently defined as $9,750 per year for a one person family. Fortunately for the likes of D.C. United’d Andy Metcalf there are McDonald’s restaurants everywhere in this fine country.

Rumour has it that the salaries are deliberately leaked every year by the players union in order to garner sympathy for its members.

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Pete

Yeah, this piece by Steve Goff was great. There is a good table of player salaries on the Washington Post site. Some interesting facts, if I remember them right:

Chivas pays its two Mexican has-beens, Garcia and Palencia, a TON of money. Palencia makes well over a million! O’Brien is making about $400K.

Rolfe in Chicago is only making $50K. Time for a raise.

Mathis is making $400K. Time for renegotiation.

Ruiz is only making $360K.

Some teams spread their money out and keep salaries down across the board. Others such as Chivas, Galaxy, and KC are starting to really create disparities. Parity will be a big issue in MLS in the coming years. If we are really going to attract some senior European players, it’s going to be hard to square with the bottom half of the roster currently making less than $30K.
http://barelylegalsubstance.chattablogs.com/ Noel

There are some real bargains in there. Ching and DeRo, both under 150k. Pete noted Rolfe at 50k. Wynne at 55k. Cooper at 60k (?!?!). I’m tempted to put together my $1,000,000 Dream Team, and send that out to play Cheski this summer.
John

I have no idea whether MLS is doing well or not profit-wise. The recent re-expansion leads me to believe they are doing at least ok. But they should consider how paying players less than 12,000 can drain some talent from the MLS.

First, some players may decide to play in minor league US soccer. (I heard of one player that did this because he could be paid more by the Long Island Roughriders than the Colorado Rapids and earn more money on the side training teams). This may not be the worst result, as the players are still in the US for fan enjoyment. Likewise, players could go abroad. Both of these options at least keep players in the sport.

What MLS should be more worried about is players worrying about the rest of their lives, getting jobs and leaving soccer. Taking that low salary also includes foregoing experience for jobs in the real world that might help someone’s career if they aren’t going to make a living playing soccer (which at 12,000 doesn’t look so good just yet).

Is suppose players can also make money training youth teams and having side jobs . . . but then they might not be training as much in the off-season.

Anyway, 12,000 is low no matter how you look at it, and aside from being questionable policy, is pretty cheap.
http://www.blado.cjb.net jan

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Oliver

One of the best bargains has got to be Dempsey. Everyone else in his class is making 150,000 +
eric

I thought that the 12000 was low for a professional but I looked at FC Dallas roster and all but two of the players making less than 30000 are listed as developemental players so I was curious if they were supplementing them with jobs through the team like the indoor teams used to do. If anyone had the answer to this I would love to know.