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Probably not. However, the cabal of tight-pursed MLS team owners, led by Robert Kraft, blocked a potentially decent salary cap raise. According to David J. Warner at AOL Sports, the league was poised to raise the cap much more than the $200,000 bump it got. The new cap will be $2.3 million, excluding LA Galaxy of course. Well, they'll follow it until they get permission to break it.
Kraft was particularly called out in the article, citing his NFL team's salary :
"Let's start with Robert Kraft, a billionaire who owns both the New England Patriots and New England Revolution and pays Tom Brady two and a half times what he pays the entire Revolution roster. "
That's actually not a very valid point when considering the way Kraft used to pay his Patriots players before this season. He was quite stingy compared to teams like the Redskins or the Cowboys and will continue that philosophy in the future. So, compared to other NFL owners, he is rather cheap.
The problem is, even non-squad NFL players earn a great wage. There is a distortion when you compare the top tier American players and their designated player counterparts. Going even further down the pecking order, MLS journeymen make around $100,000 a season when they could be making three times as much in places like Norway or the second tier league in England.
The article addresses a potential labor dispute looming in 2009, when the current agreement expires:
"Major League Soccer is setting itself up for a massive labor dispute -- one in which its players might decide to head for Europe en masse, without the approval of their bosses, much like locked out NHL players did in 2004. If that happens, it could force FIFA to get involved. Do these billionaire cheapskates really want let Sepp Blatter, already one of the least popular FIFA bosses in recent memory, to have a legal and binding impact on their fledgling business"
I have to disagree with that assessment. The pay scale for reserve and development players is absurdy low. However, so is the pay for most minor league players in baseball. The league could easily reclassify such players to avoid any legal recourse from the union. Also, the collective "mainstream" American sports community would laugh it's butt off during a MLS player strike. Then again, so would I.
MLS owners should have raised the cap to at least $2.5 million to get pay more competitive with foreign leagues. With the added exposure MLS got with Beckham's arrival, comes more interest in players from richer leagues. To keep our players, they need to be paid more. Period.
1 Comment:
Say what you will Kraft and the Revs, but he has never been stingy with the Pats. That is a fallacy that has been put out there by fans who get upset when the Pats don't spend big on certain fan favorites, so the fans say that he just won't spend money, and all is now lost due to the loss of that player. Belicheck has the whole cap to spend as he pleases, and he always spend the entire cap, or very close to it, by the end of each season (for pedants: they do leave money available going into each season in case they need to pick up a player or something during the season, but if it isn't needed, they distribute it as bonuses and such, so I suppose it's possible that a couple of bucks are left over or something, but it’s not like they’re millions bellow the cap number, ever). It's funny that people think that the Pats actually spent the full cap for the first time this year, as it’s purely because they had Randy Moss and a couple of other free-agent WR's, and it’s even ironic, because in reality Moss took a major pay cut when he came here.
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