Imagine you’re a starting player for Red Bulls II. Last night, you played 90 minutes and beat a fellow second-division side. You’re trying to recover so you can be ready for training when you look at your calendar and see a big red circle around today’s date.



It’s timesheet day.



You open the Excel document that the team sent you when you signed your contract. The MLS affiliate is paying you by the hour, and you need to track how long you worked. You cross-reference the attached key: three hours on a training day, an extra half-hour if you did strength training, four hours for a game. In total, your two-week timesheet should equal 40 hours. As you scroll through your phone’s calendar app, you remember that the coaching staff cancelled last Monday’s training because you “earned it” with your play.



That’s one less day you’ll be paid for. You can’t make this time up after training by doing extra...