This post is based on Jonathan Tannenwald’s piece for philly.com analyzing the recently released MLS salary data. The article can be found here. It has stuff about the Union, and their players (by the way, it’s crazy how Cristhian Hernandez, a player who hasn’t played since 2012, is getting paid about $30K more than Ray Gaddis) but there’s also stuff for us non-Union fans. It tells us the top 25 players in MLS based on salary (plus Kaka; observation: Diego Valeri is only the 3rd-highest-played player on Portland, and Nagbe is not one of the top 2) but my favorite is that it says how much total team payrolls are.

I love crashing down people’s theories on things. One of those is where people think that a power group of big-spenders are ruining MLS. I enjoy conspiracy theories about the league (TIL Clint Dempsey sold his soul to Merritt Paulson in exchange for enough allocation money so that he could collaborate with Jermaine Jones’s BFF Chris Brown on a new album), but MLS isn’t like the European leagues where only a few teams ever win. This is true because of the salary cap.

Some teams, namely Toronto, the Red Bulls, LA, and Seattle, have way higher wage bills than the other teams. TFC, the biggest spenders of all, pay about 5 times as much on salaries as the smallest spenders, Chivas USA (shameless plug: check out my Chivas is Bad Q&A from a week or so ago if you haven’t yet, it’s more relevant now than it was then).

How come TFC aren’t running away with the league when they spend 4 times as much as RSL or DC? Because unlike European leagues, the difference of the big-spenders and the not-as-big-spenders is split over only 3 players: the DPs. Sure, LA or Seattle may be superior to RSL or DC in roster slots 1-3, but it’s a level playing field for roster slots 4-30.

In other words, soccer is a team sport. You win with the best team, not with the best player. Germany proved that vs. Argentina in the World Cup final. I think that good management and quality player moves is more important than money, although money does help.

Want me to put my money where my mouth is, to topically utilize an idiom? Okay, here are some cold, hard stats, in colorful chart form.

This is a graph depicting the relationship between money spent on salaries, and points per game (right now, a random moment in the 2014 MLS season):

As you can see, there is a bit of a trend, but not much. It shows that 1) Montreal is terrible, 2) New England looks inflated due to the Jones signing (they were near the bottom before that), 3) DC United, RSL, and Columbus are brilliant, along with SKC and Pareja’s Dallas (Coach of the Year) and 4) good management (coaching + front office) is far more important than wealthy owners, because in this league big money only makes a real difference in three players, and you need 11 to make a team (plus several important subs/rotational players).

Overall, I would say that the bottom line in MLS is winning. You want to win games, and thus win points. You want to win points, because you want a Supporters’ Shield or at least a playoff berth. You want to win playoff berths, because that gives you a chance to win the MLS Cup. It all starts win winning games. Good teams win games more than bad teams. The goal for the coach and GM is to make the team good, period. (And you could say that being “good” and “winning” don’t overlap, because some teams “win ugly,” but my definition for a good team is one that is designed to get points–yes, very Mourinho of me).

Winning is the target destination, and there are multiple paths to take. You can build a SuperClub with big-name players (Keane, Beckham, Henry, Defoe, Marquez, Tommy Thompson) or build a Moneyball-style team of bargain-bin guys on a budget (this season alone, DC United has signed Davy Arnaud, Sean Franklin, Bobby Boswell, Eddie Johnson, Fabian Espindola, Jeff Parke, Steve Birnbaum, and Chris Rolfe; with the exception of EJ, these were all relatively low-profile, nowhere near the neighborhood of TFC’s Drake-fueled escapades).

Being in charge of a pro sports team is about winning. Money is like a tool to help you win. But no matter how many tools you have, you can’t build a thing without the supplies.