Posted by

Aaron Nielsen ,

February 10, 2015 Email

Aaron Nielsen



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The new MLS season is scheduled to start in less than a month; two weeks if you include the Montreal Impact’s first match of the CONCACAF Champions League knockout stage against Mexican side Pachuca. With preseason games already underway, things appear to be going as normal, outside the fact that a new Collective Bargaining Agreement hasn't been signed and the season could be delayed because of a strike or players being locked out.



Without the mainstream sports media attached to the day to day going ons of MLS like it does with the other professional sports, the story isn't grabbing as many headlines as one would expect. You add to this the fact that most involved in major media outlets are former players, they are going to be very protective about what and when they speak. Finally, we all know how MLS prefers to keep all information behind closed doors as best as possible.



My thoughts are there will be no strike or lockout. Traditionally, leagues that don't have a major media voice for the players, the league usually dictates what the new agreement will be and the players agree just like the MLS Referee strike or the Canadian Football League CBA issues before this past season. There are issues with the current CBA on both sides, and for someone who works with soccer around the world, much of what MLS does I find very muddled and in some ways it benefits the league and other ways it hurts it. In terms of which side am I on, Players vs Owners, I'm a bit in the middle. There are a couple of current MLS rules that I find unfair, however, some of the rules in place are there to help the players that those elsewhere don't have.



The issue I have the most problems with is the Free Agency argument and in some regards not allowing it should be illegal. The biggest issue I have is a player who has completed his contract still has to take part in the season ending MLS waiver draft before signing with a different MLS club. I believe that players, in this case as everywhere else in soccer, other sports and in most business practices, should be free to negotiate with the team of their choice. I also don't think this will affect the league negatively in anyway because the league is under salary cap/budget, so players can only be signed to fit within the cap and based on other rules in the league there are actually few players who fit this criteria.



After the 2014 MLS season there were only twelve players who were free of their contract and chose not to resign with their current club and none were picked in the waiver draft. Troy Perkins signed with Seattle after his contract ran out in Montreal, Jon Busch signed with Chicago after his contract ran out in San Jose, Servando Carrasco joined Sporting KC, although they had to trade with Houston for his rights. Meanwhile the others, Victor Pineda, Futty Danso, Stephen McCarthy, Heath Pearce, Rauwshan McKenzie, Danny O'Rourke, Cole Grossman, Carlyle Mitchell and Andy O'Brian are still out of contract and are looking for a club for the 2015 season.



If free agency was granted, there would be issues of players holding out on clubs and not resigning with the ability of being free agents. The numbers could be larger and the players more significant, but because of the MLS cap system I don't think wages would increase drastically, which is the fear and, in some cases, the reality in other sports. Free agency also creates a talking point for the league, and arguably because of restrictive player movement within the league, clubs are bringing in players from outside instead. The irony is it increases overall costs because MLS clubs have more difficulty evaluating free agency from outside the league than within it.



Which brings me to the second big discussion point, and the one every blogger writes about in favour of the players, and that is the wage disparity in the league. With this, a popular graph is making the rounds showing salary comparison from MLS with NHL and NBA. The MLS graphs in this case will always be skewed because of Designated Player contracts and it is true there are players who made $36,500 in the league last season. Meanwhile, Kaka, who didn't even play made a reported $7,167,500. However, disparity in sports is common; in baseball the minimum salary is $507,500, while Clayton Kershaw makes $30,714,286 a season, and in the NBA the gap is 40 times and in the NHL it’s 25 times the highest player makes over the lowest.



These sports are very different games from soccer, as all players play a higher percentage on the field than they do in soccer. A soccer roster can consist of 25 to 30 players but only 11 start per game, a max of 14 play and 18 are dressed, including subs. In soccer it is normal to have players on the roster who will play limited or no minutes during the season but still get paid. Although all numbers are not given, the discrepancy in other soccer leagues without DP's is actually similar to MLS where in Spain’s La Liga the lowest wage is €129,000 and Lionel Messi is making more than €20 Million a season.



If you remove the DP's from the equation, the average salary from lowest to highest paid player in MLS is closer than any sport - less than 10 times from highest to lowest. The average median is around $135,000 - a number that has been growing each year, especially on the lower end of the pay scale. This is at a point where I mentioned in my evaluation of the MLS Union salaries last season that are there players being paid too much for the contribution they are providing on the field.



In preparation for the new season I produce a statistical model projecting what is expected out of each player and team and give my opinion on how the league will perform based on these observations. To do this I have to create individual depth charts for each club in evaluating the expected minutes for each player for the upcoming season.



Looking at MLS rosters as they stand now, there are forty expected new starters in the league who were not on an MLS club the season before. This means these players have replaced players such as Tim Cahill and DeAndre Yedlin who have left, while players like Landon Donovan and Thierry Henry have retired. It also means thirty or so players who started have lost that starting role and now can be expected to start the season on the bench. This includes ten players such as Tally Hall, Dominic Oduro, Kenny Cooper and Steven Lenhart, who are expected to make over $200,000 this year. Including players who didn't start last year, there are over 60 players who are expected to make more than the MLS average salary this upcoming season who are not expected to be in their clubs’ initial starting eleven.



Of the players making the minimum salaries because of the new USL Pro initiative, I don't expect many to be playing in MLS this season. Last year, players making under $50,000 averaged less than five games played. If you break down the cost per minute, many of the younger and newer players in the league were the most costly to teams compared to performance, which has been my issue with the Generation Adidas contracts for many years.



In the UK's Daily Mail soccer data examination last season they reported the average ticket price in the MLS at around $25 US, and the league saw a record attendance of 6,185,773. Based on those numbers the league is making $160,000,000 and if you add television, advertising, sponsorship and merchandise, the league potentially generated over a quarter billion dollars and according to the MLS Union Salaries information they paid $115,346,338 to the players. With this in mind, I think it is fair like other leagues and do a 50/50 split, which would be an increase of $500,000 to players per team. The question which remains, and being debated as part of the CBA, is would this sum be better off giving clubs another DP spot or a pay increase across the board?



I do feel this is how the new CBA will be resolved, with Free Agency to out of contract players and an increase of wages to equal a 50/50 split between teams and players. The league will still have its single entity and be able to keep option contracts, which I actually believe is the biggest thing holding players back in MLS, especially ones who wish to leave the league and play elsewhere. I also think based on player movement this off season, a new international player rule will happen that will separate CONCACAF players from other internationals, which is currently done in places like Asia and is the reason why Tim Cahill, an Australian (plays in Asian federation), joined a Chinese club. This will allow MLS to continue to take advantage of the player pool in CONCACAF, but still protect the amount of Americans in the league. Unfortunately for Canadians I don't see them being given equal status. I also believe either in this CBA or the next one the amount of non-CONCACAF players allowed in the league will decrease to counter rules that limit CONCACAF players from playing in Europe.



Other issues discussed regarding the CBA will not play as much of an important role, although there are certainly questions regarding youth development and the academies that could be further examined. Also, the one thing I would like to see added is if a player plays for a club for a certain amount of years, he will be given a testimonial match. I do feel players who are committed to an MLS club should be rewarded and it’s a soccer tradition that MLS fans have yet to experience.



As I have said many times, soccer is at a boom period and, although I don't think an MLS strike/lockout will ruin this momentum, one could argue if a strike was to take place the mainstream and international media coverage it would generate might actually be a good thing for the league. That being said, this is not a league in despair and, if both parties can work out a way to share the spoils, I think the league will continue on an ascent, no matter what agreement is reached.