MLS's Poverty Line

To begin, full credit to MLS for making available through the official web-site articles crapping on their wage policy. They didn’t have to do it.

But they did, by linking to articles from the LA Breeze not once, but twice. Both deal with the same subject: is the dream of playing professional soccer strong enough for MLS to pay a pittance-plus-a-nickel for developmental players? To put a dollar value on a “pittance-plus-a-nickel,” one article puts it nicely in context:

“The senior roster minimum is $28,000, while players signed to standard developmental contracts make $11,700 or $16,500, or $5.635 or $7.933 an hour.”

As anyone might guess, it would be hard enough to live on the senior roster minimum in a number of the league’s cities. But detailing the essential impossibility of living on the developmental contract is the point of one of the articles and a sub-text of the other.

A couple prominent players speak to the league’s limitations in this regard - one of them, unfortunately, was Alexi Lalas:

"This may sound Scrooge-esque, but as far as the sacrifice they're making, nobody is holding a gun to their head. This is not indentured servitude or slavery."

(MEMO to Alexi: Sometimes it’s not about providing colorful quotes; you sound like a dickhead.)

Ivan Gazidis does a better job by far:

"’We have limited financial resources,’ Gazidis said. ‘And we don't want to be closing a door to players who may want to have an opportunity in MLS.’"

To the question of should this change, the answer must be yes. I’ve seen talk (can’t say where) of applying freshly-acquired TV revenues to boosting pay on the lower end of the pay-scale and that adds up pretty well. It’s a status thing, in part, which was illustrated nicely in the lead to one of the articles.

A second, more concrete question is whether this can change from a financial perspective and that’s something else again. Again, the answer here should be yes. MLS can’t compete with Europe financially at the top end of the scale, which renders trying to do so a little pointless and a little suicidal. For every Landon Donovan, whose desire to stay States-side balances against salary considerations, there’s a Clint Dempsey willing to risk washing out if it means playing against the best in the game. Bidding wars seem as likely to expose MLS’s weakness at the bargaining table as anything. Worse, it also poses the potential for breeding resentment when salary figures don’t match production (call this Twellman’s Conundrum).

So, here’s to hoping the league makes a serious push to raise the minimum, both for developmental and senior players. Based on Hercules Gomez’s comments (Los Angeles Galaxy), they risk losing some decent players. Then again, I suppose Gazidis would respond to Hercules by reminding him that he’s one who made the grade in spite of it all.