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Does the MLS salary cap need to go?

By on September 29, 2014

The MLS Player’s Union recently released updated player’s salary figures. The most noticeable change was the fact that Kaka has overtaken Clint Dempsey as the league’s highest paid player, earning a guaranteed $7.2 million-a-year in his contract with the new franchise Orlando City. The Brazilian star is closely followed by Michael Bradley, and Jermain Defoe as well. These salaries are hardly small, and even compare to those of stars across the pond in Europe. But these players are all designated players. Each MLS club can only have three, and only the top designated players are millionaires. In fact, according to the MLS Player’s Union, only fifteen are (although the salary of David Villa is reported to be structured differently, thus making him another millionaire). For those who aren’t designated players, it is a whole different story.

Everybody knows that, controversially, the MLS has a salary cap for the other twenty players in a club’s squad. The salary cap for all twenty of those players amounts to just $3.1 million, and the maximum annual salary one of those players can make is $387,500. The league’s top scorer, Bradley Wright-Phillips, a breakout star this season, makes just $372,500 annually. Even that number is big compared to most player’s wages – Dom Dwyer, second in the scoring charts, earns just $92,500-a-year in Guaranteed Compensation. Diego Costa, the current top scorer in the 2014/2015 Premier League, makes more than that in three days, and in a week he will earn more than what Wright-Phillips does. As a matter of fact, the average Premier League player is reported to make over three times as much than twenty out of every twenty-three MLS players can even possibly make. Three of the league’s current top five scorer’s aren’t designated players.

Now, lets take a step back. This salary cap thing is a trademark to American sports, particularly the National Football League (American football, that is). But in the NFL, the money isn’t even comparable. The rules of the cap are far more complex than that of the MLS’ counterpart, but it is estimated that the average NFL player earns $1.9 million-a-year, even with the cap. That is astonishingly more than MLS players make, considering the number of players are allowed onto an NFL roster. The MLS’ cap is meant to have the same effect as that of the NFL, level out the playing field between teams, but the MLS’ cap may simply be too small.

David Beckham recently blasted it’s existence at all, and he was the player whom the league adapted its rules for to allow designated players. It wouldn’t help attracting more stars directly, but would bring more average, mediocre European players over the MLS, seeing that they could make just as much money as that are in Europe. That would bring the league’s level up as a whole, and this attract more stars, indirectly. The rule doesn’t have to even be abolished, but changed to allow a higher average wage.

About Alex Morgan

Alex Morgan, founder of Football Every Day, lives and breaths football from the West Coast of the United States in California. Aside from founding Football Every Day in January of 2013, Alex has also launched his own journalism career and hopes to help others do the same with FBED. He covers the San Jose Earthquakes as a beat reporter for QuakesTalk.com and his work has also been featured in the BBC's Match of the Day Magazine.