Soccer News Comments 2006-11-21
A ESPNnet series of articles giving tribute to the passing of Mooch, the US National team assistant coach.
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I agree with the beckham rule, as long as the clubs actually fund the salary rather than having a bunch of loopholes available (other than corporate sponsors willing to pay the tab). The low-end of the MLS salary spectrum is really low though. $11K for developmental players (hopefully the team has one or more mass-charity accommodating players or they live with their parents, locally) is like working at McDonald’s (at or near minimum wage, with taxed paychecks and not under-the-table). One can live independently at $22K if stingy on the road (No parties, no going out to eat, no shopping, no laptop, no portable DVD, little or no video games, no hotel rip-off PPV and other services) and have no car (A few MLS practice sites have poor or no public transit access). A cheap Ebay Laptop with DVD drive ($400-600), A gameboy advance with flash advance kit ($60 for GBA, $100 for FA), a cheap generic portable MP3 player ($40) are probably the best travel investments for introverted players with a salary less than $30K techy enough to enjoy gadgets extensively (Only Eddie Gaven on his rookie year from the pool of players that I know; most players turn to a teammate or their cellphone when bored, not a gameboy, cellphone game, or music player). I think MLS should be 20-30K for U-21 developmentals, 30-40K for no-name rookies and roster-scabs, 40-60K for the mediocre to average, 60-120K for the above average non-stars, and 120-160K for well established non-poster veterans and no-name foreign players (that don’t suck), and 160-240K for high-end foreign players. For the talented players that are also corporate-marketable (or have marketability trained or emulated if they are *that* good) then the sky would be the limit. Hopefully the >$400K exemption rule can be kept under control at one player. The 400K is about 20% of the salary cap and definitly marketability becomes an equal or greater priority to talent at the level (preferablly a lot of both). In my opinion, Chungy’s fame level was ideal for me. Donovan and Beckham would be too much for me personally.
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Editor Opinions in an unsorted thumb’s up / thumb’s down format. I agree with most of them. I think the failure of the bechkam rule to have much impact is a good thing. $400K is a lot of salary for a league where around half of the players players are in the 30-80 range. I wonder if a manager can volunteer more out of pocket cost to reduce salary cap impact (only MLS’s contribution, which the max is 400K, counts against the cap) of if its fixed at 400K? I agree that MLS Cup half-time shows are dumb.
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Tangent post from an autism post (comparing Boy Scount Troop 223 to Shenendehowa). Extra links here. Shenendehowa’s soccer team are so good that, in 2001, some of the MetroStars players (now Red Bull NY) knew names of about a third of that year’s roster, and this is a high school. The quality of soccer in NY is obviously better than the quality of soccer in AZ. Dobson High School (West Mesa Guadelupe Road between Alma School Road and Dobson Road) won states twice straight and I didn’t percieve the same recognigtion from the LA Galaxy players that Shenendehowa has (or had because I only had good contact with the players between 2000 and 2003) with the MetroStars.
