Major League Soccer is often caught between a rock and a hard place when it comes to the issue of American players leaving to ply their trade overseas, writes Russell Berrisford. On the one hand it’s not good for the League to have their best players out of the country, but on the other the experience that they gain can be invaluable when they represent their country. There can be little doubt that Landon Donovan benefited from his time at Everton (as well as being a good advert for the often derided quality of MLS players), and Clint Dempsey has improved as an international forward after leaving New England to join Fulham for example, but some moves are hard to defend and, at first glance, even harder to comprehend.
Take the case of Edson Buddle. For the last four years he has been plying his trade as a successful striker with LA Galaxy, scoring 42 goals in 87 games and being an essential part of a team that had the best overall record in MLS last season, so why has he left America to play in the second tier of German football for the struggling side of FC Ingolstadt 04? The simple answer is money (Ingolstadt are reported to have offered twice his MLS wages) but the more complex answer is the convoluted rules that govern salaries in MLS.
Every team has to stick to the maximum salary cap, with the exception of three ”Designated Players” that can earn as much the club chooses to pay them, and next season the Galaxy already have Beckham and Donovan as two of their DPs and there are rumours that Juan Pablo Angel will join from the New York Red Bulls as the third, so Buddle’s salary has to be included in the overall cap limit which means that if the Galaxy were to match Ingolstadt’s offer it would inevitably lead to a loss in quality in other areas of the squad.
It’s a dilemma that all MLS teams face. They can afford to pay the big name players and they can pay enough to keep young players for three or four seasons, but once a first team regular gains a solid reputation he falls into the middle ground of not being impressive enough to be worth risking Designated Player money on and not being quite good enough to pay wages that can compete with Europe (not even a team struggling in Germany’s second tier).
It’s an issue that the MLS hierarchy needs to examine or the League is in danger of becoming an unhealthy mix of fading superstars and promising youngsters.
Tags: Edson Buddle, LA Galaxy, Major League Soccer
Couldn’t agree more with this, and we will see this become a much more prevalent issue for teams as MLS continues to grow. I’m a Dynamo supporter and we’ve seen the same thing happen recently to our team: we had great talent that was grown over time but they reached that “gray area” where they didn’t quite command DP money but could probably earn more (and improve their quality) playing abroad. Having an academy somewhat abates that issue (again, Dynamo recently signed 3 Academy players) so we can develop good talent on the cheap, but we’ll be back in this position probably in another 3 years. MLS needs to take a look at the pay scale because to me this will become one of the larger bottlenecks to the league’s growth over the next decade. Great article, btw
Michael D- Thanks. It’s now been confirmed that Angel is the third DP at the Galaxy so clearly they chose him over Buddle which is kind of a shame. As you say MLS clubs are getting good at developing players but they need to be given the flexibility to be able to keep them.