...I want to move the goal posts. That's the message from L.A Galaxy owner Tim Leiweke. He wants the salary cap and designated player rule dropped. Why? Because the Galaxy suck and he wants to go shopping. The man who initiated the 'designated player' rule also known as the 'Beckham' rule has seen his team win one game in 13 over the last 3 months and has decided that he needs to replace the duffers he currently employs within his cap of $2 million a year.
Of course you can't sign more than one or two over rated aging Premiership stars for that paltry sum. The MLS salary cap is the equivalent of a League One sides yearly wage bill and this is one reason why the standard of the MLS is no better than League One.
The current salary cap is a mile away from the spending of a bottom Premiership side, in fact it's far from being close to that of a Championship side. Norwich City's wage bill this season is 10 Million pounds. That's about 17.5 million Dollars or the wages of EIGHT MLS teams. For Leiweke and his Galaxy to sign some quality new blood like Beckham, Angel or Huckerby they will need to splash some serious cash. L.A's recent struggles could be down to the fact they had to ditch several half-decent players in order to obtain one of their high-priced aging imports. They have many!
Raising the cap to accommodate Leiweke is possible but only as long as teams can sustain the cost to be competitive. That $2 million cap exists for a reason and the MLS appears to be looking for a slow, steady build rather than an exciting rush to extinction seen in the days of Pele, Marsh and Canaglia!
Upping the cap ceiling will improve the standard of the play for sure. Better players will arrive from abroad, but for the love of god can M.L.S teams stop signing useless old duffers like Abel Xavier and Celestine Babayaro in order to flog t-shirts? They should be improving gradually by signing decent players in their prime from the Championship or League 1. Three or four Cameron Jerome's, Casper Gorkss or Darren Beckfords will do much more for the standard of the league than one David Beckham.
-Bigus
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Now That We're Poo....
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4 comments:
Why would players like Jerome come to MLS? The league is viewed as inferior by most Europeans, so players are supposed to dominate when here. They will struggle to return to Europe, and their salaries here won't increase much. And this doesn't even get in to the idea of them having to adapt to American culture/lifestyle. Unless someone really just wants to move here, I can't see the lure of MLS being enough.
ALL footballers are greedy and have to make as much as they can within their short careers. Take jerome for instance. If you paid him more than he gets at Bongo then he would move. He is currently one of 6 forwrads at Birmingham.
Huckerby came didn't he? He is older I grant you but a good Championship player who still had 2-3 CCC years left in him.
Didn't the recent Forbes article have all of 3 MLS teams operating in the black?
Allowing teams to spend themselves further into the red might help the product on the field, but mightn't help solvency. Although I'm not sure which is the cart and which is the horse here.
Then they should not be signing the players they are then.
No soup for you!
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