Last week, FC Cincinnati announced that former USMNT defender Geoff Cameron had signed with the club.[1] With the changes in MLS’s Free Agency[2] eligibility rules, it’s possible Cincinnati availed itself of the signing mechanism to bring on Cameron, which creates a great opportunity for us to break down the new MLS Free Agency rules, and how they affect eligible players’ return to MLS.
Continue readingTraining Compensation
Transfer Analysis: Daryl Dike, Purchase Options, and Player Valuations
Daryl Dike has had an incredible professional career. One that has lasted less than a year and a half. After being drafted 5th overall in the 2020 MLS SuperDraft, Dike had a standout MLS performance for Orlando City SC in his first professional season. This rookie performance caught the eyes of Championship club Barnsley who offered him a loan in February of 2021. Scoring nine goals since February, and averaging a goal every 129 minutes in the Championship so far, Dike is now one of the top strikers in the USMNT player pool, has had his loan extended until the end of the championship season, and is reportedly turning heads at Premier League clubs like Everton and Leeds.
Reports have hinted that Barnsley and Orlando agreed on a $20M purchase option, with a 20% sell-on fee. [1] At the time, many considered such an impossible value for Dike to reach.[2] Now, with the way he is playing in the championship, that number is starting to sound more realistic.
With Dike shining in the Championship, it seems time to talk about his purchase option, assessing his value, and how it might affect his move up the football ladder.
Continue readingMLS Salary Cap 101
Major League Soccer (“MLS”) has two distinct, and intertwined, defining features that set it apart from the rest of global soccer: Its single-entity structure, and its salary cap.
While standard in most major American sports leagues, salary caps are near-nonexistent in soccer elsewhere in the world. Earlier this year (2021), an arbitration panel threw out the English Football League’s attempt to establish a salary cap for League 1 and League 2 (the third and fourth tier of professional soccer in England), after the English player’s union (the PFA) challenged the regime.[1]
One of the central philosophies behind MLS’s American-style salary cap is to maintain competitive balance amongst its clubs.[2] This balance, to MLS, is fundamental to its growth strategy for North American soccer, and the league writ large.
To MLS, parity reduces the predictability of competitive results, which creates a more interesting product for prospective fans and neutrals, which in return will lead to growth in popularity of the sport and the league —or so the theory goes.
For MLS clubs, however, competitive dominance -not balance- is top of mind. The fundamental basis of the parity theory is that it creates a potential for all teams to win. Essentially the draw for fans is the hope that there is a possibility in every matchthat their team will win. So, a club on an individual basis will grow interest, fan support, market share, and revenue faster if they increase their likelihood of winningby become consistent winners.
This makes sense. The biggest clubs and teams in the world are the ones that have the biggest histories of winning. Real Madrid, Liverpool, the Yankees, the Lakers, all built their global fanbases with the contents of their trophy cabinets, not the fact that their matches and games had extremely unpredictable outcomes.
Therefore, soccer clubs, including those in MLS, should fight to maintain competitive dominance, not balance to grow their fanbase and improve their bottom line.
This is the first piece in a series discussing strategies MLS clubs can leverage to break the league’s competitive balance and create a model for sustained sporting (and therefore, hopefully, commercial) success in MLS. You can read the subsequent pieces here: II.
As the 2021 MLS season kicks off this weekend, it makes the most sense to start by breaking down MLS’s Salary cap in straight forward terms, to better understand the constraints by which MLS Clubs must follow as they build their rosters.[3]
Continue readingA dispute over training compensation in US Soccer: Youth Soccer Clubs v USSF, MLS & MLSPU
Several American Youth Soccer Clubs sued the MLS Players’ Union (MLSPU) and three former and current MLS players in the Eastern District of Texas federal court in July 2016 to enforce the training compensation and solidarity payment provisions[3], contained in FIFA Regulations on the Status and Transfer of Players (RSTP). The complaint[4] was brought in United States District Court of the Eastern District of Texas by Youth Soccer clubs, Dallas Texans Soccer Club, Crossfire Foundation, Inc., and Shocker’s FC Chicago LLC (together, the Youth Clubs). These clubs were training clubs for Clint Dempsey, DeAndre Yedlin, and Michael Bradley respectively. The Youth clubs name the MLS Players’ Union (MLSPU) Dempsey, Yedlin, Bradley, and “all those similarly situated” as defendants in their complaint. On March 29, 2017, the Court dismissed the case on jurisdictional grounds.
Andrew Visnovsky 