Sir, I Think I Deserve A Raise
It has been well-documented that there is a significant divide between player salaries in Major League Soccer. For a league that's still getting its legs after only thirteen years in existence, it is easy to see why that is -- as the league tries to bolster its image and fanbase with larger signings in the Beckham mold, developmental players are de-emphasized. With time, salaries for lower-tier players should rise as the league finds success. But the thorny issue remains in the present: there are a large amount of professional soccer players in the United States that don't even come close to making a living wage playing professionally.
Of course, D.C. United is no exception.
That said, I thought that I'd go through the numbers and see exactly how wide the breach is between the haves and the have-nots. In order to lend credence to their (potentially accurate) claim that most MLS players are underpaid, the MLS Players Union has released salaries for each player in the league for the last two years. A complete scan of United's salaries and compensation in 2008 -- and some basic analysis -- provide some striking figures about MLS' disparity of wages.
One tool that I was interested in utilizing to help understand these figures was Penn State University's Living Wage Calculator. According to the LWC, one single adult in the District needs to earn $25,299 in gross pay in order to "meet the minimum standards of living" in the District of Columbia. (With two children and a partner, that number shoots up to $56,394.)
Even taken at the smallest monetary level of the LWC, there are an incredible eleven United players -- over one-third of the squad -- who don't even come close to reaching the required minimum. United has seven players who made $12,900 in guaranteed compensation for 2008, and another four players who made only $17,700. In addition, there are six players who barely make slightly more than the basic one-person living wage. These players, including Santino Quaranta -- who is married and has a daughter, and hence, has a much higher living wage requirement -- made between $33,000 and $35,000 for their play this season.
On the other hand, United does have ten players who earned $136,000 or more for 2008's playoff-less campaign, including midfielder Marcelo Gallardo, the only United player to earn more than one million dollars for 2008's body of work.
United's guaranteed compensation to the 31 players it employed this season averaged out around $157,000 -- but the truth inside the numbers shows that only two players' compensation falls within a 10% radius on either side of that figure.
It deserves mentioning that this divide is not completely the doing of D.C. United -- player salary minimums and tiers are based upon the league's mandate. MLS has an interesting organizational approach in which the league itself owns the rights to players, not individual franchises or clubs.
Peruse the table below, and let us know your take. Should MLS take action to raise the minimum salary of developmental players to one that at least tries to reach a living wage?
