Dirty TackleMLS teams get more designated player slots they probably won't use
As foreshadowed last week, MLS did, in fact, expand the designated player rule, granting each team two slots and the right to buy a third. Says the league's official website:
Each DP player signing will now count as $335,000 toward a team’s salary budget and $167,500 if the DP is signed midseason. According to the league, the $335,000 figure represents approximately 13 percent of a team’s salary budget. Previously, teams were charged $415,000 against the salary budget for the first DP. A team can also use its allocation money to bring that salary budget hit down to just $150,000.
Teams will no longer be able to trade their DP spots and in order to acquire a third, they have to pay $250,000. As Unprofessional Foul points out, all this means that a team that decides to go all-out with three DPs will have $1 million of their $2.55 million salary cap tied up in the trio, which hardly leaves enough to fill out an entire roster of non-day laborers.
But with just six designated players (Landon Donovan now counts as a DP, while Columbus' Guillermo Barros Scheletto had his deal negotiated below the DP level) in league now made up of 16 teams, will these added slots really matter for anyone besides the LA Galaxy, New York Red Bulls, and maybe a couple others?
When Beckham joined the league with the rule's inception in 2007, people worried that the league was starting to go the way of the NASL and every team would be paying over the odds for over the hill "stars" that would ruin the league. Since then, MLS owners have proven to be either too pragmatic or too cheap to go nuts with the rule. So is this an exciting new development for Major League Soccer that will open it up to a new generation of appeal and big name players? Maybe. But it probably won't happen overnight.
Photo: AP