The player’s union of Major League Soccer released its annual disclosure report of all of its player contracts.
This allows the public to see (and compare) what every player on each MLS roster is earning.
Minnesota United’s allotment was always going to be interesting as an expansion franchise because it was the first time the franchise would have to disclose these numbers and to analyze how they chose to invest in player recruitment.
The full chart can be found by clicking here and it is a must see.
United’s total salary table comes out to about $5 million. Though that may seem small, the league’s salary’s have continued to increase over the last few years. However, there are certain “star” players in MLS that will make as much as the whole of the Loon’s roster by themselves. This includes players like Michael Bradley, Kaka and previous MLS MVP Sebastian Giovinco, who will make $7.1 million this season.
Back to Minnesota. The full list of its player salaries is below.
John Alvbage – 230k
Bernardo Anor – 105k
Marc Burch – 135k
Francisco Calvo – 300k
Sam Cronin – 300k
Abu Danladi – 125k
Justin Davis – 80k
Thomas de Villardi – 53k
Vadim Demidov – 550k
Miguel Ibarra – 322k
Ibson – 200k
Ismalia Jome – 65k
Bashkim Kadrii – 265k
Brent Kallman – 65k
Collin Martin – 84k
Patrick McLain – 80k
Kevin Molino – 390k
Christian Ramirez – 400k
Rasmus Schuller – 200k
Bobbby Shuttleworth – 155k
Jermaine Taylor – 125k
Jerome Thiesson – 171k
Johan Venegas – 227k
Kevin Venegas – 85k
Collen Warner – 230k
Now, the first and scariest takeaway from this from a United perspective is that Vadim Demidov, who began the season as the club captain but has since been stripped of that and will be riding the bench for the foreseeable future, is the the team’s highest paid player by a wide margin at 550k.
On the flip side, the player that has directly replaced Demidov and arguably been the club’s best player in its infant stages of MLS play is Brent Kallman, who is among those being paid the least at 65k.
It’s also worth noting that the hypothesis that fellow-expansioners Atlanta United spent much more heavily than Minnesota has been essentially proven true — as the Georgia-based squad costs around $9 million.
Looking at the Loon’s salary table in rank order of highest to lowest paid points out some trends. For example, it appears MLS experience proved (unsurprisingly) to be a direct corollary to how much a player earns. One of the few things that deviated from that was player’s being paid on their potential — i.e. Christian Ramirez, Miguel Ibarra and No. 1 overall pick Abu Danladi.
It also appears (and least thus far) that United whiffed on many of its Scandinavian-based signings — i.e. – Rasmus Schuller, John Alvbage and Bashkim Kadrii. That, more so than the other analyzations, is definitely a bit knee-jerk as the season is only about a quarter of the way through.
Also, from ESPNFC.com:
“The top six [MLS] players each make more than the entire payrolls of four clubs — Houston, Montreal, D.C. and Minnesota — all of whom only pay their teams a little over $5m total. Those teams are also the only ones who don’t pay any single player $800,000 or more.”
We’ll look to get comments from the players and coach on this so stay tuned.
