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MLS Players Still Lost in New Bargaining Agreement

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By @DFresh39

MLS CBA

John Geliebter-USA TODAY Sports

For many fans, the fact that the MLS season will kick off this weekend is enough closure to move on from the collective bargaining agreement. For at least this weekend, fans should watch the games knowing the players entertaining them left too much on the table, again.

The terms agreed upon are not far from what was reported on Tuesday night when the MLS Players Union (MLSPU) voted 18 to one in favor of a strike. The deal agreed upon may be an improvement from last year and perhaps could never truly touch issues with league structure, but the baby steps are not good enough for the current crop of players or for the league to truly grow.

A restricted form of free agency that allows a player 28 years of age or older with eight years of service to pick their next team is part of the agreement. Nick Rimando said that the MLSPU should be happy that they are the first professional league to get free agency without a strike or legal action. However, this stiffs many of the younger players in the league. The older players will benefit in the near future while players like Luis Gil, Diego Fagundez and Russell Teibert will not be eligible for free agency in the five-year life span of the new agreement.

There are also caps on the amount of money a player can make in free agency. Depending on a player’s current salary there will be a 25, 20 or 15 percent increase ceiling when they move to their next team. The cap on free-agent salaries devalues players and disrespects their time served.

The minimum salary went up, which is great news for the 181 players that went from making approximately $35,000 to now making $60,000. That is approximately $2.6 million in additional costs to the owners, or less than one-third what Orlando City is paying Kaka. The new minimum salary is roughly 13 percent of the minimum salary in the NFL, which has the lowest minimum salary of the four big leagues, according to CPA Robert Raiola. Obviously MLS is not as valuable as the big four, but they are getting money from a new TV deal and upcoming expansion franchises. Where did the $100 million that the new owners of LAFC just committed to go?

The players were not fully behind the new CBA. The vote was actually only 12-8. Players have already come out to reporters with Sports Illustrated and American Soccer Now to say that the deal “barely helps the current group of players” or “when things got tense, we caved.” It is hard to argue with these statements given how truly minor the adjustments in the new CBA are and how much fire power the players had on their side of the negotiations.

That includes word that Audi signed a new sponsorship deal with the league that leaked during today’s negotiations. Perhaps a strike was never fiscally responsible, but the players see all the money flying in and know that owners fear the loss of single entity. They see a growing league that is spending millions on designated players and still has the ability to use allocation money to get around the salary cap with layers of obscure rules.

With an opener in Orlando looming with 60,000 tickets sold, the players had everything they needed to put pressure on the owners. Yet they come out talking about progress and using rhetoric about avoiding a strike. They can also say that the owners did not win, but that would just be a roundabout way of saying the players did not push back hard enough.

Douglas Smith is a soccer writer for www.RantSports.com. Follow him on Twitter @DFresh39, “Like” him on Facebook, or add him to your network on Google.

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