In order for the LA Galaxy to bring David Beckham to Major League Soccer the rules had to change. The salary cap was too small for Beckham to fit on any team by himself, so the league added DP’s which only count toward some of your salary cap. After that the team can pay that player as much money as they want to. The Galaxy were able to get their 32 year old man Beckham for a huge amount of money.
Later other teams got in on the action and New York Red Bulls even traded to get 2 DPs. The have 32 year old Juan Pablo Angel and 34 year old American Claudio Reyna to fill their DP slots. Chicago has 35 year old Blanco, DC United will have 32 year old Marcelo Gallardo, and Kansas City has now signed 33 year old Claudio Lopez to fill their DP slot.
The average age of the DPs that will be playing in the league at the start of this season will be 33. In the past the average age of the whole league has been right around 27-28 years old. So the average DP is about 5-6 years older than the league average. These number may not be accurate today – they were based on some numbers I saw that were a few years old. I would guess the league average might be a little bit younger today.
While the DP’s are great to have around, I can’t wait for the day they don’t have to be all these old timers. There is no problem with them – some of them have been tremendously important for their teams (Juan Pablo Angel, Blanco) but some have made small impacts (Claudio Reyna, David Beckham). Maybe that isn’t totally fair, both Reyna and Beckham were held back by injuries.
While these old guys are coming into the league, young guys like Eddie Johnson and Clint Dempsey are leaving the league. These are young guys that could potentially hold a DP slot someday. Yet they are leaving the league to go play in Europe. I can only imagine that money and better experience are the main reasons these players are so eager to head to Europe and leave MLS behind. Both are very valid reasons but this needs to start changing in MLS.
Our national team does just fine when they have an MLS dominated lineup so we can’t say our young Americans need to play in Europe to build a better national team. I’m sure the experience doesn’t hurt, but I don’t really see it as necessary. So if the money was there for MLS would they be able to keep more young talent? Preston North End, a team at the bottom of the 1st division in England, recently wanted to bring Taylor Twellman to England. Either MLS or the Revolution would not let him go which angered the striker because this low level team was going to pay him three times his salary here in the MLS. I wonder it Twellman would have been ready to go for the same pay he receives now? What if it had been a top notch premiership team willing to pay his current salary?
I guess two things probably need to happen before these DP slots don’t have to be filled by these near retirement old timers. First we have to get rid of the idea that Europe is so massively better for the payer’s development. I’m not arguing that Europe isn’t better for our young talent – but I do believe that a young player can have a successful career in Major League Soccer and be competitive with the national team. If people start to believe this it just comes down to money. If it is just money I would think that more teams would fill their DP slots with young talent. Claudio Lopez should be pretty awesome this year, but who would you rather have for the long run, Eddie Johnson or Claudio Lopez?
