Who Are the Richest and Poorest Players in MLS? 2009 Salaries Revealed

By: Laurie | March 7th, 2009

Once upon a time, there was a league owned by a single entity named MLS. Because MLS owned the league, MLS owned all of the players. It was essentially impossible for a player to play teams against each other to get more money, because he wasn’t owned by the team he played for. And the league wasn’t about to start bidding against itself for his services.

This was very good for MLS, a league seeking financial stability, but not so good for the players. It gave them very little control over things like how much they would be paid, or their ability to leave for a club outside the league. It also allowed MLS to do things like set the minimum salary at less than a young player would make flipping burgers.

Enter the Players Union. The Players Union thought that it might be in the players’ best interests to make those salaries public, to allow the media and the fans to see exactly how things stood for our on-field heroes. They put it to a vote, and the vote was unanimous, even among the highly paid. The result? The MLS Players Salary page at the Players Union site.

As an added benefit, fans of the league can now see, analyze and debate the salaries of the players on their teams as they decide whether management has used its salary cap wisely. Was David Beckham really worth $6.5m a year for LA? Will Freddie Ljungberg stay uninjured long enough to earn his $1.3m for Seattle? And how the hell did NY get away with paying Dane Richards only $33,000 in 2008? (This has since been rectified. In the 2009 figures, he’s making $136,500 in guaranteed compensation.)

The best part of the 2009 figures? The minimum salary for a Developmental Player seems to have been raised from a jaw-droppingly low $12,900 last year to a not-quite-so-obscene $20,100.

Top ten in pay (The link will give you the Top 25):

1 David Beckham (Designated Player) Los Angeles Galaxy $6,500,000.04 (Should be prorated to take into account his time in Milan)

2 Cuauhtemoc Blanco (DP) Chicago Fire $2,943,702

3 Juan Pablo Angel (DP) New York Red Bulls $1,798,000

4 Freddie Ljungberg (DP) Seattle Sounders FC $1,314,000

5 Landon Donovan (DP) Los Angeles Galaxy $900,000

6 Guillermo Barros Schelotto (DP) Columbus Crew $775,000

7 Luciano Emilio (DP) D.C. United $758,857.14

8 Shalrie Joseph, New England Revolution, $450,000

9 Christian Gomez, D.C. United, $430,000

10 Taylor Twellman, New England Revolution, $420,000

As far as I can tell (because MLS does its best to keep all financial news quiet), the salary limit for a DP is still $400,000, but players like Joseph, Gomez and Twellman can be paid outside of that without DP status by using the ever-nebulous “allocation money.”

For more on individual MLS teams, be sure to check out our MLS team blogs. Links are in the header of our MLS Page.