Every May is peak MLS nerd Christmas as the MLS Players Association reveals its salary guide for the new season.
Christmas came today, as the MLSPA posted this year’s salary information, only to quickly take it down.
Before we get to the numbers, we will make some standard disclaimers. We list both the base salary and the total compensation (technical term: Annual Average Guaranteed Compensation), which is the best guess that includes signing bonuses1 and other guaranteed payments averaged over the contract's term.
Note: This information was accessed on the Major League Soccer Player’s Association website earlier today, but that link is no longer available. If anything changes in tomorrow’s official release, we will update this post. But for now, we are standing by these numbers.
Quick Notes for 2024:
Middle of the pack in spending: FC Dallas lands in 15th place out of the 29 clubs. The salary guide also includes the 2025 expansion side, San Diego FC, as they are also starting to build for next season. For those curious, Inter Miami sits atop the league, spending at a wild…$41 million. They blow everyone out of the water thanks to some guy named Lionel Messi.
Musa tops the chart: There should be no surprise that Petar Musa leads the club in the salary department. The newcomer is the 38th highest-paid player in MLS, just two spots ahead of teammate Jesus Ferreira.
Illarramendi bump: We were curious if Aiser Illarramendi would receive a sizeable salary bump after earning around $300k last season. He actually came up a bit shorter than I was expecting. I thought he’d take over Jose Martinez’s $700k-type salary, but instead, he got bumped only to around what Sebastien Ibeagha was earning in 2023.
Allocation used on players: I may spend some time trying to break this down in another post, but the amount of allocation used to pay down Paul Arriola, Paxton Pomykal and maybe Sebastian Lletget has to be what is hogging up a lot of the available allocation these days.
U-22 salaries are middle of the pack: Both Geovane Jesus and Enes Sali aren’t seeing time on FCD’s roster at the moment, for two different reasons. One is injured (Jesus), and the other is deemed a project (he’s with NTSC). But each is in that $300k range, which when you consider Miami is spending $500k on a guy like Diego Gomez, you kind of feel short-changed by a lot here.
Nice jumps in salaries from 2023: I’m still shocked at what Nkosi Tafari earns here. He’s just a shade under $350k. He did get a $100k bump from 2023. Sam Junqua, FCD’s utility guy is up to $200k from his slim $85k salary a year ago. Marco Farfan also earned about a $100k raise to get up to over $500k this season.
Newcomer prices: Patrickson Delgado, who has earned many minutes in 2024, earns a decent $150k. All of the rookies and Homegrown players signed deals that you’d expect at the bottom end of the roster. Nothing that stands out too much.
This does not include performance bonuses because, in the words of the MLSPA, “there is no guarantee that the player will hit those bonuses.” ↩
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