Player Salaries: Fire With Fifth-Highest Wage Bill in MLS
Xherdan Shaqiri has company.
In what has become a semi-annual tradition, the MLS Players Association has released its salary guide, revealing the pay of each player in the league, and the league has a new highest-paid player: Inter Miami’s Lionel Messi, who has guaranteed annual compensation of $20,446,667 this year, displacing Toronto FC’s Lorenzo Insigne from the top of the list, who is guaranteed $15,400,000 this season.
The Fire’s Xherdan Shaqiri clocks in at $8,153,000, good for third on the list, immediately ahead of the L.A. Galaxy’s Javier “Chicharito” Balcázar, Toronto FC’s Federico Bernardeshi, and Austin FC’s Sebastián Druissi.
Notably, out of the ten highest-paid players in the league, only two play for teams that have not been eliminated from postseason contention: Héctor Herrera of the Houston Dynamo, who have clinched a playoff spot, and the Fire’s Shaqiri, who has an opportunity to make the postseason with a result and some help on Decision Day.
All told the Fire have the fifth-highest wage bill in the league, with guaranteed compensation totaling $20,415,828, behind Los Angeles FC, with salaries a few hundred thousand dollars above the Fire’s; the L.A. Galaxy, at just over $25 million; Toronto FC, at $32.2 million and Inter Miami, whose total wage bill stands at $39.4 million this season.
For a league built on a promise of parity, the gulf in spending between the teams with the largest and smallest wage bills is noteworthy: Orlando City’s entire roster is guaranteed $9.6 million this season, significantly less than the pay given to Messi or Insigne, and just about $1.5 million more than Shaqiri’s wages.
There is also little correlation between spending and results: Just four of the top 10 highest spending teams in the league have clinched a playoff spot (and of those that have not, only the Fire remain in contention for one), while both Supporters Shield-winning FC Cincinnati and St. Louis City, who have clinched the top spot in the Western Conference, are amongst the 10 lowest-spending teams in the league. In fact, only one team of the bottom ten spenders has been eliminated from postseason contention (Colorado Rapids).
The MLSPA’s salary release includes both base salary and any guaranteed bonuses spread over the length of the deal but does not typically include performance bonuses. It also does not include deals with external partners, such as Messi’s reported deals with Adidas and Apple.
Significantly, the salary data released by the MLSPA only includes player compensation, not transfer fees to bring a player to the league, which can be a significant outlay: it is thought, for example, that the Fire paid nearly $7.4 million to Olympique Lyon to bring Shaqiri to the Fire, equal to about 30% of the approximately $24.5 million he has been promised over the course of this three year deal. Transfer fees are generally a part of the figures used by the league for salary budget calculations.
That is presumably why Ousmane Doumbia, whose guaranteed compensation is $564,000, is allowed to occupy a Designated Player (DP) slot, reserved for players whose “budget hit” (compensation plus annuitized transfer fee) is greater than the “budget max” figure of $651,250. Teams must use one of the various accounting mechanisms - DP slots, the under-22 designation, or allocation money, amongst others – to “buy down” the budget hit to something under that figure for salary cap reasons.
Doumbia is the 8th highest-paid player on the Fire’s roster, ahead of Federico Navarro and behind Chris Mueller. Gastón Giménez – who was a DP until last year - is the team’s second-highest earner, with just over $1.6 million in guaranteed compensation, while Designated Player Jairo Torres comes in third, at just under $1.5 million.
Overall, the Fire’s ten highest earners add up to nearly 82% of their total wage bill, but notably do not include the team’s leading scorer in Maren Haile-Selassie, at $279,800, or Brian Gutiérrez, who leads the team in assists, immediately behind him in team pay at $240,004.
Since Joe Mansueto has taken ownership of the club, the team has clearly been willing to spend on player signings, however, many of the team’s highest earners have underperformed their paychecks. In a capped league, this presents the front office with challenge of either finding a way to move an underperforming player who is unlikely to accept a pay cut or finding ways of adding effective players to a roster with little budget headroom.
