The Los Angeles Football Club team that won the organization’s first MLS Cup four months ago would cost an untenable 30% more to field in 2023.
Pitting the promise of a stellar encore performance against the impression that Major League Soccer champs suffer for their success, the league’s uniquely American budget rules and regulations deem that an array of individual and team performance bonuses, written into standard player contracts at the discretion of the clubs, shall count against the next season’s salary cap.
Winning, it seems, can carry a price, which LAFC was willing to pay.
“I think on one extreme you would say you’re punished,” said John Thorrington, LAFC general manager and co-president. “And to those who are in favor of parity, you’re saying it’s just a part, a function of one of the league’s priorities, which is competitive parity.”
MLS prefers for its labyrinthine salary structure to be described as serving “competitive balance,” said Christina LaBrie, MLS senior vice president of player relations, which means poor performing teams receive additional financial tools to quickly turn things around.
“Going into the next season, there are no rules that disadvantage a champion team,” LaBrie said. “There are rules that redistribute some of the allocation, some of the salary budget space, as we call it, to the teams that didn’t make the playoffs or the teams at the bottom. This is traditionally within American sports a common concept.”
After missing out on the MLS postseason in 2021, LAFC received more money to sign players or pay down salaries under the cap in 2022 than it did in the wake of its championship.
At the same time, the rules act as a governor on ambitious clubs by ensuring they can’t spend multitudes more than others, as is commonplace outside the U.S.
The Designated Player rule and mechanisms, such as targeted allocation money, offer exceptions to the overall cap by providing teams options to spend more.
The difference between parity and balance comes down to semantically fine margins, however the effect on franchises, particularly those competing against clubs outside MLS that do not operate under similar restrictions. It all makes LAFC head coach Steve Cherundolo feel as if the rules are stacked against them.
“It’s just the way this league has been built and it is not ideal if you increase the amount of competitions for a champion in the following season, so I think in the future maybe we need to rethink this,” Cherundolo said. “But the rules are the way they are and we will obviously abide by them and do our best to field a very strong team.”
After capturing two of the three competitions it entered during Cherundolo’s debut MLS campaign, this new group will vie for twice as many trophies over the next 10 months, presuming they qualify for the playoffs.
This is why, as LAFC returns to competition Saturday seeking to repeat, which hasn’t happened since the Galaxy in 2012, Cherundolo sees the season ahead as “a challenge, but it’s also an attest for those organizations that can do it. It means their scouting, their management and their vision is great. But it’s work and it’s hard.”
The core of last year’s championship team, including the majority of the starting 11, returns without the expansive team sheet supporting them.
In more ways than one, the Black & Gold were fortunate that Welsh forward Gareth Bale retired instead of sticking it out and blowing a superstar-sized hole in LAFC’s budget, partly because starters Jose Cifuentes and Diego Palacios did not move to Europe as expected.
This is why the team’s leading goal scorer, forward Cristian Arango, was begrudgingly transferred to current Liga MX victors Pachuca, which represents a potential opponent in CONCACAF Champions League and the Leagues Cup on top of their Campeones Cup meeting later in the year.
It is also why LAFC wasn’t in the market to retain free agents Sebas Mendez, Cristian Tello, Franco Escobar or Sebastien Ibeagha.
“We are entering a period where our budget is very constrained at a time when their value is at their highest having just won an MLS Cup, so it’s really difficult,” Thorrington acknowledged. “It’s not a level playing field in some regards.”
Opponents may have had similar thoughts about LAFC when it was at least two-deep in every position last year, an anomaly that helped them dictate terms on the pitch en route to the MLS Cup-Supporters’ Shield double.
The Black & Gold pressed and pressured opponents into mistakes for 90 minutes, creating chances in dangerous areas, while showcasing enough dynamism and quality to build up from the back, through the middle, or along the flanks.
“We wanted to keep everybody – we really loved that group and the success we had together,” Thorrington said. “Once we realized that was not possible, we had to prioritize and that’s what we did.”
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“We wanted to keep everybody – we really loved that group and the success we had together,” Thorrington said. “Once we realized that was not possible we had to prioritize and that’s what we did.”
This meant landing their top free-agent target, center back Aaron Long, whom LAFC previously attempted to acquire in trades from the New York Red Bulls, and bringing versatile “players we think can play three times in a week without much issue. So that was part of our intent this year knowing we would have this glut of games,” Thorrington said.
“It’s never going to be the same team, but this club won the championship. It’s not like it’s new that we have a target on our back. It’s always been the case. Our players embrace that challenge.”