The thing about those “relatively meaningless reg season games” and “totally meaningless friendlies” is that they generate revenue and interest. Houston drew a big crowd for Valencia, much, much bigger than they would have for an Open Cup match. As long as that’s the case, you can’t blame clubs for prioritizing where the actual money is, given how much money has been spent and lost in this country on the game over the years.

And as for Seattle, Portland and perhaps Vancouver being able to compete with MLS on salaries….I think players on those teams were doing okay in the second division, sure. But they weren’t going to go off and form their own league. And between them they could only have siphoned off about 50 players from MLS (fewer, actually, who would have been okay playing in the second division), so I doubt it was about that. It was more about getting those markets into the league.

It’s kind of unfair to the players that they look like their value is what they are paid because MLS has single entity structure. These players would be making 20-30% more if collusion wasn’t allowed, and teams competed to sign players.

Sadly, players must either sign for what the league offers or they must move abroad if they want to make upper 5 figures playing soccer. By the way, practically the only teams that could compete with MLS on salaries have been since been absorbed by it – Seattle, Portland, and perhaps Vancouver. That was not by mistake.

Just wanted to make the point that it’s categorically true that what they are worth to their team is more (and sometimes a lot more) than what they are paid.

Also, in the case of Portland, they are karmically burdened by their short-sighted embrace of the Paulson family and their blood money. Henry Paulson should be in jail.

Quick shout-out to David Horst, nice to see a kid from ODU pull down a half-way decent MLS salary with the Timbers; even though it’s near the bottom of that day’s roster.