Phildalephia won an MLS franchise that will be playing in their own staduium in 2010 in a new half a billion dollar entertainment, retail, residential and office complex that will be built in Chester PA, just south of the city and the Philly airport near the Commodore Barry Bridge, which is just south and west of the Philly airport.
Now with 16 teams, I think the MLS will need to spend a couple of years not expanding and working on increasing revenues (since most teams don't turn a profit) and thereby increasing the salaries of players at all levels. The collective bargaining agreement expires just prior to the start of training camp for the 2010 season and it will be time to get the role players and not quite household names on to a real salary. Nobody in the league is expecting a six figure minium salary, but for goodness sakes, there should be no need for professional players to have a part time job to make ends meet. The annual base salary for players in 2008 is $33,000 and for 2009, it will be $34,000. In think a base salary of at least $45-50,000 will be good. Furthermore, development players make a monthly salary of $1,075 in 2008, pro-rated for their employment. Senior development players make $1,475. If the MLS is going to be serious about developing player talent, you need to pay them more than $15,000 per year.
In order to start playing players better and hopefully retain some of them in this league as opposed to losing them to overseas leagues that don't really qualify as top nations (i.e. lots of American players play in Scandanavia now), and thus not getting top dollar in transfer fees, we need to develop talent here.
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