Sounders Salaries Released

MLS has released the Sounders salaries and it makes for very interesting reading, particularly since you, dear reader, probably make more than many of them. Leonardo Gonzalez is not on the list. Freddie Ljungberg is our top paid player by a mile at $1.3M. Kasey Keller is next at $300,000, and then the salaries drop all the way down to $20,000. Here is our opinion on the wages of each player:

Player Salary Judgement
Freddie Ljungberg $1,314,000 - Overpaid: lack of leadership / screams at refs
Kasey Keller $300,000 - No amount is too much for KaKe.
Nate Jaqua $208,121 - Fair deal, but Montero should be up here
Steve Zakuani $163,000 - Needs to start scoring at that pay level
Tyrone Marshall $161,250 - Must have a good agent
Peter Vagenas $158,400 - Fair deal: why doesn't he start more Sigi?
Fredy Montero $155,000 - Should be higher than Jaqua but he's younger
Nathan Sturgis $133,000 - 5 starts at that salary? Trade bait.
Sebastien Le Toux $112,000 - Underpaid: Huge heart and a better free kicker than Ljungberg (hell, Vagenas is a better corner kicker than Ljungberg)
James Riley $72,625 - Underpaid: Rock solid at right defence
Patrick Ianni $72,000 - Underpaid: Goal of the week / adds depth on D
Osvaldo Alonso $65,000 - Are you freaking serious? Way underpaid
Taylor Graham $55,000 - Stanford grads are always overpaid.
Chris Eylander $45,500 - Underpaid: Keller backup
Brad Evans $44,550 - MASSIVELY UNDERPAID - National Team Player
Roger Levesque $40,008 - MASSIVELY UNDERPAID - 2 US Open Cup Game Winners
Zach Scott $40,008 - Trade bait
Jhon Kennedy Hurtado $37,000 - MASSIVELY UNDERPAID - As good as Marshall
Tyson Wahl $34,650 - On his way out with arrival of Gonzalez
Ben Dragavon $34,000 - No opinion, but also a cool name
Stephen King $34,000 - Underpaid: Adds depth at midfield + cool name
Sanna Nyassi $20,100 - And the award for most underpaid Sounders goes to...Sanna Nyassi! The guy comes in late in most games and is solid at midfield, has more appearances and shots than Vagenas, and adds attacking depth at midfield.

Observations: The Sounders are following the MLS rule where you pay all your money to attackers and goalies and throw in some cheap defenders. Hopefully the signing of Gonzalez is evidence that the Sounders understand that you actually need quality defenders on a professional soccer team.

Financial Analysis:The Sounders are selling 33,000 tickets per game at about $25 per ticket. This works out to $825000 per game in gate receipts alone, or over $16M for the season. Typically, you'd expect salaries to equal 40% - 60% of a team's gate receipts, but the Sounders are paying out about 25%. Of course, with the salary cap they are restricted on what they can spend. The question is: what are they going to do with all that money?

Conclusion: You could sign ten Latin American stars for the price of Freddie Ljungberg, all of who would run circles around most MLS defenders. Houston understands this and have signed young Latin American star Lundin as their designated player.

The future of MLS lies in Latin America, not Europe.