Philadelphia Union Finds A Winning Formula

The MLS put out its annual salary release this weekend and it struck me to notice that the Philadelphia Union has the highest MEDIAN player salary in the league, but is in the bottom half for TOTAL salary. We must examine these facts in light of the Union's very positive start to the season, which has them sitting in 3rd place in their conference as of this writing.

First, the Union chose not to sign a Designated Player. There are two emprical advantages to this choice.

1. You preserve dressing room chemistry because all of the players have roughly the same earning capacity. The fact that some DP's, like Beckham and Henry, earn 50 times as much as other regular players, definitely generates friction even if teams are reluctant to admit it.


2. You don't have to alter your tactics to accomodate a player whose skills may actually be diminished in certain areas.

The next part of the Union's strategy is key. Because they have a high median salary and a low total salary, we can infer there is not much variation. This means they are shelling out top dollar to get high quality players in all positiosn. Look at the Union median relative in particular to all the teams that don't have a designated player. The next highest median is 25k lower. Quite a gap indeed.

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