CPL General

[mtlsab]

32 minutes ago, shamrock said:

There's every reason to keep salaries low. It's going to be the same (Canadian) players, even if you pay them more. It will increase in time anyway, no reason to start high.  

True, it has to start as a development league. I don't think that copying the Indian Super league and bringing damous players for a 4 months contract would be usefull 

[Complete Homer]

53 minutes ago, shamrock said:

 It's going to be the same (Canadian) players, even if you pay them more. It will increase in time anyway, no reason to start high.  

Veterans sure, but most talented and driven teenagers will end up with much better alternative opportunities than slogging out a soccer career for 25-30k and retiring mostly unskilled in their early 30s. They will continue to pursue other opportunities instead of choosing to dedicate themselves to a soccer career

From a player pool perspective CPL is only partially about creating a safe harbour for existing Canadian players, it's also about creating a legitimate pathway to becoming a pro. While a 1 million cap is a reasonable starting place, I don't think you are going to dramatically change the amount of talent that stays in the pipeline until you are at least offering in the 50-60k range as an average salary. Why gamble on a high risk career when the reward is so low? 

[Watchmen]

It's nice to see Pacific FC aligning with the Whitecaps in West Coast solidarity: complaining that salaries are too high and wanting to spend half as much as more ambitious teams.

[C2SKI]

Do we know what Ottawa is spending this season on player salaries?

[BringBackTheBlizzard]

4 hours ago, shamrock said:

There's every reason to keep salaries low. It's going to be the same (Canadian) players, even if you pay them more. It will increase in time anyway, no reason to start high.  

True, but you still need to get a decently talented spine to your team in place to be able give the paying customers something that's going to be seen as worth paying to watch. Given 850 = (8 x 50) + (15 x 30), people need to temper their expectations on the sort of quality that can be put together in year one for that sort of money, if the numbers emanating from Victoria are accurate and that winds up being a hard salary cap. Suspect there might be a move to a smaller fully pro core of 16 or so with players on the fringes being younger local guys on amateur and semi-pro deals, if those types of numbers are the shape of things to come, because there's no point blowing 25 to 30k each on the guys that are going to be firmly rooted to the bench almost all of the time when you can use that to have significantly more quality out on the field of play that will be needed to win more games.

[Alex D]

This is from a recent article from Nipun Chopra. Shows USL wages between 250-500k US. 1 million CDN would be a good bump up even with exchange. 

[CDNFootballer]

4 hours ago, C2SKI said:

Do we know what Ottawa is spending this season on player salaries?

Not sure, it won't be near the million mark in USL though. Another matter is if these players are on multi year contracts or not where they would carry over to CPL.

 

Unlike other USL teams Ottawa has a year at a time commitment as the CPL was known about when they jumped from NASL to USL (so a multi year USL contract would likely have provisions to transfer over to CPL) and the USL head has seemed to accept that Ottawa's future in USL is not long. Gives USL another expansion slot to sell for the $7 million expansion fee they are currently asking so they won't shed tears when Ottawa leaves. The vast majority of USL contracts are single season only.

[Complete Homer]

1 hour ago, Alex D said:

This is from a recent article from Nipun Chopra. Shows USL wages between 250-500k US. 1 million CDN would be a good bump up even with exchange. 

Did they actually publish those documents? Not that I don't believe them but it's nice to have the actual source when correcting the misconception that USL players get 50k and dental

[Ansem]

11 hours ago, shamrock said:

There's every reason to keep salaries low. It's going to be the same (Canadian) players, even if you pay them more. It will increase in time anyway, no reason to start high.  

Almost half the team will be allowed to be foreigner. The higher the salary cap, the more likely you have the resources to pay for good internationals that will help elevate the level of play and develop further the Canadians. 

It's not necessarily about paying the Canadians more. Pool 1 deserve to be paid a higher pay, pool 2 to 4 haven't proved anything, hence not in a position to ask above market value.

[Grandbloke]

1 hour ago, Ansem said:

Almost half the team will be allowed to be foreigner.

A dozen foreigners is way too many. Would like to see a maximum of 8 foreigners per team.

[matty]

14 minutes ago, Grandbloke said:

A dozen foreigners is way too many. Would like to see a maximum of 8 foreigners per team.

we can't always get what we want and they have hinted it will be around 50% canadian roster with a 6-5 rule in place but honestly i don't know what to believe anymore after clanachan said they were talking about 100k markets lol

[An Observer]

6 hours ago, Alex D said:

This is from a recent article from Nipun Chopra. Shows USL wages between 250-500k US. 1 million CDN would be a good bump up even with exchange. 

These figures don’t really add up.  Salaries for players would be between 3 and 5% of the operating budget.  That just doesn’t make sense.  

[Blackjack15]

I think every club should have only 7 Internationals per 25 Man Roster and the 6/11 rule in place which is beneficial to the Canadian player 

 

[shamrock]

Right now, we have no hard figures of USL salaries nor of CANPL salaries. We'll just have to wait and see what sort of talent they'll be able to attract. 

[Alex D]

7 hours ago, An Observer said:

These figures don’t really add up.  Salaries for players would be between 3 and 5% of the operating budget.  That just doesn’t make sense.  

Sorry, i cut out the part of the article where he explained those numbers include the $7 million franchise fee.

Edit* I found the link with the full break down of USL costs for a first year team. It's safe to say USL ranges from Semi Pro to MLS light.

 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1MYGPYfDY7vVD1xDldLkSTUtAWTYufjgSjJGYj4Ajudg/edit?usp=drivesdk

If CPL has a cap of $1 milliin CDN it will be on the higher end of the USL scale. Some people have derided $40k average as a shameful poverty wage, and it isnt a tonne, but most of these kids that will populate the league are currently playing for the love of the game and free Gatorade. 

People forget that MLS less than 10 years ago had players making only $12K. I imagine CPL will have some young players making $15-20K while living at home just to chase the dream. If they do well they will get a raise or move to Europe. 

Edited August 12, 2018 by Alex D

[BringBackTheBlizzard]

3 hours ago, shamrock said:

Right now, we have no hard figures of USL salaries nor of CANPL salaries. We'll just have to wait and see what sort of talent they'll be able to attract. 

The reason it is difficult to nail down what USL clubs get up to is that there is no players' union with a CBA and no salary cap:

https://www.tsn.ca/radio/montreal-690/godfrey-no-salary-cap-in-usl-1.676821

[CDNFootballer]

Will be interesting to see how the salary details for CPL club are setup, should be finalized soon as clubs will be starting to build their rosters in a couple of months. A cap of $1 million to start for player budget will be fine, more than USL and getting close to around where the NASL average was. One thing the NASL implemented last season was a luxury tax where a club with a player over a certain amount would be taxed, maybe something CPL should look at as well. Tax funds could be spread back to the other clubs.

[Keegan]

1 hour ago, CDNFootballer said:

Will be interesting to see how the salary details for CPL club are setup, should be finalized soon as clubs will be starting to build their rosters in a couple of months. A cap of $1 million to start for player budget will be fine, more than USL and getting close to around where the NASL average was. One thing the NASL implemented last season was a luxury tax where a club with a player over a certain amount would be taxed, maybe something CPL should look at as well. Tax funds could be spread back to the other clubs.

I’m all in favour of a luxury tax and I don’t think the cap should be what teams spending power is.  I.e I don’t want a team with the potential to spend 5 million down to 1 because a small market can’t keep up.  

 

[Ansem]

1 hour ago, Keegan said:

I’m all in favour of a luxury tax and I don’t think the cap should be what teams spending power is.  I.e I don’t want a team with the potential to spend 5 million down to 1 because a small market can’t keep up.  

 

Exactly. If Forge and Valour wants to be the early giants of CPL, I disagree that they should be held back. I remember Bob Young wanted to be competitive right from the get go in the Canadian Championship. Where you have some ownership wanting to keep it low, there must be others who wants that 1st ever Championship and are willing to buy talent to make it happen.

I'm all for a luxury tax on owners willing to go over. Make it expansive if that ensures that only those with the pockets to spend does.

[Complete Homer]

There's a reasonable middle ground between those two. A cap ceiling 50-100% higher than the cap floor is probably reasonable, with or without a luxury tax. A 5x gap between the top and bottom is unheard of in north American sport and wouldn't be tolerable to the majority IMO

[top cheese]

The other thing with Ottawa is would they be allowed to retain their players depending on how the player allocation rules go in CPL

[grande]

A friend of mine suggested having a hard-cap, but Canada-eligible players only count for half against that cap (eg, if you're paying a Canadian $50,000, he only counts as $25,000 towards the salary cap). Kind of a neat idea for encouraging Canada-heavy rosters.

[deschamp86]

I don't think a $1 million cap will be bad to start. There are not going to be an abundance of high calibre players out of contract within the first couple of years anyway. Will be good to set precedent by not having huge contracts

[shorty]

2 hours ago, grande said:

A friend of mine suggested having a hard-cap, but Canada-eligible players only count for half against that cap (eg, if you're paying a Canadian $50,000, he only counts as $25,000 towards the salary cap). Kind of a neat idea for encouraging Canada-heavy rosters.

I agree that this is a neat idea for an incentive to chase higher quality Canadian players who might not leave current situations for 25K, but there already will be a roster minimum for Canadians driving signings. Plus, I don't think Shillington is advocating for a $1million cap purely in an artificial-competitive-rules-of-the-game sense. As a small c conservative business owner I think he probably literally doesn't want to spend much more than $1million on player wages in which case this idea wouldn't fly.  Also, possibly the owners are haggling over the number at the moment, and he is pushing for a lower figure in the 1-1.5 range and is "bargaining" in the press. 

Whatever the truth is, the owners all have a tricky balancing act in the first year between salary precedents and on the field quality. 

[C2SKI]

I hope that homegrown players won't count against the cap