CPL General

[Cblake]

6 hours ago, CDNFootballer said:

Best to look at just the league to league numbers overall, when you start cherry picking it becomes irrelevant - those MLS II teams are USL franchises after all just like the minor league USL affiliates and the Independants.

Was quite happy this year that the first year CPL had a near equivalent average to the 10 year old USL and it will only go up from here for Canada's D1 league, just as it did for MLS from their early years.

Even the USL itself publishes two attendance numbers, independents and MLS owned. 

 

[Aird25]

The MLS reserve roster minimum must be well above the CPL average salary. That makes it super risky for CPL teams to take even young MLS players on loan. We need to raise the cap soon to be remotely competitive 

Edited February 15, 2020 by Aird25

[Big_M]

strongly doubt cpl teams are paying the whole salary when a player is loaned from mls..smith and telfer at 70k us last year..no way teams paid all of that..with a cap of 750k that would be over 10% of it

[Unnamed Trialist]

57 minutes ago, Lofty said:

You can uncross your fingers now. 😁

In fairness, I don't really expect the schedule to be released many months in advance. The EFL schedule is typically released mid-Jun for an early Aug start and you then have to wait a further 2-4 weeks for it to be finalized by Sky choosing which matches it wants moved for TV. But of course the EFL has a much shorter close season so it would be hard for them to do it 3 months in advance.

All things considered, I'd be fine with a target of 1st March each year for releasing the schedule, but then COMMIT to it!

In Spain they don't even release a whole schedule, ever. They just announce the fixture sequence, and then the actual times and dates are often only confirmed less than a month in advance. So you effectively can't plan in advance. 

In the past this was because they federation was useless. 

Now they say it is to design what they are offering to national and international tv audiences, so that they pick the matches that might interest more in Spain or in Asia (eg Espanyol has a big following because of Wu Lei) as the season progresses. This actually does make sense, they are fiddling with the algorithms constantly, but I realise it is not what we are used to in North America, dates and times for an entire season.

[Cheeta]

7 hours ago, Big_M said:

strongly doubt cpl teams are paying the whole salary when a player is loaned from mls..smith and telfer at 70k us last year..no way teams paid all of that..with a cap of 750k that would be over 10% of it

Don't care who pays it.  Don't think you could even dictate how A and B decide how they're going to spend their money on C.  But a loaned player's salary, in it's entirety, better bloody well count against their CPL team's salary cap.

Want no part of any scheme which can create a dependency on subsidized labour from an outside organizations.  Nope.  

That cap is too light in my opinon, by a stretch.  Think it might be a couple years yet before it gets into the 1M mark.   But it's going to need to, and the sooner the better.

[CDNFootballer]

18 hours ago, Cblake said:

Even the USL itself publishes two attendance numbers, independents and MLS owned. 

 

Ahhh No, that's not the USL report, that's from a guy on twitter, Mike Pendleton, a Rowdies fan (it even shows his twitter handle on the bottom if you look).

But USL does change the narrative when it suits them, like when their average attendance barely moved one year so they ignored that figure and started touting "total attendance" instead as they had grew by a few teams and of course the total went up.

[Ansem]

Good exposure for the league 

 

[Ozzie_the_parrot]

On 2/14/2020 at 8:05 PM, Kent said:

....I guess to answer your question about warning signals, and none of these mean they are behind where I think the League should be at this point. Attendance is low enough that a decrease could put teams in a tough spot, OneSoccer and CPL still feel like things that if you mention them to a stranger on the street they will not know anything of it, onesoccer subscription numbers are not known which suggests the numbers aren’t high enough to brag about and now they are being given to SSH presumably to pump up viewership....

The main thing is the salary cap has been kept sensibly low. They avoided the mistake of trying to outspend the independent USL teams and competing with MLS teams for fringe CMNT players like Tosaint Ricketts, so the financial bleeding involved probably isn't all that drastic for the investors given their wealth level.

Now that most games will be on weekends there is even scope for more of a downscale financially if it were ever needed. Hopefully not because it's important to stay genuinely fully professional if at all possible to keep the level of play up to the level that we saw in year one.

The biggest danger is having so many fantasists around that expect the league to be able to run before it learns to walk and think CanPL is in some huge competition with MLS. As long as the investors pay no attention to them and are only expecting to have significant upward growth post-2026 there is plenty of time for the league to get things right on and off the field of play. 

Edited February 17, 2020 by Ozzie_the_parrot

[Ansem]

3 hours ago, Ozzie_the_parrot said:

The biggest danger is having so many fantasists around that expect the league to be able to run before it learns to walk and think CanPL is in some huge competition with MLS. As long as the investors pay no attention to them and are only expecting to have significant upward growth post-2026 there is plenty of time for the league to get things right on and off the field of play. 

Most would agree with that. We're in CPL 1.0 era. I expect the league to go "2.0" as soon as the 2027 season riding the high of the World Cup

[Reign]

The league isn’t even fully professional. If anyone watched the YouTube video that Camargo and Niko posted, Camargo was going out to job interviews. He was one of the best players in the league last year and has to work a part time job.  This should not be the case. If the league truly wants to develop talent, and sell players off we need these guys focus on football 100% during the season.

Lets speculate the starting 11 eats up 60% of the cap. The average starter would make around 40k. However if we bump the cap even too 1M. That number jumps to 55ish which makes it significantly easier to live as a full time pro. I hope the league tries to bump up the cap even slightly ASAP. It makes a big difference for the players and hardly any difference for multi millionaires. 

If we are looking at 2026 as the year this league should take off. Even bumping to cap to 1M would only cost the owners 1.5M from now till then. 

[Mikmacdo]

1 hour ago, Reign said:

The league isn’t even fully professional. If anyone watched the YouTube video that Camargo and Niko posted, Camargo was going out to job interviews. He was one of the best players in the league last year and has to work a part time job.  This should not be the case. If the league truly wants to develop talent, and sell players off we need these guys focus on football 100% during the season.

Lets speculate the starting 11 eats up 60% of the cap. The average starter would make around 40k. However if we bump the cap even too 1M. That number jumps to 55ish which makes it significantly easier to live as a full time pro. I hope the league tries to bump up the cap even slightly ASAP. It makes a big difference for the players and hardly any difference for multi millionaires. 

If we are looking at 2026 as the year this league should take off. Even bumping to cap to 1M would only cost the owners 1.5M from now till then. 

Give it another year and they will probably look to increase the cap. If there's growth in revenue next season that should help the cap increase. 

[Ozzie_the_parrot]

1 hour ago, Reign said:

The league isn’t even fully professional...

Given its only active for 7 months, it shouldn't be a shock if the players are working jobs the other 5 months. The main thing is whether they train five days a week in the mornings during the season.

[youllneverwalkalone]

In a perfect world it would be nice if these guys could supplement their income through youth coaching if so inclined. Particularly mid 20s players who want to stick in the game. I've been wanting the cap to increase, but paying for coaching badges, running some clinics, and doing so local scouting of youth clubs would also be a good way to spend another $250k per year or so. For all I know this is already happening.

[Aird25]

The average player not even making their MLS bench makes more than many CPL starters. I think that’s a bad valuation of talent, but I also think it could prevent young MLS players from getting loans to CPL, and I think there are heaps of young Canadians that could benefit from a loan. But loaned players would be some of the highest paid on a CPL roster and I don’t think you can guarantee a Simon Colyn, Michael Baldisimo, Raposo or Facchineri would be a home run in this league next season. So it becomes a risk to commit that much of the cap on young players

[Reign]

3 hours ago, Ozzie_the_parrot said:

Given its only active for 7 months, it shouldn't be a shock if the players are working jobs the other 5 months. The main thing is whether they train five days a week in the mornings during the season.

As I referenced Camargo is going to be working during the CPL season. He was taking interviews last week.

[Cheeta]

Lots of thoughts.

It's Year 1, it was a cautious figure and I'm sure CPL brass know it's too low to be taken seriously.  It'll move upwards quite quickly but of course, as has been mentioned, the rub is in where you go to from here.  There is risk involved.

But simply put, to my mind anyway, if half the teams aren't complaining the cap is too high while others aren't complaining that the cap is too low then you need to raise the cap.  Might be hard to do with the owners having the final say but...

And as always the Devil is in the details.  A $750K cap reads differently when say, it doesn't include the $10K you're required to pay each player on your roster for housing & sundry, doesn't it?  Not saying that is what's happening, just suggesting we probably aren't seeing the full picture just yet. 

Also, pet peeve of mine,  if we have a player salary cap to encourage parity, and by necessity that means the cap has to be set at a level which is sustainable by the weakest link within the CPL family, why don't we have travel costs being an equally shared burden by all members of that family?  Does that create a subsidy?  Yup.  Will that subsidy nudge the salary cap upwards?  If your weakest links are also the organizations with the highest travel cost, then also yup.

And finally, development league or no, developing players in this league shouldn't be seeking outside employment, not even in the off season.  Don't care how long the season is or isn't.  Not trying to make it harder for anyone to make ends meet but if it isn't footie 24/7 365 you've missed the 1st leason you need to learn about being a professional footballer.  At any level. 

Raise the cap.

 

 

 

  

[Bison44]

32 minutes ago, Reign said:

As I referenced Camargo is going to be working during the CPL season. He was taking interviews last week.

Do you have a link?? I dont seem to be able to find the video...

[Reign]

5 minutes ago, Bison44 said:

Do you have a link?? I dont seem to be able to find the video...

https://youtu.be/nkBeP5XFS90

[Ozzie_the_parrot]

8 minutes ago, Cheeta said:

....if we have a player salary cap to encourage parity, and by necessity that means the cap has to be set at a level which is sustainable by the weakest link within the CPL family,...

...and if that's 750k there obviously are no megamillions being received from the Mediapro deal at this point. If some of the teams are struggling to consistently draw more than 2000 actually in the stadium as was abundantly clear from the Onesoccer coverage towards the end of last season regardless of what the attendance stats might have been there would probably need to be a very high tolerance for red ink on the part of some of the owners for the cap to rise substantially. The league is what it is in other words. Hopefully a large enough hardcore will hang in there as the soccer culture grows and standards improve in the years ahead. Rome wan't built in a day.

[BuzzAndSting]

1 hour ago, Ozzie_the_parrot said:

...and if that's 750k there obviously are no megamillions being received from the Mediapro deal at this point. If some of the teams are struggling to consistently draw more than 2000 actually in the stadium as was abundantly clear from the Onesoccer coverage towards the end of last season regardless of what the attendance stats might have been there would probably need to be a very high tolerance for red ink on the part of some of the owners for the cap to rise substantially. The league is what it is in other words. Hopefully a large enough hardcore will hang in there as the soccer culture grows and standards improve in the years ahead. Rome wan't built in a day.

As per usual you have no idea what you’re talking about.

[CanSuffer]

1 hour ago, Ozzie_the_parrot said:

If some of the teams are struggling to consistently draw more than 2000 actually in the stadium as was abundantly clear from the Onesoccer coverage towards the end of last season regardless of what the attendance stats might have been there would probably need to be a very high tolerance for red ink on the part of some of the owners for the cap to rise substantially.

To be viable, the clubs only need the paid attendance  (plus all other revenue) to cover their expenses. Of course for a host of very obvious reasons everyone concerned wants ticket holders to show up. But lets be clear that fans not showing up is a secondary problem to fans not buying tickets. 

[RickC]

3 hours ago, Aird25 said:

The average player not even making their MLS bench makes more than many CPL starters. I think that’s a bad valuation of talent, but I also think it could prevent young MLS players from getting loans to CPL... So it becomes a risk to commit that much of the cap on young players

I don't know much about loans from MLS, but in Europe, loans are a negotiation between two teams. Sometimes very little of the player's wages are picked up by the team bringing him in on loan. Whatever the two parties agree to would be the loan terms: wages, length of loan, expectations of playing time, etc. So, it may be that loans wouldn't hit the salary cap much at all, meaning young Canadians in MLS could indeed be loaned to CPL clubs. 

[MM3/MM2/MM]

7 minutes ago, RickC said:

I don't know much about loans from MLS, but in Europe, loans are a negotiation between two teams. Sometimes very little of the player's wages are picked up by the team bringing him in on loan. Whatever the two parties agree to would be the loan terms: wages, length of loan, expectations of playing time, etc. So, it may be that loans wouldn't hit the salary cap much at all, meaning young Canadians in MLS could indeed be loaned to CPL clubs. 

I would assume in most loan cases the loaning team is picking up part of the salary.  So for CanPL purposes what portion is the league counting towards the salary cap, the amount the player is earning with the parent club or the amount being paid by the CanPL club.   Could be a huge difference.   They could also being using a formula not determined by the actual #s.

 

[Mikmacdo]

Some CFL players work jobs in the offseason, its not considered semi pro. 

Hell the UFC heavyweight champion still works as a firefighter. 

[Ams1984]

4 hours ago, Cheeta said:

Lots of thoughts.

It's Year 1, it was a cautious figure and I'm sure CPL brass know it's too low to be taken seriously.  It'll move upwards quite quickly but of course, as has been mentioned, the rub is in where you go to from here.  There is risk involved.

But simply put, to my mind anyway, if half the teams aren't complaining the cap is too high while others aren't complaining that the cap is too low then you need to raise the cap.  Might be hard to do with the owners having the final say but...

And as always the Devil is in the details.  A $750K cap reads differently when say, it doesn't include the $10K you're required to pay each player on your roster for housing & sundry, doesn't it?  Not saying that is what's happening, just suggesting we probably aren't seeing the full picture just yet. 

Also, pet peeve of mine,  if we have a player salary cap to encourage parity, and by necessity that means the cap has to be set at a level which is sustainable by the weakest link within the CPL family, why don't we have travel costs being an equally shared burden by all members of that family?  Does that create a subsidy?  Yup.  Will that subsidy nudge the salary cap upwards?  If your weakest links are also the organizations with the highest travel cost, then also yup.

And finally, development league or no, developing players in this league shouldn't be seeking outside employment, not even in the off season.  Don't care how long the season is or isn't.  Not trying to make it harder for anyone to make ends meet but if it isn't footie 24/7 365 you've missed the 1st leason you need to learn about being a professional footballer.  At any level. 

Raise the cap.

 

 

 

  

Raise the cap for sure. Better yet, eliminate it, or at the very least, make it relative to a club’s income. I don’t think the cap is there for ‘parity’ to begin with, it’s there to ensure financial viability of the clubs. Anyways, ‘parity’ is both a fallacy and an undesirable one at that. ‘Parity’ is 20 West Broms not 20 Liverpools. It’s much better to let stronger markets grow and pull the rest of the league up with them! (Increased ad revenue, tv viewership, etc).