Backpass: All in on a Max Bet
Thoughts on the Max Alves suspension. A deep Rapids-centric dive on the MLS salary dump. PLUS! We have some merch coming from HTHL...
It was probably a bit hyperbolic of me to state on twitter the other day that Max Alves’ indefinite suspension, pending investigation, was going to “tarnish the franchise forever.” I admit it. I’m a drama queen. Maybe ‘tarnish’ isn’t quite the right word. ‘A small stain on the reputation’. ‘A dent in the fender.’ ‘A hair in your soup.’ Maybe it’s more like when you have spaghetti and that little end of the noodle flicks one little red dot on your white-collared shirt to create a tiny spot that is noticeable but not, like, a big deal. But also, your shirt just got back from the cleaners, so uggghhhh.
Still. Hard to ignore the fact that the first MLS player ever to get popped for taking cash to pick up a yellow card in a soccer match is a Colorado Rapid. It adds to the other dubious distinctions the Rapids holds. We:
Are the only MLS originals to have never won Supporter’s Shield.
Are the all-time leader in losses in MLS history (363 losses, 10 more than DC United).
Lost the 1999 US Open Cup to the Rochester Rhinos - who are the last non-MLS team to win the Lamar Hunt Trophy.
Are one of only two MLS originals to have never won the US Open Cup (the other is NYRB).
Are regularly regarded by MLS executives as having the one of the worst owners in the league (via The Athletic, the Rapids were 3rd-worst in 2022, and the worst in 2023).
Missed the playoffs six times in past decade (2014, 2015, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2022) [Note: It’s possible DC United, Chicago, Houston or Vancouver is worse. I dunno. That’s a lot of research and I have emails to answer].
Once signed Zat Knight.
And now add to that ‘Are the first MLS team to have a player suspended for taking a bribe to draw a card.’
I had a pretty epic rant about this last week on the podcast, so I won’t rehash my pearl-clutching too much here. Suffice it to say it looks bad for the integrity of the players and the game that there’s now a ‘cash for yellow cards’ problem that affects even mid-major leagues like MLS.
The affect of widespread legalized internet betting, betting from your phone, and unregulated prop betting has inevitably come home to roost. Max is just one corrupt individual in the system, but as you might conclude if you have read about the 1919 Black Sox scandal in which gangster Arnold Rothstein rigged the World Series, the players are just cogs in the machine. The organized crime syndicate that paid Max Alves $12,000 to pick up a yellow could have easily made several million when they bet that it would happen. With that much profit for such a small investment, there’s hardly anything to deter the sketchy and unscrupulous to do that again. The result?Max is likely to face a lengthy ban from world soccer. He certainly won’t be playing for Colorado in 2023 - if ever again. Whether the crime bosses involved in Brazil receive any punishment, only time will tell.
Max is a cog, but I doubt he’s a dupe. I disagree with my friend Matt’s assessment that his situation growing up poor in Brazil should be weighed in considering his decision. When you make $313,260 a year, you can’t claim poverty. Max earns more annually than 98 percent of Americans. My grandfather grew up during the depression. He has childhood memories of being evicted every month when his family couldn’t pay the rent. When he got his first job as an accountant, he discovered the company was cooked the books. Rather than take the logical, safe, but dubiously ethical path, he quit.
We all make choices in life. Max made the wrong one. It will be a while till anyone trusts or respects him again.
Meanwhile, it is probably time for major sports leagues – who often take loads of advertising money from betting firms (see the kit sponsors in the EPL and English Championship for examples) – to force teams to crack down on prop bets that can be easily manipulated. As long as it is easy to bet on a yellow card, there will be players willing to draw a yellow card for cash. And there will be shady syndicates willing to front the money for the chance to make millions.
…
Cash moves everything around me
We move from talking about money to talking … about money.
The annual MLSPA salary drop, uh, dropped on Tuesday.1 All the raw details are here. Paul Tenorio, Tom Bogert, and Jeff Rueter have a great analysis piece in The Athletic here. I’m here to give you some Colorado Rapids-relevant details.
Kevin Cabral is our highest-paid player at $1.8 million; although Colorado only pays half of that, while his prior club, LA Galaxy, pay the other half. The second-highest-paid player is DP centerback Andreas Maxsø, who will earn nearly $1.3 million this year. He is the 11th-highest paid defender in MLS, although the MLSPA website lists Carlos Gruezo and Kellyn Acosta as defenders, so take that with a grain of salt. Defenders Matt Miazga, Walker Zimmerman, Victor Wanayama, Miles Robinson, and Nemanja Radoja all earn just a smidgeon more than Maxsø.
For the rest of you salary data nerds and roster fanatics, here’s the latest Rapids Senior roster info, in spreadsheet format.2 No, you can’t click it. It’s a .jpeg.
Some other interesting tidbits on #Rapids96 :
There are 5 TAM players on the squad: Abubakar, Acosta, Barrios, Cabral, Rubio.
1 player that is eligible to be salary exempt (because he is either a Home Grown Player or a Generation Adidas player) is on the senior roster. This is partly due to injury/
Lalas Abubakar is the big $$$ winner: he received a 158% salary increase from '22 to '23.
I was surprised to learn Collen Warner's salary is still on the roster. Matt noted on the podcast that he’s helping out as a coach with the MLS Next Pro team, Colorado Rapids 2.
Our highest-paid player, Kevin Cabral, has just 95 more minutes played than our lowest-paid player, Anthony Markanich. Half of Cabral's salary is paid by LA Galaxy.
You won’t find Jack Price on that chart above, because he’s on the Season-Ending Injury list. He’s the team’s third-highest paid player, earning $825,000.
The average MLS salary in 2023, per The Athletic, is $530,262. That’s up 3.5 percent, from $512,287, in 2022. The average Colorado Rapids salary is $388,442. The Rapids average salary is 26.7 percent lower than the league average.
The Colorado Rapids overall roster commitment, not including transfer fees, is $13.2 million. However, with half of Cabral and half of Gustavo Vallecilla’s salary being covered by the LA Galaxy and Columbus Crew, respectively, the real outlay is more like $12.1 million. Once you factor in DPs, TAM, and GAM,3 the maximum roster spend for an MLS is $9.8 million. Using their DPs and Garber Bux, Colorado’s actual budget charge is $9,090,827. They’re (probably) happily on-budget, with a little money to spend in the summer.4
The Rapids roster spending places them 20th in MLS in payroll. It’s great that they seem to be willing to spend a little more this year than in past years, when they were notorious for being at the bottom on total spending. This never means that much to me, though. When your owner is worth roughly $10 billion dollars, and also owns the Arsenal Football Club, the LA Rams, Denver Nuggets, etc; player salaries are never that keeps you up at night. Sure, Stan and Josh Kroenke want to keep costs in check in Commerce City, because a team that spends irresponsibly on players while performing poorly and earning disappointing turnstile revenues will lose money, and of course, that’s never great.
However, as I have said a zillion times before, the real value of the Rapids is not in their operating profit or loss – it is in their estimated franchise value. In 2008, the year after Stan Kroenke bought the team, Forbes valued the club at $31 million. After adding a stadium for $131 million, half of which was paid-for by a bond issue from Commerce City, the team was certainly worth no less than $90 million in 2010. With this week’s announcement that Egyptian billionaire Mohamed Mansour will pay a $500 million expansion fee for a new San Diego MLS team5, it seems the Rapids are likely worth somewhere in the neighborhood of $350-600 million. Kroenke has earned 10 to 20 times his initial investment. That’s a 60 to 80 percent return on investment each year. I’ll make 5 percent interest on my bank CD this year. Suffice it to say, I wish I had a billion dollars and could have bought an MLS team in 2007. 6
My point is, losing between $2 and 5 million a year in operating loss a year isn’t so bad if your team is appreciating each year in value by $20 to 30 million. As long as the overall budget is close-to balanced and most of your players are productive, you don’t really care if your DPs are making $2 million or $20 million. The Rapids have productive players, reasonable contracts, and no ‘dead-money’ to carry this year – no overpriced albatrosses like Stephan Aigner, Shkëlzen Gashi, or Tim Howard.7
We’re doing ok financially, even if the team isn’t getting great results on the pitch – our modestly priced players are simply not as productive as other teams modestly priced players.
Shillings
We’ve got merch coming soon!
Holding the High Line will be sending a pint glass, emblazoned with a cool *new* HTHL logo, to all our highliners. A highliner is anyone contributing $5 a month or $42 a year. 8That means you can hoist a pint of your favorite Colorado beer in a glass from your favorite Colorado Rapids podcast. For highliners that want a set of 2 or 4 glasses, we’ll sell you extras at a totally reasonable price – Matt and I are in this to reward our loyal listeners, not turn a profit. This sure as heck ain’t KSE.
But this pint glass is ONLY available to paid HTHL subscribers. However, YOU can still be one! Yes, you! Click the pink button below to subscribe at the $5 a month or $42 a year level, or to change your free subscription to a paid subscription, and we’ll send you a pint glass. We’d love it even more if you become a ‘Galley of Honor’ plan subscriber at $96 a year.
Matt wanted to record the podcast on Monday but I had a rough two days of work so I pushed till Tuesday so I could get some sleep. That worked out well for us. Word to the wise, Matt: good things happen when you let me sleep.
Michael Edwards is probably not the guy on the senior roster, but all the other HGP and Gen. Adidas guys are all also making Kia/Hyundai money: $68k to 88k a year. No diss to Kia/Hyundai owners: your car is not an extension of your worth in the universe, at all.
Complicated MLS roster mechanisms that I could explain, but I’ve done that so many times before. Google it if you’re confused.
Or not! MLS teams almost uniformly do not disclose transfer fees, which can be amortized over the length of a players contract. So while we know that Andreas Maxsø will earn $1.3 million this year, we do not know his transfer cost. Transfermarkt lists the transfer fee as €650,000; I have no idea where they got that. Let’s say it’s true. His transfer fee is then spread out over the life of his 3-year deal, meaning he really costs $1.5 million for our budget this year. The Rapids also acquired Alex Gersbach, Connor Ronan, and Marko Ilić in the offseason. Transfermarkt states Gersbach’s transfer was €300k and Ronan’s was €570k, while Ilić is on loan. Add it all up, and (if it’s true) the Rapids have spent more like $9.6 million under the salary cap, and thus have little to play with at the summer window unless their additions all come with subtractions. This entire paragraph, however, requires a degree of intelligent speculation that, in my experience, will not be revealed. If Pádraig Smith were a magician, he knows enough to know not to reveal how the card trick works.
Stadium, staff, players, history, branding, and soccer balls not included and sold separately.
Does that mean buying a team for $500 million will net Mansour $5 billion in a decade? I sincerely doubt it, but I do think that luxury items that are very scarce, like sports teams, will always go up in value.
These players were all worth their salary in year 1, and not worth it in year 2. Howard was pretty terrible in year 3 and 4; Gashi was cut altogether in 2019, and we paid him to sit on a yacht in Dubai all year. Gashi has played for FC Aarau in the Swiss 2nd division since 2020.
I haven’t worked out the math yet, so we may politely ask for our subscribers to cover the modest cost of shipping and handling.