Free Designated Players For Everyone

Tim Leiweke, the mastermind behind the Designated Player rule, is lobbying for Major League Soccer to change its rulebook once again in the offseason, this time to allow DP signings to be exempt from the league's salary cap altogether.

Leiweke, the president and CEO of Anschutz Entertainment Group, says that by making a designated player signing count for $400,000 against a salary cap of just over $2 million, owners are being penalized for taking a big risk. If he had his way, they would count for nothing. He perceives the big hit towards the cap as part of the reason there are only six DPs spread out among the 14 teams and believes that making them free - essentially - would create more of an incentive for teams to go out and sign big-name players.
"Within our structure as a league, are we penalized for going out and taking the risk we took on David? I think we are," Leiweke recently told SI.com in an interview. "And so that's something that we as a league are going to have to deal with, is the ditch that we find ourselves in the day we announce David Beckham based on the cap.

It would not be the first time that league owners have passed a ruling to help out the Galaxy in a time of need. Last year, it was agreed upon that Landon Donovan and his $900,000 salary would not make him a DP, grandfathering in such players who already made more than the maximum salary. Still, the Galaxy must take on $400,000 of his salary as well, meaning Beckham & Donovan alone combine for about 35% of the team's cap.

"There are some in the league who argue, 'Yeah, but you're spending the same amount of money on the rest of your team that some of the other teams are spending on their entire team. So you made some bad personnel decisions.' I think we probably did," Leiweke admitted. "I'm not an expert, but I think we spent some money and brought some guys in that ultimately aren't very good. So they are right: We've made some bad decisions.

"That said, why does David count against the cap when you see the impact that David has created for everybody else in the league? Every team should have the ability, I think, of pulling in a Designated Player and making a decision to pay that player outside the cap, and it shouldn't have an impact on the cap."

Leiweke will have a lot of convincing to do when the MLS Board of Governors convenes their next meeting over MLS Cup weekend in late November.