Why MLS Can’t Keep Its Best American Talent And What Needs to Change

All told, the FIFA Club World Cup could have gone a lot worse for Major League Soccer, with Inter Miami reaching the second round and all three of its teams giving a competitive display.

Even so, the tournament made it clear there was some distance between MLS and the best clubs in the world. And it also showed that if you’re not going to spend Real Madrid or Paris Saint-Germain money, the best way to compete with those worldwide brands is to lean into an enormous domestic talent pool.

That’s how teams from Brazil became the story of the tournament, relying mostly on domestic players, young and old, with some augmentation from elsewhere in South America. But it’s a model most of the best MLS clubs can’t follow because of an outdated collective bargaining agreement that depresses what domestic players can earn relative to imports.

It takes five seasons for MLS players to earn free agency, which is far worse from an earnings standpoint for players who begin their pro careers in MLS—especially those who do so in their early 20s after a college career.

The result is that, far too often, those American players who blossom and attract interest from abroad quite literally can’t afford to say no, even if the circumstances in another country might be worse for their long-term development.

Take U.S. men’s national team striker Patrick Agyemang, for example. One year away from a World Cup, it has been widely reported the 24-year-old striker will be moving to Derby County in England’s second-tier EFL Championship.

The Rams were nearly relegated last season, and Agyemang will arguably go to an environment where he will have more pressure and less service than in Charlotte, where he plays alongside Israeli international Liel Abada and former Crystal Palace star Wilfried Zaha.

He’s far from a certainty to make next year’s World Cup squad, and going to a new club could certainly hurt his 2026 chances.

But he’s only in Year 2 of his MLS career, making the senior roster league minimum of $104,000 in Charlotte, with no major motivating factor for The Crown—or another MLS employer—to truly meet his value as a double-digit goal scorer. At Derby, reports are he’ll see his salary increase more than tenfold. How can you expect him to turn that down?

Maybe Agyemang is the exception rather than the rule as a player who begins on a league-minimum contract and becomes a national team prospect. But it’s the exceptional talents that MLS must retain to begin thinking about challenging Brazil for the best in the Americas, let alone someday rivaling those big European divisions.

The most maddening part of it all? Many MLS teams would willingly pay far more for Agyemang’s services if he came from abroad and they had to compete for his signature on the global market.

A look at Agyemang’s U.S. teammates at the recently concluded Concacaf Gold Cup shows his situation sadly isn’t that unique.

Diego Luna, who led the U.S. and leads Real Salt Lake this year in scoring, makes just under $500,000 annually—and just under $100,000 less than the league average. Sebastian Berhalter, one of the key players in the Vancouver Whitecaps’ run to the Concacaf Champions Cup final, makes $385,000 in his fifth season in the league and might be the best free-kick taker in the entire USMNT program. And 20-year-old defender Alex Freeman—son of former NFL wide receiver Antonio Freeman—makes only $108,000 and could very soon find himself also subject to a foreign offer that, by contrast, is almost impossible to refuse.

Overall, MLS salaries have increased significantly from the league’s early days, when players on the fringe of the roster often had to take second jobs to get by. And MLS should still aim to be a selling league where it can, particularly with regards to the very top levels of the European game.

But it makes little sense to stick to a structure that results in American players leaving strictly for financial reasons, for foreign destinations that aren’t all that elite—especially when foreign talent in MLS isn’t forced to make the same calculation. And in a nation that is richer with talent than ever, it’s holding the league back.