Indio – Maya Yoshida directed The galaxy In departures and minutes played last year. By counting the playoffs, no player in the league was on the field more than Yoshida during a season that ended with the Galaxy Captain Histing The MLS Cup.
For the oldest player of the team, it was among the most human seasons in the history of the franchise. And for that, he was rewarded with a salary reduction.
“These are bulls-” he said last week.
Yoshida's base salary was $ 800,000 last season, while six teammates had more value contracts. As for the quantity of cut, he would not say. However, he obviously cut deeply for a proud man who came to MLS after playing in three Olympic games, three World Cups and starting almost 300 times combined in four of the best leagues in Europe.
“It's very unfair, to be honest,” he said. “I become champion and my salary is less. Everyone knows that it should not happen. ”
Yoshida, 36, does not blame the galaxy. Ok, maybe just a little.
But he saved his most virulent criticisms for a strict salary ceiling and the rules of Byzantine alignment make the teams to reward excellence for more than one handful of players each season.
Of the 14 players used by the galaxy in the final of the MLS Cup, Yoshida, a central back, was the only one to have had to renegotiate his contract this winter. The timing could not have been worse because the team had more than a million dollars in additional payments to adapt to the 2025 salary ceiling after the signatory U22 Dejan Jveljic and the young player designated Gabriel Pec has aged $ 5.95 million in the league.
This left Kuntz's general manager between a rock and a difficult place. After having tightened every penny that he could out of this rock, he still had to exchange defender Jalen Neal, the fields Mark Delgado and Gastón Brugman – MVP MLS Cup – and Jveljic, who scored six times in five qualifying games last season, to operate the figures.
“It was a mathematical problem, not a football problem,” Kuntz said after getting rid of more than a quarter of the players used by the galaxy in the MLS Cup final.
Yoshida does not buy this distinction because for him, this is not a problem at all. For him, the whole premise of the argument is simply crazy and this is one of the reasons why he thinks that MLS is undergoing his own success.
The MLS could have rewarded the galaxy by letting them keep a young talented local player like Neal. Instead, they were forced to exchange it. It could have found a way to reward the team for discovering and recruiting a player like Joveljic to come and play in the United States now, too, has left.
“Fans want to see the player who grew up locally and succeeded in the club,” said Yoshida. “It's very normal.”
It is also very normal for team owners to pass like drunk sailors in order to outdo themselves. This is what led the bankruptcy of the North American Soccer League (NASL). MLS therefore deliberately slowed down the expenses.
The teams can give unlimited amounts to three designated players, whose wages only partially count against the salary ceiling. And they can soften the salary for others with allowance money. But the teams do not have a white check, and the pain of balanced their budgets often falls the heaviest on veterans like Yoshida.
The rules are correct, underlines Christina Labrie, senior vice-president of relations with the players, because they are the same for each team of the League. But, responds to Yoshida, MLS is in competition on a global market where everyone playing by different rules.
“For other sports – Basketball, baseball or American football – there is no competition from outdoor countries. But football is different,” said Yoshida. “You have to think of world competitors.
“The more the contract is (this is where the player goes,” he continued. “This is why the Middle East is very popular now. This is why China was very popular like five years ago. This is how capitalism is. And I thought that America was a very, very capitalist country.”
The fact that the unique football league in America is more cooperative than the capitalist does not hurt MLS, said Yoshida, who returned to Japan this winter and found an interest in the League.
“Everyone asked me questions about MLS. It becomes very, very popular,” said Yoshida, one of the Six Japanese players in MLS last season.
“But at the same time, he must grow financially because the salary ceiling is different from the salary in Japan. A non-DP player is nothing different. This is the key: no money, nobody comes.”
So why Yoshida, who said he had offers to play elsewhere, chose to come back?
“It's very complicated,” he said.
There was heavily in his reflection, his school age, who was born in the United Kingdom, when his father played for Southampton, then followed him in Italy and Germany before coming to the United States 19 months ago.
“I don't want to change my daughter's school,” he said. “Over the past two years, she has changed every one, two years old in a new environment, which is very sad for her. She ages.”
Yoshida, who is 37 years old in August, said he could have done more than what the galaxy agreed to pay it in 2025, but the galaxy offered a second season and it was worth money because it meant another year in the same school for her daughter. This second year will also keep Yoshida in the country through the World Cup, which will be played in the United States next summer, followed by the Olympic Games, which arrive in Los Angeles in 2028.
“It is not bad for the future, having this type of network, relationship and experience in America,” he said. “So I did not think (for) this short period, but longer.
“It was a difficult decision to be honest. It is difficult to compromise your (situation), but we will see. I have to earn money outside football. ”
Because in MLS, leading your team to a championship does not mean that you will not have to make a salary reduction.
