Photo courtesy Philadelphia Union Communications

The MLS Players Association (MLSPA) has released the Spring-Summer Salary Guide for 2024, for which the data was due on April 25. Philadelphia ranks 24th of 29 in its total salary expenditure at $14,821,159. Inter Miami is first, spending over $41 million.

It should be noted that the guide lists a salary for recent Union homegrown signing David Vazquez, who was announced on April 29. However, the two most recent Union homegrown signings, goalkeeper Andrew Rick and midfielder Cavan Sullivan, do not have data listed. We must wait until the fall salary guide in early October to learn their salaries.

Below PSP has modified the Union’s portion of MLSPA’s raw data as follows.

• We omit first names, clubs, and player positions.
• We have rounded up or down to the nearest thousand dollars to save space.
• We have presented the annualized base salary and omitted guaranteed compensation.

Using annualized salary provides the same type of datum for each player, thus making comparisons among them valid. The guaranteed compensation number may include various types of money, not all of which apply to each player. This can render comparisons and subsequent calculations less accurate. To illustrate, Lionel Messi earns $12 million in salary, with guaranteed compensation exceeding $20 million by a few hundred thousand dollars.

Errata

1. Alejandro Bedoya occupies a hybrid position. He is both an active player and a front office intern learning various administrative roles.
2. Nick Pariano occupies Supplemental Roster Slot 31, and as such is on loan for the season to Philadelphia Union II.
3. Daniel Gazdag remains eligible for a Targeted Allocation Money (TAM) salary buy down by less than ten thousand dollars.
4. Olwethu Makhanya earns $75,000 above the minimum budget charge for a U22 initiative player who is 20 or younger, which he was at the beginning of the season.
5. There is space to sign Jose Riasco to the first team roster. He would be the last possible acquisition by the first team without someone else leaving.
6. The two obvious candidates to leave are fifth striker Tai Baribo and fourth goalkeeper Holden Trent.
7. If Riasco signs and no one leaves, new academy amateurs can only sign with Union II.

Roster categories

“Roster Category” indicates how the player fits into MLS’s salary cap, so this segment is only for roster junkies interested in that topic.

The recent salary information provides more clues towards each player’s probable roster category, but what follows below is completely unofficial guesswork. Players newly acquired or re-signed for 2024 can often have their categories inferred from their salaries*,  but not always because of Homegrown player subsidies.

Players loaned away are not included below, except for Pariano, whose loan is within the organization.

Cavan Sullivan’s contract is a wild card. We will not know his annualized salary until the end of September. Any officially announced record deal’s “record-nature” can depend heavily on its qualifying adjectives. Given the announced new roster rules, using a U22 initiative slot on the senior roster for him seems the most flexible approach. It accommodates the greatest range of future developments from Julian Carranza signing a new one-year full DP deal in October to return or leaving as a free agent in December .

Here is our best guess at Roster Categories as of Wednesday, May 22.

Players in the Senior Supplemental Roster Slot must be paid a minimum salary of slightly under $90,000 and may be older than 24. On the other hand, Reserve Supplemental Roster Slot players must be paid a minimum salary of slightly more than $71,000 and must be 24 years old or younger during the year in question.

Supplemental Roster players are not included in the Salary cap and are paid by their clubs, not the league. However, with a few exceptions, Senior Roster players are paid by the league and their salaries count against the salary cap.