One of the English Premier League’s most known players, ex-Manchester United star and also former MLS D.C. United Designated-Player Wayne Rooney said that Major League Soccer owners are “taking advantage” of players in the US, using the American draft system that is also used in the NFL, NBA and other major sports leagues in the country.
Rooney started his professional career in English Premier Club Everton in 2002, and after two seasons transferred for a fee of $35 million to Manchester United, where he played for 13 seasons before returning to Everton for the 2017-2018 seasons. He won with Manchester the Premier League title 5 times, and also played for England’s National team for 3 world cups (2006, 2010, 2014) and three UEFA European Championships.
In 2018 Rooney joined Major League Soccer as a Designated Player, and played for two seasons with Eastern Conference club D.C. United where he registered 52 appearances and scored 25 goals. In January Rooney left the MLS and went back to his native England to join second-tier club Darby County.
In any interview with former D.C. United teammate Quincy Amarikwa, the forward said that he initially did grasp how the system works, and once he joined the MLS it took him by surprise: “I didn’t realise it before, but when I got there [to Major League Soccer], I’ve seen it. We had a player that was told he is getting transferred when we finished training.” Said Rooney.
Rooney added: “I was like, ‘Why? What’s going on here? Where is he going?’ So it’s difficult.” Rooney said that he spoke to his teammate at D.C. United Steve Birnbaum to which he was close, and wondered how can this be done, and how come it is that easy for the MLS to move a player from one Major League Soccer club to another: “There’s not thought behind it in terms of this player might have a family, children…a life here.”
Comparing the draft system in the case of Major League Soccer to that of basketball and the NFL, Rooney said that given athletes of these leagues earn considerable sums of money (“millions of pounds”, as he termed it), they can afford such sudden moves. But given MLS players earn considerably less, their salaries may not even cover the costs associated with a move.
“It is wrong for that to happen. I think the MLS needs to really look at that, because from seeing it, a lot of them owners are taking advantage of the league [structure], which is affecting American players,” said Rooney, and also added the perspective of a diverse player group: “The American players are just the same as the South Americans, the English, the Spanish. The American players just work as hard, if not harder, and get taken advantage of.”
Having played for Major League Soccer for two seasons, Rooney says he is a great believer in the potential of the league, and the sport in the US. But in order to reach that potential, the MLS must adapt to the international soccer marketplace. “There is so much potential there, there is so much market,” Rooney said. “I said it when I left D.C. [the MLS] has to take on the rules that Europe and the rest of the soccer [markets] are taking.”
Rooney also said that players at Major League Soccer should earn more: “If [the MLS] wants players to reach their full potential, then they have to take the salary cap off.” When joined D.C. United in 2018, Wayne Rooney’s base annual salary of $2,776,730 was ranked eighth in the MLS.