MLS Has A Lot To Improve On – Rooney

Manchester United legend, Wayne Rooney has come out to say that Major League Soccer’s owners are taking advantage of a flawed football system in the US.

Rooney recently revealed that the way transfers work over there and how the salary cap is lifted is not a good enough example for other leagues to follow.

According to him, there is zero thought behind the decisions taken in terms of the lives of players, their family and the well being of the children.

He added that the footballers in the league even get a little percentage of cash which can barely cover their weekly bills.

His words, “I didn’t realise it before, but obviously when I got [to D.C.] I seen it,”

“My first week, we had a player who, when he finished training, he got told he was getting transferred onto somewhere else.

“I was like, ‘Why? What’s going on here? Where is he going? What’s going on?’ So, it’s difficult. I spoke to Steve [Birnbaum, D.C. team-mate] a lot. I was like, ‘Can he do that? Is it that easy to do? Is it that easy to actually move someone on?’

“There’s no thought behind it in terms of this player might have a family, children, a life here. They might have told, ‘You know what? Move on.’

“I know it works that way in basketball and in the NFL, but those players get paid millions and millions of pounds. So, they can afford to actually do that, but MLS players can’t.

“They probably get a small percentage of money which won’t even cover the bills, won’t even cover what they have to live on. It’s wrong for that to happen.

“I think 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. The American players are just the same as the South Americans, the English, the Spanish. The American players work just as hard, if not harder, and get taken advantage of.”

“There is so much potential there, there is so much of a market,”

“I said it when I left D.C., MLS have to take on the rules that Europe and the rest of soccer are taking.

“Although they might not want to, and I know the rest of U.S. sports don’t do that, but if they don’t, then they will never get there [level with European leagues].

“They get players like me and Zlatan, but I can’t give them Wayne Rooney from 10 years ago, Zlatan can’t give himself from 10 years ago. We can give you ourselves from now, we can go there and earn a decent amount of money and give the fans some entertainment, but we can’t give you our full potential. If MLS want players to reach their full potential, then they have to take the salary cap off.”