MLS Players Union Denounces Superliga

The purse for Superliga, the second-year tournament pitting Major League Soccer and Mexican clubs, which kicks off this weekend, is a cool million dollars. At least, that's what MLS loves to say.

But on Saturday, the MLS Players Association sent a few shots across the bows of the league. In a statement emailed to the media, the MLSPA slammed the tournament and MLS's marketing arm, Soccer United Marketing, for misrepresenting the true amount of money involved.

"MLS is misleading its great fans," the statement reads. "What has not been revealed by the league is that its New York office has unilaterally set its own bonus structure for players, who will receive only a small fraction of the $1 million....If an MLS team wins SuperLiga, the players on that team won't split $1 million. Instead, they will receive only 15% of the prize money. This puts MLS players at a significant competitive disadvantage as the Mexican clubs are not operating under the same rules. Indeed, it is our understanding that the players on last year's winner Pachuca split the entire $1 million prize amongst themselves."

In other words, the MLS players, if their team wins the tournament, would split $150,000. This breaks down to roughly $5,300 per player.

"It's a shame that MLS doesn't pay its players -- the persons responsible for making the tournament exciting -- their fair share of the proceeds," the statement continued. "Their refusal to do so has left the players with a bitter taste in their mouths as they enter the tournament."

This issue --  and the angry sentiment of the MLS players -- was raised several weeks ago by New England Revolution goalkeeper Matt Reis during an interview with Goal.com. In that interview, he said there was little motivation for MLS players to win Superliga.

"Everybody throws this million-dollar mark around, but the players get less than they do to win MLS Cup," he said. "You know, what if you get injured playing in Superliga? If you have bonuses set up for your league play, then that sort of washes all that out. The league keeps talking about how they want MLS to stack up with European and South American countries, but there really isn’t too much incentive for MLS players to go out there and win it. I think there should be a per-game bonus. I think there should be a lot more incentive to go out there and play if that’s what the league wants."

-- Goal.com