MLS player salaries: Toronto FC spends the most, Shaqiri is highest earner, more notes
Toronto FC teammates Lorenzo Insigne and Federico Bernardeschi take home more than the entire rosters of 11 MLS teams — and neither player is even the league’s top earner.
On Tuesday, the MLS Players Association released salary information for every player in the league following the recently closed primary transfer window. Despite the eye-popping sums taken home by Toronto’s pair of Euro 2020 champion attackers, it’s Chicago Fire playmaker Xherdan Shaqiri who leads all MLS players with an $8.15 million salary. His club isn’t particularly benefitting from that outlay, as head coach Ezra Hendrickson was fired due to poor results earlier in May and the Swiss international has alternated in and out of the lineup this season.
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Insigne and Bernardeschi’s combined guaranteed compensation was greater than the entire 2023 first-team payroll for Charlotte, Colorado, San Jose, Philadelphia, Vancouver, Minnesota, Real Salt Lake, Orlando, New York Red Bulls, St. Louis and Montreal, in order of decreasing expenditure. On the other end of the spectrum, three teams have built their rosters without any single player earning above the maximum salary that can be bought down with targeted allocation money (TAM): New York, San Jose and St. Louis.
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It’s important to remember that the guaranteed compensation totals are not the full amount a team spends on its roster. The numbers do not take into account transfer and loan fees that clubs pay for individual players; those totals can run into the tens of millions. This season sees increases in the thresholds for both the senior maximum salary ($651,250) and the maximum salary that can be bought down
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