SI.com's Jonah Freedman reports that the only thing standing between Benny Feilhaber and a move to MLS is ... Benny Feilhaber. According to one of Freedman's sources, Feilhaber (or Feilhaber's agent, Henner Janzen) is demanding "designated-player like money" to return to the U.S., where he has never played professional soccer. The only way that would make any sense is if that were close to what Benny is making now, but as Freedman says, seven figures simply isn't going to happen for him, nor is a DP slot, as that would require a team to shell out $400,000 (nearly 20 percent) of their cap space.

Benny is good and he's young, but he's only shown flashes of his ability in an erratic career that saw him unsettled at Hamburg in Germany and now at Derby County in England. In fact, he only seems to show his true potential playing for the national team, where he had a series of solid performances in 2007, particularly the Gold Cup final against Mexico, where scored that brilliant winner. However, as yet, Feilhaber doesn't have the "qualifications that merit money similar to what guys like Landon Donovan and Juan Pablo Ángel are earning," Freedman says.

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