"The man who brought the 'Beckham Rule' to Major League Soccer now wants to change it in a dramatic fashion," writes Grant Wahl. L.A. Galaxy president and CEO of the Anschutz Entertainment Group Tim Leiweke thinks that Designated Players should no longer count against the salary cap.

Regardless of their salaries, DPs currently count as a flat $400,000 a year against the cap. Leiweke believes that this puts the teams who are bold enough to invest in marquee players at a disadvantage. He only needs to cite his own team and its almost complete absence of quality defenders as a perfect example.

"Within our structure as a league, are we penalized for going out and taking the risk we took on [signing] David? I think we are," Leiweke told Wahl. "And so that's something that we as a league are going to have to deal with, is the ditch that [the Galaxy] find ourselves in the day we announce David Beckham based on the cap."

Leiweke conceded that L.A. has "made some bad decisions" in player signings, but asked why Beckham counts "against the cap when you see the impact that David has created for everybody else in the league? Why do we get penalized for that? Every team should have the ability, I think, of pulling in a Designated Player and making a decision to pay that player outside the cap, and it shouldn't have an impact on the cap."

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