Cooper Sr. Calls Out MLS on Young Americans' Pay

• YanksAbroad.com, Tuesday, August 4, 2009 4:15 PM

There are overbearing sports parents, those who unconditionally criticize and blindly claim that their son/daughter isn't being utilized or valued enough, and there are sports parents who played the sport and might actually know what they're talking about. Whether former FC Dallas striker Kenny Cooper has the former or latter is up for debate after comments he made to YanksAbroad.com calling out MLS on its treatment of young American talents.

A former NASL player, longtime coach and active presence "since the younger Cooper's days in the youth ranks at Manchester United" in which he was earning a $300,000 salary at age 18, Kenny Cooper Sr. denounced the current MLS pay scale, saying "the value of a player as a young American is not even close to what it should be" and believes that by way of the Designated Player rule, the league values foreign stars far more highly than some of its best American players.

Cooper Sr. is also critical of "MLS' insistence that the player sign over his right to 10 percent of the transfer fee, a percentage guaranteed by FIFA by laws," writes Brent Latham, which has been the deal breaker that doomed past transfer offers before Cooper's recent move to German club 1860 Munich. "You can call it business or whatever you want, but what I call it is incorrect," said the elder Cooper of the unusual practice. "Every player in the world gets 10 percent, so why would you stop a young player from getting his, when you're making millions? Nowhere else in the world does that happen."

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