New York Red Bulls and Kemar Lawrence: Pay your talent

Kemar Lawrence has reportedly requested a trade away from the New York Red Bulls amid growing frustrations regarding his contract. The impasse speaks to a larger issue throughout MLS: team’s caution to pay their talent over a number of years.

There is a hesitation throughout Major League Soccer to invest heavily in certain individuals. While teams are increasingly willing to shell out the big bucks on short-term deals, especially with the introduction and subsequent growth of the Designated Player rule, there is a general caution to secure players to long-term deals.

Per Transfermarkt, at present, only three players in the entire league have a contract that is set to expire in 2023 or beyond:

• Colorado Rapids – Sebastian Anderson (2024)
• San Jose Earthquakes – Marcos Lopez (2023)
• Atlanta United – Josef Martinez (2023)

That means that every other player in MLS is on a two-year contract or shorter. Some of these contracts have club options, admittedly, but these are completely controlled by the teams, and if they are exercised, they often result in the player being vastly underpaid.

In world football, the players hold far too much power in the transfer market. They are able to run down their contracts, dictate exits from teams, and hold clubs — and subsequently supporters — to ransom because of the strength of their negotiating position. But in MLS, it is the teams that hold all of the power, and they make sure to take advantage of it.

All this brings me to the New York Red Bulls and a reported impasse with full-back Kemar Lawrence. Lawrence has been one of the premier defenders in MLS throughout his five years in New York. He was rewarded with a new contract in 2018 which made him the highest-paid defender at the New York Red Bulls. But the deal was laden with option years and did not commit to him long-term. It expires at the end of the 2021 season.

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What was even more frustrating for Lawrence was that Tim Parker and Aaron Long signed new deals that immediately passed him in the Red Bulls dressing room, while a swathe of new deals for left-backs throughout MLS saw his $383,000 yearly wage dwarfed — Ali Adnan’s new deal with the Vancouver Whitecaps is nearly three times Lawrence’s.

This has led to an obvious unrest. Per SBI Soccer, Lawrence wants to be traded away from the Red Bulls after he has grown frustrated with the team’s hesitance to enter into talks regarding a new deal that would up his pay into the upper echelons of MLS defenders, which would be a much fairer wage given his performances over the years.

MLS team’s general hesitance to pay players what they deserve, especially regarding the length of their contracts, is again coming to roost. While the New York Red Bulls are under no obligation to negotiate with Lawrence, they are exploiting their power, as almost every other MLS team. The only time a player is given a long contract is when they are young and a team is concerned about losing them to Europe.

Lawrence is justified to feel aggrieved. He wants to be paid a fair wage. But sadly for him, leaving New York will not solve those issues. It is an MLS-wide problem.