When the Major League Soccer Players Association released the fall update for the salaries of all rostered players in the league on Wednesday, we learned that Nico Fernández Mercau, New York City FC's newest Designated Player, will make $3.65 million. That's the club's largest contract since David Villa made $5.61 million in 2018.
The news prompted us to look at the history of NYCFC's biggest signings. Nico becomes just the 12th player in club history to earn more than $1 million in guaranteed compensation, and will pull in the ninth-highest annual salary since NYCFC started playing in 2015. You can see a full table of all 35 of the club's seven-figure salaries below.
Here are 5 observations about New York City's largest contracts.
1. $ ≠ success...
To state the obvious, money doesn't always equal success. As former NYCFC Sporting Director David Lee told Charles Boehm for MLSSoccer.com, “There is no correlation in MLS between the amount you spend and how successful you are," Lee said. "There just isn't."
The table above is proof of that. New York City's biggest contracts, namely the $6 million paid to Frank Lampard in 2015 and 2016 and the $5.92 million paid to Andrea Pirlo in 2016 and 2017, might have bought some international publicity for the club, but they didn't lead to lasting results on the field.
