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.
Instead, the team’s greatest successes came in 2019, when the team had just one seven-figure player in Maxi Moralez (who was paid a cool $2 million), and 2021, when the team’s three DPs made a combined $5.7 million.
Other notable misses include Talles Magno (who is still on NYCFC’s books despite joining Corinthians on loan last year), Alexandru Mitriță (who never delivered ), and Matías Pellegrini (whose $1.1 million contract for the miserable 2023 season might be the biggest head-scratcher of all).
Andrew Leigh
2. But some players are worth it
Others earned their pay, such as Villa, who made $5.61 million per year from 2015 to 2018, scoring 77 league goals in that time. Villa was a franchise player, and easily one of the best in the league — he remains the only NYCFC player to be named the Landon Donovan MLS MVP.
Moralez appears on the list five times, more than any other player. Four of those are as a DP, and once as part of the regular roster. Most will agree that the club legend deserves every dollar paid to him.
Oliver Strand
3. NYCFC: Only 3 millionaires in 2025
Strictly speaking, NYCFC have five seven-figure players this year, but that’s only if you include James Sands (on loan to St. Pauli in the German Bundesliga) and Talles Magno (on loan to Corinthians in Brazil’s Serie A). Take away those two, and you are left with just three active players, which puts New York City towards the bottom of the league for million-dollar contracts.
Only five other clubs have three or fewer such players: Austin FC (3), DC United (2), FC Dallas (2). CF Montréal (3), and Real Salt Lake (3). In general, most teams carry five to six large contracts. For example, New England Revolution have six (Leonardo Campana, Tomás Chancalay, Ignatius Ganago, Carles Gil, Matt Turner, and Jackson Yueill), while New York Red Bulls have five (Gustav Berggren, Eric-Maxim Choupo-Moting, Emil Forsberg, Alexander Hack, and Lewis Morgan). Clearly, large contracts don’t correlate to results: Neither of those teams made the playoffs.
Matthew Mangam
4. New York City’s return to spending?
Will Lee’s legacy at New York City mark a return to big paydays? His final negotiation on behalf of the club was signing Matt Freese to a contract that will keep him with the club through 2030 and will reportedly make him one of the highest-paid goalkeepers in the league. We should expect to see his name on this table next year.
Freese’s extension came just two months after Nico’s move to the team. Between the two, NYCFC could be committed to around $5 million annually.
The new sporting director could have one or possibly two DP spots to fill, depending on what happens with Thiago Martins (who has an option for 2026) and Talles Magno (who is signed through 2027 but could remain away on loan). Will we soon see more Nico-level salaries at the team?
Glenn Crooks
5. These numbers are just a vibe
It bears repeating that all of the dollar amounts cited here are based on the figures released by the MLSPA, which calculates the Annualized Average Guaranteed Compensation, a number that “includes a player’s base salary and all signing and guaranteed bonuses annualized over the term of the player’s contract, including option years.”
In other words, the salaries are an average of what the player is guaranteed to make. The annual pay for any specific year might be significantly higher or lower than what the MLSPA publishes.
Even if the figures aren’t exact, they give us a sense of what players make and where each team stands. By that measure, New York City believe they have a franchise player in Nico, at least by the frugal standards of the club.
Nico is worth it!