Are US players feeling the recession?

Los Angeles, CA

This morning as I was reading the news, I came across headlines of Sir Richard Branson's foray into space travel. He unveiled his prized aircraft, WhiteKnight Two. It will be the carrier vehicle that hauls the main, Spaceship Two, near the outer limits of our world before releasing the spacecraft to blast herself the remaining distance, just above Earth's atmosphere. Naturally, as a born athlete and man of competition, my first thoughts were of watching future generations racing spaceships competitively throughout our galaxy. My second thought was, ouch, this is going to be really expensive!

According to the BBC News article, about 300 people have already signed up, and are willing to pay the $200,000 (£121,000) fare. For this price, passengers receive six minutes of weightlessness during a two-hour flight. After the holiday feasts are over, weightlessness is just the feeling I'll find myself looking to achieve. As for the cost again, well, it will take a hefty salary to afford a trip aboard a Virgin Galactic flight. With Sir Branson being a supporter of England's Nuneaton Borough F.C., I figured it would be appropriate to see which footballers could make the trip.

In unison with a list of the highest played players in football, published by a Portuguese website Futebol Finance, 20 of the top 50 hail from the English Premiere League. The highest ranking non-European player was David Beckham, who landed at 44th on the list. He may have been higher, except the list only accounts for team salary, therefore not including any endorsement deals. All of this still left me a bit unsettled. When I glanced over the list that features Kaka, Ronaldinho, Frank Lampard, John Terry, and Fernando Torres as the top five paid athletes, I felt no closer to my goal of reaching space. As much as I enjoy watching these men display their foot-skills on the pitch, they seemed almost as far off as my final destination. With that in mind, I began my search a bit closer to home. In the MLS the salaries are far less than that of our cousins abroad. Here are the top 25, according to MLS Daily.

Rank	Name	Club	Salary
1	David Beckham	Los Angeles Galaxy	$6,500,000.04
2	Cuauhtemoc Blanco	Chicago Fire	$2,943,702
3	Juan Pablo Angel	New York Red Bulls	$1,798,000
4	Freddie Ljungberg	Seattle Sounders FC	$1,314,000
5	Landon Donovan	Los Angeles Galaxy	$900,000
6	Guillermo Barros Schelotto	Columbus Crew	$775,000
7	Luciano Emilio	D.C. United	$758,857.14
8	Shalrie Joseph	New England Revolution	$450,000
9	Christian Gomez	D.C. United	$430,000
10	Taylor Twellman	New England Revolution	$420,000
11	Brian McBride	Chicago Fire	$385,333.33
12	Darren Huckerby	San Jose Earthquakes	$385,000
13	Dwayne DeRosario	Toronto FC	$357,000
14	Amado Guevara	Toronto FC	$323,750
15	Chad Marshall	Columbus Crew	$320,000
16	Carl Robinson	Toronto FC	$315,000
17	Pablo Vitti	Toronto FC	$303,000
18	Pablo Mastroeni	Colorado Rapids	$300,500
19	Kasey Keller	Seattle Sounders FC	$300,000
20	Jeff Cunningham	FC Dallas	$267,500
21	Fred	D.C. United	$257,000
22	Justin Mapp	Chicago Fire	$255,000
23	Jaime Moreno	D.C. United	$250,000
24	Ricardo Clark	Houston Dynamo	$248,050
25	Bobby Convey	San Jose Earthquakes	$244,500

At least five of the top-25 salaried soccer players in the United States would have to play just about their entire season to earn the required fare for a galactic journey. Is this the result of an American recession, or are we indeed, a lagging second rate to our across the pond counterparts of the pitch. The upcoming FIFA 2010 World Cup may shed further light on the truth of the matter. The U.S. team headed by coach Bob Bradley, will begin play against England on June 12, 2010 at Rustenburg.