It could be said that Sebastián Driussi has been worth every penny that Austin FC spent on him. Now, we know how many pennies he's actually worth.
Latest salary figures released by the MLS Players Association on Wednesday confirmed that Driussi is Verde's highest-paid player, with his $2.7 million guaranteed compensation almost a full million dollars higher than Cecilio Domínguez, whose $1.73 million was the highest on the previous release back in May.
More importantly, the investment in Driussi – a 25-year-old Argentine playmaker with Champions League pedigree — brings Austin into the realm of competitive MLS teams. The club climbed from 26th in MLS in roster spending (second-to-last) to the middle of the pack at 15th. In line with that, Driussi's salary ranks 15th in the league in terms of guaranteed compensation — slightly more than Nani at Orlando City and slightly less than Nico Lodeiro is paid by the Seattle Sounders.
The other intriguing revelation from the latest salary dump is that Moussa Djitté, the 21-year-old Senegalese striker who was brought in to vill the void at center forward, is Austin's seventh highest-paid player at $500,000 per year. That's less than Danny Hoesen, who makes $716,667.
Verde's third summer signing, McKinze Gaines, falls in the supplemental category with a salary of $84,125 that's in line with Kekuta Manneh, Jared Stroud and Jon Gallagher. Homegrown signing Owen Wolff, 16, is guaranteed $76,600 as the first homegrown signing in club history.
I'm sure we'll dive further into these numbers, especially as the offseason nears, but it's worth noting that none of these figures make an outsized impact on the salary budget for 2022. As a designated player, Driussi counts the same against the cap as Cecilio Domínguez and Tomás Pochettino, and Djitté hits at roughly half of his reported salary as a U22/Young Money signing.
Flexibility is one of the major assets of the roster sporting director Claudio Reyna has built, although his options at the top end do become somewhat limited with all three DP and Young Money slots full.
