I have watch or listened to 3 recent Don Garber interviews. In each he keeps referring to significant Roster Rule changes as MLS switches to the new calendar. A couple of other owners have also made rumbling about the changes, but I have yet to see something specific. I have to questions. First, has anyone insight on what is being proposed/implemented on new Roster Rules that accompany the new alignment with the global transfer market. And second, if you could make changes, what 3 changes to the current Roster rules would you make?
I've also seen what you described, and Garber did state something would be revealed in April. I imagine that with more players signing with MLS and Garber publicly stating he would like to see Mo Salah sign here, it might be an expansion of the DP rule by adding possibly another slot or two. They need to give Apple a reason to be competitive bidder to retain them and name players is the way to get more casual fans. Three things I like to see changed are get rid of the TAM & GAM and just settle on a Cap with floor and ceiling. Make DP players exempt from the cap and let teams cover the 100% of the contract. Last get rid of territories for player recruitment to academies and let the teams with good academies go that route with the players want to make the move.
Yeah, Garber and other officials have hinted multiple times at an "MLS 3.0" wherein there would be some rules simplification and almost certainly some degree greater money spent. It's got to be pushed by some owners wanting more. I think there's a "Latte Lath Problem" going on, which is that, for want of being able to spend a few hundred thousand more on defenders and utility players, they had to overspend by millions on a DP forward in his prime. The type guys they would have wanted for their tax bracket often don't want to come due to the overall status of the league in terms of top-to-bottom roster talent. Up to now, MLS has always looked at those types of guys (the defenders and utility players) as the guys who don't sell tickets, and the ones that the Excel spreadsheet tells you to squeeze to maximize value. But MLS is becoming a different league now, trying to get a different type of player for its DP slots, and trying to make an international impression. So I'm thinking the more aggressive owners in the league are trying to loosen the rules in order to allow for that. Yeah, I think I understand getting some allocation money (or something like that) as a reward for a successful transfer, or maybe for playing young players, but for the rest of it, I don't really get it at this point. I do understand DPs having a cap cost, though. You can debate what it should be but if they have zero, you're more or less forcing teams to sign them (it'd be a world where you objectively can't compete without them).
If the team was totally responsible for signing DP players, it would free up the cap space for the rest of the roster as of now. Up to 20 players, occupying roster slots 1-20, count against the club's 2026 Salary Budget of $6,425,000 and are referred to collectively as the club's Senior Roster. Clubs are not required to fill roster slots 19 and 20, and clubs may spread their entire Salary Budget across 18 Senior Roster Players. A minimum Salary Budget Charge will be imputed against a club's Salary Budget for each unfilled Senior Roster slot below 18. A club may have no more than 20 players on its Senior Roster, subject to the Season-Ending Injury, Injured List, and Loan exceptions. The Maximum Salary Budget Charge for a single player is $803,125. (See Allocation Money section below for details on buying down a player's Salary Budget Charge.) If a team has three DP's, you are already losing over 2 million against the Budget. If you increased the Budget to over 10 million which is probably a low number because almost every team spends more than that already, the extra 2 million would pay for some good players. Forcing teams to buy DP players should be a goal for the league as these players help with eyes on the league.
Teams also get a base ~$3M GAM every year. Per the Feb. 20 numbers, it ranged from $0 (LAG) to $6.3M (SKC), with an overall average of $2M/team. However, a good number of teams had $4M+, and several had very little. Base salary $6,425,000 + $2,930,000GAM = $9,355,000, which is effectively the base salary of each team.
It's funny how these threads start and the next thing you know an article comes out that mirrors the threads theme. https://sports.yahoo.com/video/nycf...Hig9O2-sRBOE3NsGAIA9w8HuS62fqKU5xDKkOJjLaHAwZ
It's my best guess that the new roster rules will be tied to team revenue plus league budget in some way. If ten million is the league base and instead of GAM/TAM it's how teams invest their own revenue from corporate partners, selling players, tours in preseason & prize money from tournaments. Letting teams that want to invest do their thing but giving them parameters of staying out of the red. . Some look at Atlanta as making a huge mistake with their signings but they have a revenue generating stadium that lets them make mistakes unlike Vancouver, Philly & Colorado that either have small stadiums or a bad lease. Some how teams that focus on an academy model will get something to appease them to keep parity within the league but not the main focus going forward.
Well, I, for one, hope that MLS still prioritizes the development of US players. I'm fine with this being a "farmer's league" as opposed to leagues that pay ridiculous and unsustainable sums of money for the best players and their agents. I'd hope that competing with Brazilian or Belgian leagues is the goal for MLS, not EPL.
I should also add.... Being better than Liga MX is the next stepping stone before getting to Belgium/Brazil levels.
Level of play, first. Value, second. I think we are doing damn well in attendance. No worries there. TV viewership is probably the metric we need to tackle instead of attendance. Number of teams isn't a big concern to me. I am leaning towards the East / West conference of 16, 18 or 20 each with minimal interconference play. Winners of each conference meet for the MLS Cup. But that's just, like, my opinion man. That isn't a metric of success.
So every body says that EPL is the best league in the world but La Liga has won more champions league trophies so wich level of play is better?
I'm talking about trying to get to and surpass the level of just Liga MX, and then hopefully Brazil/Belgium. Your question is completely irrelevant in regards to that, and I have explicitly said I don't want MLS to try and compete with leagues that drop unsustainable amounts of cash on players and their agents. We aren't getting UEFA money, so it is stupid to even have this conversation.
I agree with that but the only real league they can compete with is Liga MX in CCC. What would it take to compete against Brazil and Belgian league is for more players to stay in MLS instead of looking for a team overseas. More and more academies are starting to produce a higher level of talent that probably won't spend their prime years in MLS.
I guess what I am trying to get at is that the jump from starting MLS to starting on a UEFA CL competitive team is only 1 or 2 jumps away. Right now, we are kind of 3-4 steps back. So, like Brazil and Belgium, they often are selling starters or at least significant contributors directly to the UEFA CL teams. That's the sweet spot.
My question is relevant, in my opinion the top teams in Liga MX are better than MLS top teams thanks to the salary cap but the middle and bottom teams the MLS are better so as a whole league how do you measure which one is better?
If/When MLS consistently beats Liga MX in Leagues Cup and CCC, AND in Mexico. Anyway this is the thread about roster changes coming in 2027-28. I will no longer talk about the ranking of leagues.
One could accomplish the same thing by raising the cap by that same amount. I just don't know that you want to coerce teams into using the slot (including possibly on guys who don't really deserve it) instead of giving different teams more options as to their roster model. Yeah, that's not to say they've found the right number necessarily, I'm just skeptical that it should be zero. And this is the part where I don't know why this isn't just cap money. Extra money for a profitable transfer I can see, but why does every team have to get the allotment in a separate bucket?
I think what he's getting at is that some of these goals, which are all good goals, are in tension with each other and hard to achieve simultaneously. Like, if it's all about the international competitions, those are just the better teams. Does it matter how good the 12th team in the league is? And for a subtly but importantly different question, does it matter if a team that came in around 12th last year has any shot at being a contender this year? In the NYCFC CEO interview above, he kinda implies that it doesn't matter much to him (perhaps not that surprising given the market he's in). In a sense it would be easy to win CCC every year if we just said ''******** it" on those other questions. With the revenue they bring in (both current and potential), they probably 'should be' better than their LMX counterparts, if they could spend what they wanted to.
1. History and current are to different things. 2. How many different Spanish clubs have won? Has anyone won it besides Barca and Real Madrid? In England, you’ve got both Manchester clubs, Liverpool, Forest, Villa, and Chelsea, off the top of my head. How many different clubs have won the Prem since it started? 7. How many different Spanish teams have won that league in that period? 4, I think. if you want to argue Real Madrid by itself makes Spanish football superior, go for it. But the other 19 teams matter too.
I agree with you and that was my argument against rslfanboy, what defines better? by comparing Liga MX vs MLS
Well, I wasn't trying to argue. It becomes a bit of a trick to make sure that teams are still developing talent while also increasing salaries. It would be poor if we are focusing on buying talent abroad instead of developing domestic talent. So, as someone who wants to beat Liga MX teams more often than not, I have a hard time figuring out the best way to structure the roster rules to encourage that. I do like that rule of keeping International Roster slots at 8/team, which can be traded for 0.5 minimum to 2 years max at a time. The intra-league cash transfers were a great idea. I like the incentivizing of teams for selling players at a profit outside the league to allow them to spend more on their roster. I like @wantmlsphilly's call to get rid of "territories." This does have us miss out on some prospects in their early-to-mid-20s still.
Should MLS allow more Super Teams? @newyorkcityfc CEO @therealbsims thinks so pic.twitter.com/XdJGyvIPO4— The Cooligans (@SoccerCooligans) April 7, 2026