MLS is making rules up again and not telling anyone... from MLS Confidential WTF? So do plain old "discovery" slots still exist? This is just getting rediculous now. Just give every team a chunk of money for new signings, and give the teams who don't make the playoffs a little more. Then turn them all loose. All this other stuff is pure BS. I swear they make this crap up as they go along.
They do.. They run themselves so they can.. It's a new league and they are not afraid to try new things in hopes of improving things.
DC fans (well at least me) knew about this last year. I mean, MLS didn't put out a buge press release, but I remember at least Ridge and maybe other talking about it last year when DC was going for Reyes. I didn't know the other two guys fell into that category though.
So? Well, yes, MLS has to "make up" operational and administrative rules. Maybe they wouldn't need to if there were a well-established and tested set of procedures about how to operate successfully a first division pro soccer league in the US. It's only been running for seven years and is still figuring out how to make things work. Every start up business changes a lot about how it operates during the early years. Would you be happier if MLS made no new efforts to give teams some more flexibility in obtaining players? Other than maybe annoying you because you didn't happen learn about a new admistrative procedure earlier, what's the big deal? Do you really believe they're "not telling anyone"?
As long as these rules don't unfairly benefit one or two teams and everyone has a chance to use them, whats the problem?
Right, this is just a new name for a comparatively old process. We already knew that the discovery budget for future years could be used in this season.
The Metros have only 5 or 6 legitimate players and only ~300K left to stock the rest of the team, thus the new "rule."
I consider myself to be a fairly informed DC United fan, and I hadn't heard this. My understanding on Reyes was that there are Discovery pick slots and Discovery pick cash. It was possible to use "up to 3 years of Discovery pick cash at one time." That quote is actually a paraphrase from something Kasper said when we acquired Reyes. He mentioned that DC United had done that and used all of 3 years Discovery pick cash. He never clarified whether it was 2002 and two years before, two years after, or what. So, I assume that this "Special Discovery" that the Confidential is reporting might not be something new, but simply a way of explaining how the Discovery cash can be utilized as a fluid thing over up to 3 years. If it's something else ... well who knows. As to the league making the rules up as they come along ... well of course, all new leagues have to do that, it's called growing pains. While the US has by far the most money going to Football, Basketball and Hockey of any country in the world, we're well behind many countries with soccer. So, the simple divying up among the teams approach (i.e. the Draft in most American sports) becomes far more complex, because our league isn't the ultimate destination for most world players as it is in those other sports. -Tron