Major League Soccer is one of the most, if not the most, unique soccer leagues in the world. The league – which is less than 30-years-old – used to gain viewers and fans by attracting primarily European stars that were on the decline, but that recruitment style has changed in recent years.
While there are still aging stars jetting over from across the pond, such as Lionel Messi, Hugo Lloris and Emil Forsberg, teams are actively pursuing younger players to couple with experienced veterans. This creates an interesting dynamic of where younger, on-the-rise players suit up alongside players who’ve won trophies like the Premier League and the UEFA Champions League.
The league has grown in popularity with new clubs added like Austin FC, Inter Miami, Nashville SC, Charlotte FC and St Louis CITY that have all started play in America’s top flight within the last four seasons. MLS’ popularity will only continue to rise with this summer’s Copa America and the 2026 FIFA World Cup, as the world will be keeping an eye on what’s happening in the United States before the most-viewed tournament in sporting history.
There’s just one problem: MLS has become stagnant in terms of roster rules in recent years, and that just isn’t acceptable when you have players like Messi and Luis Suarez bringing tons of new fans to the league. MLS should capitalize on this moment by loosening their roster rules and regulations so that business is really booming by the time the summer of 2026 rolls around.
The salary cap for the 2024 MLS season is set at just north of $5.2 million, and the league makes it so complicated for fans to understand how intra-league transfers and trades work. In other leagues, if Team A wants to buy a player from Team B, they can just show up with bags of money to acquire the player.
That could not be more different than how it goes down in MLS. Teams are allowed to acquire players from other teams in the league with Targeted Allocation Money (TAM) and General Allocation Money (GAM) as well as SuperDraft picks. To make the long story short, MLS has these complicated rules in place so that teams can’t create dynasties and to also keep parity as high as possible with the extremely low salary cap.
One thing MLS has done right regarding roster building is the Designated Player rule. Teams are allowed to sign up to three Designated Players that can be any position – goalkeeper, defender, midfielder or forward – for any amount over the minimum charge of $651,250. Some teams choose to take advantage of this by using all three DP spots, while other teams choose not to.
Many teams also choose to spend most of their DP money on forwards, which is why MLS defense, for the most part, looks like something out of a Looney Tunes script. For example, Messi, a forward, earns a base salary of $20.5 million at Inter Miam, while Nashville SC’s Walker Zimmerman, a defender earns just over $2 million. However, for MLS teams to fully compete in tournaments like Leagues Cup and Concacaf Champions Cup against clubs like America and Monterrey.
For soccer – or football – to really explode in the United States, MLS has to play their part by loosening up on their roster rules. Foreign fans who want to know more about the American first division leading up to the 2026 World Cup will probably become disinterested when they realize how complex their roster building rules are compared to leagues across the world – that don’t have “GAM” and “TAM.” There’s no doubt that soccer will become much more popular when summer 2026 rolls around, but MLS could blow a huge opportunity if they don’t take the training wheels off for their teams.
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