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Within minutes of Lionel Messi announcing that he would continue his MLS career with Inter Miamirumors and reports of players wanting to join him began to appear on social media and in newspapers around the world.
Sergio Busquets, Jordi Alba, Angel Di Maria and Luis Suarez.
There is likely some truth to at least some of these names. Multiple sources briefed on the discussions confirm that the club have been engaged in serious talks with Busquets since well before Messi’s announcement. Alba is leaving Barcelona but earned a significant amount of money in Spain and a move to Inter Miami doesn’t make much sense on the surface considering the salary caps explained below and their positional needs. Di María will be a free agent when his contract with Juventus expires at the end of this month, and while sources involved in the talks confirm reports that the interest between Di María and Miami is real, there is a long way between interest and possible contract negotiations. Suárez reportedly has a buyout clause in his contract with Brazilian club Grêmio, which runs until the end of 2024.
While it sounds good for Inter Miami to gather a bunch of Messi’s friends — who, of course, are also top-level soccer players in their own right — to bolster the roster of a bottom-place team in MLS, the realities of the MLS salary cap can stay on the road.
All of those players are overpaid at their current clubs, and Miami still is under salary cap sanctions for previously breaking those roster rules in a case centered around the payment of out-of-bounds players – most notably France’s World Cup winner Blaise Matuidi. No doubt every team in MLS will be watching to see how the league handles the rules. Messi will be a designated player, so no rules will be bent or broken when he signs; The NDP can be paid any amount of money as per the rule. But that won’t apply to every player that Inter Miami signs.
Considering the current squad list and team situation, sporting director Chris Henderson will be quite busy in the coming weeks before the secondary transfer window opens on July 5.
Here are some of the challenges he will face.
Places assigned to players
The designated player “DP” rule was introduced in 2007 when the LA Galaxy welcomed David Beckham to MLS. It allows teams to spend any amount of money over the salary cap to sign high-level, undrafted players. Each team is allotted three player spots and they are not tradable.
Before the Messi deal, Miami already had three DPs: Mexican midfielder Rodolfo Pizarro, Ecuadorian forward Leo Campana and Brazilian midfielder Gregore, who is out until at least September after undergoing foot surgery in March. In order to introduce Messi to the team, Miami will “buy” Gregore with the allocated money. (Any player with a cap hit—which includes salary and any transfer fees—more than the “maximum budget payment” of $651,250 can be listed as a designated player, but players with a cap number of $1,651,250 or less can be purchased below that maximum budget rate using allocation money.)
With Messi slipping to one of the three DP spots, Miami would almost certainly need further DP moves if Di María or Suarez were to join, because both players would likely command salaries in excess of 1.65 million dollars.
MLS clubs can use a one-time contract buyout — other than a buyout — at any point in 2023. A buyout allows a team to remove a player from the roster and his contract from the salary cap. Pizarro is only under contract until the end of 2023 and would make sense as a potential acquisition if they go that route.
Campana’s DP spot could be bought, but that would require enough spread money and salary cap space to fit him and another DP. Another option is to sell Campana — Miami paid a $2.7 million transfer fee to the Wolves at the end of 2022 and would prefer to recoup some of that — or an intra-MLS trade that could increase Miami’s reserves of cap money. general, which is a key tool. for creating cap space. More on that in a minute.
If Miami moves Campana and acquires Pizarro, they will have two open designated player spots to use for the likes of Di María or Suarez.
Rodolfo Pizarro will likely have to be acquired if Miami is to add more PD-level players (Stew Milne/Getty Images for USSF)
Salary cap space
The MLS salary cap — like many other MLS features — has layers. The most basic of which is that the clubs have a total of $5.2 million to spend on their roster. This in itself is not a hard cap, but rather a base number around which they operate with multiple levers that allow them to spend more.
As described above, clubs can pay up to three DP whatever they want. DPs older than 23 hit the salary cap at $651,250, while younger DPs hit at lower rates: players between 21 and 23 hit $200,000 and DPs younger than 21 hit the $150,000 mark. This was done to encourage MLS teams to sign younger players and was a key tool in bringing back the “retirement league” moniker – the average age of MLS DPs did not drop below 30 until in 2013, and since then it has fallen to the current record of 28 years and 21 days. In 2023, the average age of MLS designated player signings was 26 years and 16 days.
Another way the salary cap can be expanded is with allocation money. All clubs are given allocation money – which is not cash but essentially budget space – at the start of each season, but can generate further money through player transfers abroad or through intra-league trades , whether for players or other assets. There are two types of allocation money: general allocation money (GAM), which can be used to buy the maximum number of any player, and targeted allocation money (TAM), which has a specified use for players that earn between maximum budget. fee and one million above this number.
With these variables, MLS salary expenses fluctuate. Toronto FC was the highest paid team ahead of the summer transfer window with a total wage bill of $25,741,930 for this season and CF Montréal was the lowest at $10,511,926.
GO DEEPER
Relations from the release of MLS player salaries
This is where it gets interesting for Miami.
Unfortunately, MLS does not share specific team salary information, unlike the NFL, NBA and other American leagues, doesn’t even reveal how much allocated money each team has at any given time. As such, how Miami is working is a bit of a guessing game. But considering their sanctions included a $2,271,250 fine in GAM spread over the 2022 and 2023 seasons, we know Miami has been operating at a deficit over the past two seasons.
They have done significant work to rebuild that fine – selling, loaning and trading players last season. This year, they also traded rookie midfielder Bryce Duke to Montreal for quarterback Kamal Miller and $1.3 million in GAM. That has given them enough room to work on buying numbers, especially if they sign Busquets, who is not expected to be a DP, according to sources briefed on Inter’s plans.
The Busquets deal, by the way, would raise eyebrows if it falls below that DP threshold. The star midfielder was earning $26.3 million a year with Barcelona and was reported to have received an extension offer worth between $7-8 million. He is also said to have eight-figure offers from Saudi Arabia. The idea that he would come to MLS for less than $1.7 million per year will be a tough pill to swallow for many teams across the league.
Miami, however, will obviously have to look to clear cap space and stockpile allocation money. They are likely to do this in several ways. Trading players like midfielder Victor Ulloa ($250,000 salary) and goalkeeper Nick Marsman ($587,184) will move at least $725,000 in salary off the cap — and theoretically, Miami will demand GAM in those trades. Trading rather than selling a player like Campana could mean Inter Miami loses money on the transaction, but it will buy them valuable cap space through GAM.
MLS clubs know Miami will want to shed wages to make room for additions after signing Messi. Teams will undoubtedly be looking to grab other players on the cheap.
The club had prepared for this moment and stayed vigilant with roster building this winter. Alejandro Pozuelo, a key signing from 2022, was out of contract and the club remained at a number they did not want to exceed in the event of Messi signing. Pozuelo hoped the club would back down, but they never did, so he signed in Turkey. Now he is a free agent again.
A total of 12 players have left the club since the end of the 2022 season.
Nick Marsman is a trade candidate as a backup goaltender with a relatively high shot (Lauren Sopourn/Getty Images)
Electronic games of international and top list
In MLS, teams are offered 20 senior roster spots that count against the salary cap. Up to 10 players making the league minimum or on special contract types built for young talent (Generation Adidas and domestic offers) are classified as additional slots of the list and do not count towards the cap.
Within those 30 roster spots, each MLS team begins with eight international games. They can be traded.
Currently, according to the league’s website, Inter Miami has 16 players on its senior roster and has used five of eight international games. This means if Miami wants to sign more than two of Messi’s friends in Argentina/Barcelona, they will either have to trade for an international slot – which requires the use of GAM – or trade other international players .
That’s low on the list of concerns — international slots are plenty available (though they can be pricey), but it’s still an area Miami will have to account for in their current roster rebuild around Messi.
These are problems with champagne. Figuring out how to build a roster around the greatest player of all time is an extremely enviable position, even if it requires an intimate knowledge of the arcane and mystical world of MLS roster rules.
That these gymnastics are necessary to surround Messi with the best possible roster is perhaps a sign of the growth needed in MLS. The inclusions of the listing rules were designed to limit owner costs and losses and, above all, to promote equity.
But the restrictions also present real limits to MLS’s potential to be a top league on the global stage. The signing of one of the greatest players in the history of the game now puts it out there for all to see.
(Photo: Xavier Bonilla/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
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