Even on a day when MLS made some long overdue steps towards transparency and simplification of its roster rules, the league's salary cap threatened to steal the limelight.
On Friday, the league made rules relating to which players are subject to the allocation process and which will fall under the discovery umbrella more clear.
"We were looking to simplify and streamline the process and to provide transparency to answer the fundamental question of how do MLS clubs acquire players," said MLS deputy commissioner Mark Abbott on a conference call with reporters.
Without question, MLS is operating with a much greater amount of clarity than in the past. As for why MLS waited nearly two months after the start of the season to release these rules, Abbott indicated that the league wanted to wait until the completion of the CBA negotiations and the finalization of that agreement before agreeing on the roster rules, which it did on Friday. There was also a desire to give the clubs time to adjust to the new regulations.
In terms of the allocation order, gone are the blind draws and weighted lotteries that in some cases were used to assign players to teams. Now there is a fixed, public list of players subject to the allocation ranking. Combined with the list of where each team sits in the rankings (which had been public knowledge in the past), there should be much more clarity about how those players get assigned.
The list is limited to select U.S. men's national team players, elite youth U.S. national team players, and former MLS players returning to the league after joining a non-MLS club for a transfer fee of greater than $500,000.
Any player not on the allocation list can be claimed via a team's discovery list, which is basically a way for teams to get right of first refusal on players in whom they are interested. The number of players on a team's discovery list has been reduced from 12 to seven. The intention here is to encourage teams to make discovery claims only on those players they actually intend to sign.
If a Team A wants to sign a player from Team B's discovery list, Team A can offer $50,000 in allocation money and Team B must either accept the money and give up the discovery claim, or make the player a "genuine, objectively reasonable offer." On the surface, there still seems to be a possibility of teams abusing the system, especially since a team can move players on or off the list at will, but the reduction in slots lessens the possibility.
"[The changes were made] to simplify the process," said MLS executive vice president Todd Durbin. "We wanted to incentivize our teams to invest more in scouting and more in recruitment."
So yes, technically speaking, Cristiano Ronaldo -- not to mention current U.S. internationals like John Brooks, Timothy Chandler, and Joe Corona -- would go through the discovery pipeline if they chose to come to MLS. Players are available on a first come, first served basis, and if two teams make a claim on the same player on the same day, the team with less points per game in the league standings will win out.
MLS has often been guilty in the past of changing the rules during the season, and neglecting to inform the public of those alterations. Abbott indicated that this was no longer the case.
"If we modify the roster rules and regulations in the middle of the season, those modifications would be both communicated to the clubs and made public," said Abbott.
The league also released its salary cap figures, which it should be noted were collectively bargained with the MLS Players Union. The salary cap for 2015 will be $3.49 million, for the 20 players comprising the senior portion of the roster. The remaining eight players on the supplemental roster do not count against the salary cap, with roster spots 21 through 24 having a minimum yearly salary of $60,000 while those taking up spots 25-28 will have a minimum annual salary of $50,000.
It's worth noting that the cap hit for Designated Players -- as it has in the past -- will be limited. Designated Players over the age of 23 will result in a charge of $436,250 against the cap. Players from age 21 to 23 will cost $200,000, while those under the age of 20 will result in a cap hit of $150,000. That explains why teams like Toronto and Seattle can spend well over $10 million on salaries and still be cap compliant.
As a percentage of the salary cap, the cap hit for each older DP remains unchanged, and comes out to 12.5 percent per player. Yet it drove home the extent to which the MLS Players Union traded a limited form of free agency at the expense of increased salaries.
The salary cap increased $390,000 from last year, and a team like the Seattle Sounders, with three senior DPs, would only have an additional $243,750 to apply to the remaining 17 players that comprise the senior roster. While the Supplemental Roster players don't count against the cap, they received significant percentage raises of between 23.7 and 37 percent.
It's clear that the mid-range player will continue to get squeezed. It's difficult to see how MLS can reach its stated goal of being one of the top leagues in the world by 2022 so long as this situation continues.
So as is often the case, MLS continues to make progress, yet it's just as obvious that it has a long way to go.