Building a successful MLS team

Apologies for all of these MLS related threads from me, its becoming obsessive however!

So, how do you actually build a decent MLS team? With the salary cap and all of the different criteria for the types of players allowed in it seems nigh on impossible.

I see AI teams waiving key players to keep them under salary cap (even before they have played a game). I brought in loads of good young players who I have no had to waive due to salary cap and maximum squad size. I know the MLS is all about egality season on season, but I cant seem to get my head around developing a decent team that will stay there year in year out. Is it a case of keeping a core of 4/5 good players then developing a whole new squad around them per season?

Any ideas/advice on how you lot get on would be great.

The scouting program in this game is horrible. But what I tend to do is sign players with low to medium CA but with high PA from really bad country. Belarus seems to have a ton of them willing to come to the US. Also sign quality American youths as well as most youth you won't have to release. All have a core group of senior players in addition to your youth prospect, and the extra player that need to be rotated every season, just sign some old veteran so their experience and higher CA will compensate for you having to change players so often.

My group at the moment is a core of 7 first team players, mostly foriegn with 2 designated players. I lost all of my developmental players when I confirmed my team and 5 developmentals were instantly free transferred. So all the youth I had taken on and nurtured through the off season all went (1 of which went to Man City of all places, very annoying) - I got in Aldo Deucher who has been great, and a few Korean strikers who are doing the business, but I still reckon come the off season anyone I take in from the draft and anyone on developmental will all go off on frees once my squad has been confirmed.

Otherwise, I guess I could send my developmentals to my accademy side, but this just prolongs the inevitable of me cutting them off at some point when they come back to the main squad.

You need feeder clubs. I have two. You also need to look abroad for free transfers. Trade young players for players you need now or trade veterans for young players you will need in a year or two. Coaching in MLS is like any other American sport; you have to build through the draft, free agency and trading. It takes a few years to see quality results.

My group at the moment is a core of 7 first team players, mostly foriegn with 2 designated players. I lost all of my developmental players when I confirmed my team and 5 developmentals were instantly free transferred. So all the youth I had taken on and nurtured through the off season all went (1 of which went to Man City of all places, very annoying) - I got in Aldo Deucher who has been great, and a few Korean strikers who are doing the business, but I still reckon come the off season anyone I take in from the draft and anyone on developmental will all go off on frees once my squad has been confirmed.

Otherwise, I guess I could send my developmentals to my accademy side, but this just prolongs the inevitable of me cutting them off at some point when they come back to the main squad.

This is like real life. It is very hard for people coming out of colledge because of the salary cap, they basically need to be a starter to not get sacked, or get paid very little money.

The other trick is to do badly for a few seasons, rack up the draft picks and voila you have a brilliant team of talented youth players.

Look for veterans with high loyalty, low ambition. And like others said, constantly crank in youth players through various avenues.

My group at the moment is a core of 7 first team players, mostly foriegn with 2 designated players. I lost all of my developmental players when I confirmed my team and 5 developmentals were instantly free transferred. So all the youth I had taken on and nurtured through the off season all went (1 of which went to Man City of all places, very annoying) - I got in Aldo Deucher who has been great, and a few Korean strikers who are doing the business, but I still reckon come the off season anyone I take in from the draft and anyone on developmental will all go off on frees once my squad has been confirmed.

Otherwise, I guess I could send my developmentals to my accademy side, but this just prolongs the inevitable of me cutting them off at some point when they come back to the main squad.

Are those Korean strikers already in the database, or are they regens??

With the new patch actually having youth intakes, it kind of lessens the draft since you can just rely on youth intakes instead of drafting (which to be is broken since I always waive my draft picks). I would say to get some International Slots to sign some foreigners from and balance that with Americans. I would not utilize a DP until I'm close to winning the championship. And also learn how to use the trading system 'properly'. You can acquire a lot of great players within MLS if you know how to trade in MLS.

Blinding advice!! Managed to get Freddie Montero from Seattle with a few draft and player trades. My 2 DP's - De Guzman and Deuscher are absolutely brilliant. Ive come to the realisation that buying big name high wage players is not what the MLS is about. Its about a core of 3 high earners (internationals), then a squad of good, solid, low cost Americans (emphasising the importance of waivers, the draft and trading) - Such a good league is the MLS, lots to get your teeth into.

I do feel that SI could do more with the drafting system, I'm no expert but it does seem that the players coming though are fairly low quality. As rancer says, I've waived every draft pick for the last 2 seasons. Waivers strikes me as crucial as you can get good quality players for free, nice!!

@ mydoctor - the Koreans are real players, with photos, from the K-Leage. Take a search around

With the new patch actually having youth intakes, it kind of lessens the draft since you can just rely on youth intakes instead of drafting (which to be is broken since I always waive my draft picks). I would say to get some International Slots to sign some foreigners from and balance that with Americans. I would not utilize a DP until I'm close to winning the championship. And also learn how to use the trading system 'properly'. You can acquire a lot of great players within MLS if you know how to trade in MLS.

Could you let me know your thinking behind the DP role? As far as I saw it it was a way of bringing in top quality foriegn talent without impacting on the salary cap position too heavilly? Why do you not utilise the DP role until you come towards winning? Surely if you deploy it early enough you can get someone in who can help you towards winning?

MLS draft has been broken ever since it came into CM/FM way back. There was a discussion about it at the time but nothing seems to have changed. The draft itself seems to function perfectly well, but the players entering are invariably completely garbage and don't even have the potential to develop into squad fillers at MLS standard. Kinda kills most of the attraction of managing in the US for me so I don't even bother to start with MLS playable anymore.

MLS draft has been broken ever since it came into CM/FM way back. There was a discussion about it at the time but nothing seems to have changed. The draft itself seems to function perfectly well, but the players entering are invariably completely garbage and don't even have the potential to develop into squad fillers at MLS standard. Kinda kills most of the attraction of managing in the US for me so I don't even bother to start with MLS playable anymore.

This was fixed for Patch 10.2. There are actually good players, the only problem I have with the draft is that Toronto FC will only draft Canadians

Wait for the 10.3 patch. That's my advice, and I play MLS exclusively. The introduction of youth players (which SI has admitted is a bug, as MLS' rules on youth/academy playes are a mystery to everyone but themselves) makes the league unplayable after the first season. I saw Columbus get a 17 y.o. keeper who was probably in the top 3 in the league; an absolute monster in net. However, I also saw no less than 6 teams have a salary under $1 million for the second season, thanks to the youth players and draft picks.

As for the draft, a simple solution is to use a program like FMRTE and manually edit the players yourself. It's time consuming, but ultimately worth it to stock the league with players that would fit in comfortably with the existing DB (namely, the vast majority of players available for the draft -125 or so- should be in the 120PA range, +/-10. The GA players (theorectically the 15 "best" prospects) should either have the best CA -100 to 105 is sufficient- or the best PA, typically one or two around 150, the rest 135-149.

Could you let me know your thinking behind the DP role? As far as I saw it it was a way of bringing in top quality foriegn talent without impacting on the salary cap position too heavilly? Why do you not utilise the DP role until you come towards winning? Surely if you deploy it early enough you can get someone in who can help you towards winning?

The DP will only count towards $400k (or whatever the league maximum is) towards the cap. I don't get a DP just for the sake of getting a DP. You only have one DP slot (well most clubs only have one), and that player absolutely has to be special and be able to challenge for the MLS Cup. You can get a solid group of foreigners to the club without spending millions.

You can find very good players, American and International, without utilizing the DP. Real Salt Lake, the 2009 MLS Cup Champions, don't even have a DP. Using a real life example, TFC Director of Football Mo Johnston refused to get a DP in the first couple seasons before signing Julian de Guzman. We had no chance of making the playoffs in the previous seasons, but last season we were in the playoff hunt, and Johnston took a chance to sign JDG. You don't need a DP on a rebuilding squad.

Have a look in the Careers Forum for my thread. I spent 5 years at New York, and you can see the squad I built.

The introduction of youth players (which SI has admitted is a bug, as MLS' rules on youth/academy playes are a mystery to everyone but themselves) makes the league unplayable after the first season. I saw Columbus get a 17 y.o. keeper who was probably in the top 3 in the league; an absolute monster in net. However, I also saw no less than 6 teams have a salary under $1 million for the second season, thanks to the youth players and draft picks.

This is really disappointing to hear.

I have to admit, I'm still plugging away with FM09 as I'm waiting for the 10.3 patch before I even contemplate playing FM'10, but it's really frustrating how year on year SI seem to stuff up the MLS in some way, shape or form. A couple of years ago it was every team in the league dumping their stars, not just one or two, ALL of them, on the waiver wire to get rid of their salaries, coupled with the utterly futile draft.

I hope, sincerely, 10.3 makes the MLS reasonably playable but I'm not holding my breath. I understand due to it's quirky nature in comparison to other leagues it can't be easy to model accurately, but having seen the lengths it's main supporters will go to (Amaroc? sp?) to provide SI with constructive feedback it's infuriating to see them goof time after time. The quirkiness of the MLS is the big attraction to playing that league for me, I don't think it helps any to improve peoples perceptions of the MLS, or encourage them to bother trying to work out how to go about managing an MLS franchise when the whole thing is rendered pointless by what seems to be rather half-hearted attempts to sort the issues from one release of FM to the next.

Never mind, as long as every single EPL player's salary is accurate to the penny then the "mob" are kept happy eh?