Frustrated by inability to comprehend MLS Salary Cap

[JTKrayCee]

Hi all,

I'm brand new to the world of football. I played FM back 10 years ago because people said it was good and I played a season or two and never could comprehend anything that was happening. This year I figured I'd give it a try after somehow coming across Zealand's Tauton Town stuff on youtube. It looked fun, coincidentally my lack of knowledge and understanding led me to being in one of his videos as he reacted me to trying to learn the very basics of the game and experimenting.

Anyway, In the time since purchase I've played alot and begun to understand FM, Tactics and just Football in general and as a result found some success. After restarting in Gibraltar, I moved up to Canada and won there twice and now have spent 4 season in the MLS at LAFC winning the MLS Cup once and the US Cup twice.

However, the Salary Cap remains mystery to me in a lot of ways. Typically when I don't understand things I can learn by just doing it and then solving what confuses me as I go. Things typically have order and structure that can be broken down into understandable chunks. Many things about the MLS seemed like complete nonsense to me (all of the drafts for example) and now I've come to understand their function and purpose. They aren't so much drafts as organized free agency, or a live waiver wire of player rights of MLS players. Whereas in my mind previously, a draft was selecting the best players who want to enter a league who's rights are not yet owned.

Even the Salary Cap has made sense in some ways. Under 22 contracts that cap how much they can count against the cap to allow teams to pay good young players. Designated contracts that do the same, but you only get 2 (or can purchase a 3rd for 200k, not sure why you wouldn't do this) and allows you to sign extremely large contracts that cost only 1.2 million against the cap.

And there are times, it seems like someone added RNG to make it a little more interesting.

So this morning I got the Top 50 Wonderkids in the world email and the #2 wonderkid in the world could be bought for 12million dollars (release clause) and only wanted a 2.1 million dollar salary. However I don't have a designated contract available, but there is some sort of system with "General Allocation Money" that allowed me to offer him a normal contract but for the wage he wanted. I had the money and since I hadn't tried seeing what the whole wonderkid thing was yet, or if that top 50 list even meant anything, I bought him.

When he showed up on the team, I was now about 1 million over the cap. So I guess the general allocation money I spent didn't buy down his contract against the cap but rather against the value of the contract that was over the maximum amount allowed for a senior contract? So I now had to figure out a way to clear 1 million dollars of cap space without being able to move the game forward (or waiving/releasing the new player I assume).

I figured I would simply waive other players and clear the cap space but... Some players when I unregistered them counted against the cap. Other didn't, though even with everyone registered I still had 7 million on the cap so I assume some places even when unregistered count against it. There something about a march deadline that impacts waivers and its interaction with the salary cap, probably related. So I went through checking which players impacted the cap and which didn't. I ended up having to choose between 5 of my bench guys to fit under about 400k of cap space. At this point I'm already confused why these 5 guys are able to be waived for cap relief and others aren't. I couldn't find anything to was similar between them, but different than the other 30 guys on my roster. No similar roster designations, no similar ages, some had played games this season, some hadn't.

Next, when registering and unregistering each one to check their salary cap impact I found one that was costing nearly 800k to be registered. His wage was 296k. 

Then, when trying to register replacements from my B team. None of them cost any money to register as I selected through. But after registering 1, now they all cost their correct value against the cap.

I got under the cap and have moved on but I'm left perplexed by it all. It makes it hard to plan for the future when players cost things are seemingly random.

What am I missing?

Or should I just move on to a new league with normal rules? I wanted to try and build a team in the MLS to win the champions cup while waiting for job offers at other teams, but if I can't even figure out how to plan for the future I'm not sure I'll ever win the champions cup against Mexican teams. 

[NineCloudNine]

12 hours ago, JTKrayCee said:

Or should I just move on to a new league with normal rules?

I'm sorry to reduce your extremely articulate post to this one line but, yeah, do this.

MLS has never been properly implemented in FM, partly (I would guess, and to be fair to SI) because it is so incredibly complicated. I haven't played a long-term MLS save but from reading these forums over time I believe it gradually becomes impossible because of oddities and discepancies in salary cap and draft rules.

Mexico beckons for you. After that...Europe awaits...good luck!

[jyny]

18 hours ago, JTKrayCee said:

Or should I just move on to a new league with normal rules? I wanted to try and build a team in the MLS to win the champions cup while waiting for job offers at other teams, but if I can't even figure out how to plan for the future I'm not sure I'll ever win the champions cup against Mexican teams. 

Do yourself a favour and move on. It's a ridiculously complex league. Much more fun can be had in Mexico, South America and Europe. Good luck wherever you decide to go next.

[phd_angel]

Yes, MLS payroll and transfer rules are incredibly complicated and other leagues much simpler. But if you want to play MLS for whatever reason,

1) consider saving the file right before completing a transfer in case some nasty surprise arises (you can say that your "legal team" is warning you that something went wrong with the contract and they had to cancel it - very much fair IMO).

2) Watch YouTube videos on how to play MLS in FM:

3) relax if you don't understand all of the transfer rule details by MLS. 

Edited January 7 by phd_angel

[mp_87]

As everyone will tell you, there are a myriad of problems when it comes to MLS saves and how the AI interprets and implements the various salary rules (plus the AI squad building effects these rules then impact). To be fair I'd say in general this has got better (for long term users who might disagree with that, remember for example there were some editions years back where the financial/salary rules interpretations made signing anyone for a transfer fee totally impossible), but the foibles are plenty noticeable and often very frustrating. As for the rules, they are complex and take time to understand but you do start to get the hang of them eventually.

However I still think depending on the type of user you are, it can be a good league to play. Particularly from an educational perspective and seeing what you can do on FM, especially with lesser/smaller teams and players and less money to throw around.

Straightaway you should forget about signing wonderkids etc. Also I'd say signing players from Europe or star Designated Players has always been much harder to do than IRL (though not impossible). This is a "development league" where you should be mostly getting by with domestic players, newgens out of academies, or mining the America's (load the league/players from these continents, for much better game playability) for cheaper unheralded talent and this includes for Designated Players. Sign, develop, sell. I do think the MLS is a good league to actually learn the game of FM because you'll be using "bog-standard" players mainly - whether that be training and player/youth development, realistic squad building and no hording umpteen players, tactics, scouting and transfers, etc. All depends on how you play the game though really.

[hoboken16]

I have had success with MLS but as others have said it's complicated.  You definitely have to scout for young players and sometimes you just have to sell a player if they want to leave or when a cheaper replacement is ready.  The AI has some issues with the salary cap so leave a roster or 2 for players that are suddenly released around registration day.  Also look in Europe for players who are eligible for the USA and not playing much.  Those players may not want to sign straight away but you can usually get them on loan for a season.  

[cerud]

Not sure if it's been implemented properly, but you actually need to use TAM to buy down contracts. GAM is used for player transfers.

There's more to it than this, but that's the very basic explanation.

[hoboken16]

On 24/02/2024 at 10:54, cerud said:

Not sure if it's been implemented properly, but you actually need to use TAM to buy down contracts. GAM is used for player transfers.

There's more to it than this, but that's the very basic explanation.

You can use GAM to buy down contracts in real life

[cerud]

On 09/03/2024 at 16:07, hoboken16 said:

You can use GAM to buy down contracts in real life

You're right! My bad. This is a fairly decent explanation of the two.

 

https://www.stlcitysc.com/news/soccer-101-gam-tam

[du Garbandier]

+1 I tried a MLS save and quickly gave up and started again elsewhere.