[Playing the MLS in FM]

On 15/02/2021 at 22:30, fivetwelvepony said:

Here are a few observations I had.

- Forget using TAM. It is literally not possible, and I don't understand why.

- For many moves, it is almost impossible to tell exactly how it will affect your salary cap until you make it. There are some unexpected results for the cap, in particular when it comes to roster moves involving off-budget players. Acquiring such a player can bump one of your previously off-budget guys on-budget, and vice versa getting rid of an off-budget player can perversely help your salary cap by moving someone from off-budget to on. Also, transfer fees affect your cap hit. I also found it unpredictable how much of the cap hit I could ultimately buy down.

- You can use GAM to buy down the cap hit of player's salary, but I found many instances in the game where you were not allowed to do it. As an example, the game wouldn't allow you to buy down any player's salary who was on a home grown contract. I had Nick Lima earning something like $278k, I should have been allowed to buy it down but was never allowed.

- There is no good option for loaning out players, so player development can be a challenge.

- Draft picks are wildly overvalued by an order of magnitude. IRL this year first round draft picks were being traded for as little as $50k of GAM, but in the game the same pick would be valued at $500k. I don't think I ever developed a draft pick into a decent player. In other words, draft picks are like cigarettes in prison -- not really useful aside from currency.

 

I'll try to help you:

- do you actually need TAM? Which is the specific problem: you can't low the weight of a DP contract like you do by using GAM for Seniors? Tbh after few seasons TAM becomes useless. I'm currently managing DCU in 2024, and I still have 20k (weekly, in €) out of 105k to be spent with only 2 DP (1 YDP + 1 DP) and never touched the TAM in 2 seasons I'm managing Washington.

- usually you low the cap by the value of the specific salary of the traded player. If you go to the Registration tab and set the list on Contracts you should have all the info, like the actual wage, the weight on the cap, if it is guaranteed and the contract type. About the transfer fees, you receive 25% in GAM of the value of the transfer (example: 1 million of transfer, you receive 250k in GAM) but that is only for players you sell abroad.

- Home Grown Status usually already helps you to low the weight of the contract automatically. Check the registration tab.

- I agree on loans. You may solve it by having affiliations with other teams tho.

- Not a big fan of draft picks, but what I hate of those are the GA contracts. Anyway, you''d better look for double nationality players (like Sonora, American and Argentinian) since draft picks are usually a loss of time because of the player's level.

[For Someone Thick, In Lay Man's Terms How Do Transfers In The MLS Work?]

Probably LAFC, it seems quite a complete team even what usually worries me is always the salary cap. Still on the Western Conference, RSL is interesting because you have a couple of nice fullbacks (Herrera and Powder), a great defender (Glad) and a key player as Rusnak.

Atlanta has really interesting young players like Carleton, Bello and Wolff, and Kansas City is worth mentioning because of Busio which might be the key player to build the team around.

If you want a challenge, instead you may go for Chicago or Cincinnati. Both team (even if Cin Cin is a young franchise) need to be lift up, especially Chicago after having Schweinsteiger.
Otherwise, you could look for Austin but only after the winter update with the full squad as I previously mentioned.

If you wanna use the canadians, I'd pick Toronto. Pozuelo and Altidore is a great combo in my opinion, and the youth system is a good one (I have Marshall-Rutty, in 2024 he has become a real star for the league).
Not a big fan of Vancouver or Montreal, but if you play with the Canadians consider that players with american citizenship do not count as foreigners if I remember correctly, and it is an advantage you might look for.

[For Someone Thick, In Lay Man's Terms How Do Transfers In The MLS Work?]

Hi! I'll try to cut it short as much as I can, since there is a lot to talk about MLS.
I'm the author of the MLS guide for FM20 of the italian community, so I hope to help you a bit. I've been playing MLS on FM since 14, I know a bit the league and the rules since the roster management is not the only thing that seems complicated to who approaches for the first time.

I'll speak about it terms of gameplay on FM, and try to be the clearest as possible for beginners.

I'm currently managing DC United, in 2024 (after starting as myself in Canadian League with Edmonton), and I won the MLS Cup (which is different by the Supporter's Shield) last season. I'm running a young team with 85k out 105k per week spent, so I still can spend a lot of money on contracts.

Basically, you have 30 slots in your team, splitted by type of contract: you have Designated players (aka Beckham rule), Senior, Reserve, etc..
The type of contract depends partially on how many years the players is in the league (remember that ALL players in MLS are signed with the league, and then the club "owns" the right to use that player: this means that if a players is paid 10k a week in LA Galaxy, if he moves to NYCFC the salary will be the same), and partially depending on the type of contract you offer (this option is mainly valid for foreign players).

At the beginning of every season you will receive an email with all the infos about the type of contracts, but usually it is pretty much useless: my main advise is to look for the registration panel (squad -> players -> registration).
On the upper part, you will have the whole requirements you need to fulfill, as the whole salary cap, the number of foreign players (players who doesn't have American passport or dual citizenship) and usually type of contracts.
On the lower part, you can display the squad list by contract, and see data like ending date, the "weight" on the whole cap, and if the contract is "guaranteed" (if it is not guaranteed, this means that you can release a player for free without having him on the salary cap, but you need to do so before a certain time of the year otherwise ALL contracts will be guaranteed. You will receive notifications about it, anyway).

DP/YDP (Designated Player/Young Designated Player) is a type of contract that allows you to pay literally A LOT of money a single player, but is weight on the salary cap will be the maximum one of the Senior contract. At the beginning of each year, you have 2 roster slots for DP players, but you can pay for a third slot as well if you need to (this might be because you have 3 DP players and you don't wanna sell one of them, or you are planning to buy one). Young DP are just contracts for u-23 players, it doesn't change anything.
DP usually means that the guy is a star player in your team, by skill.
Senior contract is the standard contract for MLS, and it within a certain range: after the maximum wage, there is only the DP contract.
Minimum Senior is the same type of contract as Senior, the only difference is that you can't increase/decrease the wage since it is the lowest wage for this specific type of contract.
Reserve is the lowest contract possible, this is usually for young players acquired via MLS Superdraft or by youth intake.

You have as well some other type of contracts that are usually counted within the Senior slots, as Homegrown players (players coming from a US academy, usually their weight is lower on the full cap) or Generation Adidas (which happens to be a super heavy contract for the best players coming from the Draft).

But it's not over yet.
Are you going over the cap? NO PROBLEM! There is a solution, and this leads us to transfers.
Why?

Transfers in MLS are not like transfers in other leagues: to acquire the right to allow a player to play for my team, I have multiple solutions that I can mix within:

- International players slots (slots in the rosters for players without American/Canadian citizenship), which may last from 1 to 5 seasons or even forever
- Exchange players (as we do in Europe)
- Exchange rights of a player (this happens when you wanna buy an American player from another league: usually if they have grown in US youth teams, the leading MLS franchise will be the permanent owner of the right of the player so you need to acquire the right of the player)
- Target Allocation Money (TAM) and General Allocation Money (GAM): these are the two most important ones. TAM allows you to decrease the weight of DP contracts only on your total salary cap, while GAM is for Senior contracts. At the beginning of every season you will receive some GAM, but if you will not use it within 3 years (I'm going by heart now) that money will be taken out: so, if you receive 250k in 2022, you have to use 250k within 3 seasons or they will be taken out of you.
A way to increase GAM is to sell players out of MLS, so in this way you will receive usually a third in cash, a third in GAM and a third goes to the MLS League (in order to substain it).

Quick example: I can offer for a single player an international slots for 1 year + GAM (500k) + a player in my current roster. Please remember that this type of transfer is valid only from and to MLS teams.

I'll end it with a couple of suggestions:

- do not start with LA Galaxy, you need to rebuild it from scraps since most of the contracts are heavy
- do not start with Austin, instead wait for winter update. Doing so will allow you to have a decent roster and staff, instead of creating itself by your own since will probably lead you in not having results straight on the first year.
- acquire GAM, always
- scout for regens, double nationality players (lots in UK and Germany) and young players with expiring contracts
- sometimes, better skip the Superdraft and pick on the Waiver Draft (Draft for players which are going to be released by their teams, it happens on December)

I've tried to be as clear as possible, but there is a lot to talk about and maybe a video might be helpful. I've found none of YouTube, so I might think about it.