https://www.mlssoccer.com/about/rost...nd-regulations
Buyout of Guaranteed Contract
A club may buyout one player (including a Designated Player) who has a Guaranteed Contract and free up the corresponding Salary Budget space each year. Such a buyout is at the club's expense and may apply to any mutually terminated contracted player or to a contract that remains in effect.
This buyout may be conducted in-season or during the offseason. If the buyout is conducted in-season, it must be concluded by the close of the Secondary Transfer Window.
Before a player is considered a buyout, the League in its discretion may place the player on Waivers to be made available to all clubs.
If a team no longer has its one buyout of a guaranteed contract, it may enter settlement discussions with a player, but such settlement shall continue to apply to the team’s Salary Budget. If said player is a Designed Player, he will continue to occupy a Designated Player position on the team’s roster.
I suspect the definition of "each year" & "in-season" is flexible here.
I hope these are the actual rules but I suspect are more like guidelines. (insert stick to the code joke here)
Last edited by OgtheDim; 10-27-2023 at 02:41 PM.
FWIW i was in the tunnel club pregame for orlando and jason hernandez said they were not going to do a post 2021 season style clear-out where they end up with only kids for at least half a season.
Good and expected news. Treating your roster like it’s fantasy football rarely works well. In the case of BB it was a sort of total moral fantasy football. His version of guys ‘who want to be here’ meant we were playing with guys who can’t play well (yet) and/or can’t play the positions they were asked to play. I hope Herdman will be a bit more pragmatic.
Herdman seems sort of the anti-Bob. While working to improve a roster he works with what he has and shapes that to react specifically to his opponent, match by match. And rather than ‘my way or the highway boot camp’ he’s talking about therapy, haha. Not to say he’ll keep people that really don’t want to be here but you need guys who can play… at least until you replace them with better options.
I wonder if there's a rule where you can't buyout injured players and that's why Diomande was put on the season ending IR rather than bought out and hoping he'd be fit by the offseason to buy him out. Really the only possible reason I could possibly think of for not using it on him in the summer.
It's been pointed out that buyouts still costs an organization funds, and therefore it wouldn't be surprising if MLSE as a whole decided to not sign off on a buyout. This especially wouldn't surprise me if this were to be the case, seeing all the missteps that has gone on under Manning's watch, especially 2021 onwards.
I'd be really interested in knowing what is meant by "off-season" - i.e. if it also includes the period from the day after MLS Cup through to the end of the calendar year? And if this were to be the case, whereby some of you might be suggesting we still have a buyout for the 2023 season.
This would theoretically be in addition to one for 2024.
Last edited by spe18; 10-28-2023 at 10:29 AM.
We'll know soon enough, no reason to panic yet. But if we somehow go through the off season without a buy out that'll be very telling about MLSEs attitude to our budget and what we could do DP wise with or without the Italians. But we won't know until it happens. Frankly it makes sense to wait until we've a clear picture of what we need and what we can trade before making a move, I doubt you'll see much until pretty close to the deadline for salary compliance
Diomande is a bit of a mystery. He returned after months out… for, what was it, about five minutes at the end of a match? ran hard as if he was fit… and we never saw him again. It was quite late that he was put on the season ending injury list.
What happens if he can’t play again, does he gracefully retire or can he sit in the stands for another season? Do you buy out a player that is unlikely to play (if MLSE will allow it) or is there another way to get him off the books?
If a buyout occurs it'll happen in January IMO
I wonder about the late season Prince and Mailula signings given we seemingly can produce so little salary cap room even if we let go the obvious guys.
20 players are on guaranteed contracts. Guys we can let go are not on big money. Sapong can be let go but we weren’t picking up his entire salary, maybe half at 300,000. VV is on 300,000. Rangitsingh, 100,000, Romero 125,000, Mabika is 93.000 but his salary doesn’t count against the cap. Gutierrez - Van was paying almost all his salary so not much difference there - is out of contract.
I get that we needed someone up front who was capable of scoring but to take a chance like that late in the season before a new manager and sporting director are hired sounds not smart. An attempt by Hernandez to take control of his position, perhaps. They’ve contributed zero goals and may cost about 1 million in annual salary, more than we can clear from the cap by not picking up options or resigning guys. Without the two recent signees we’d have more like 1.8 million from this current roster for Herdman and Rubio to work with.
Let’s hope we can buy out Diomande… otherwise its trading players. Anyone want to have a shot at who on the 20 man guaranteed roster is tradable to possibly good effect?
I guess we hope for the best re the league cap increase and other league tweaks/enhancements. Of course, everyone gets those but it appears we really need them.
We got another $1.5 million off the books just from Hedges being traded and Bradley retiring. Combined with the departing platers, we have over $2 million to spend, a free DP spot, and six open roster spots.
They have quite a lot of flexibility, and that's before they even try to move some of the players we have.
Also, the transfer portions of Owusu and Mailula only count against the 2023 season. Their actual salaries are less than $1M combined.
Remember The Man, The Legend, The Goal 5-12-07 and All That #9 Left On The Pitch, Thanks For The Memories !!!
Owusu was on a free. I'm not sure about Mailula's, but it's possible that with Hedges leaving, they wrote some or possibly all of it off this year. I think they had enough space to do it.
Either way, the amount carried forward would likely be quite low, because they'd want to have maximized this year's cap space.
As Michael announced his retirement this season, his last year of his deal might've been the buyout this year, in exchange for retiring and giving them a slot and cap space.
Not sure what they're doing with Diomande. There doesn't seem any serious intent to keep/play him, so you'd think he'd be a buyout.
We easily have enough cap space to move Oso out of the DP spot, so I suspect it'll depend on whether they find the right target. (Which... man, if we don't get an attacking threat who has pace, next year is going to be rough).
Oso is on a TAMable contract. TAM contracts are DP deals, but the TAM can buy it below the threshold. They just didn't do it for Oso in 2023, they could've (but didn't have any TAM left) and can still for 2024. (Hedges and Bradley were both on TAM deals, so theoretically we can allocate the TAM used on them and apply it to Oso, thereby freeing up the DP slot)
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Maybe. Perhaps consideration is in play of MLS/TFC HR, USA/CDN, state/provincial, employment laws. Diomande has had substance abuse and behavioural health issues in his past. Although he came to a mutual termination of contract agreement with LAFC for ‘family reasons’.
I did sort of wonder, as the Bradleys strike me as moral humanists, whether Bob gave him that deal as payback for what happened in LA. He's apparently an extremely devout Muslim, and going to LAFC put him in the midst of more temptations that he'd probably ever had to deal with, and a lot of money with which to try things.
It made sense that he went to Qatar (Saudi?) after that, strictly from a 'getting straight' perspective. But LA got rid of him awfully quickly, and I wonder if Bradley's had was somewhat forced at the time.
The dude was seriously talented, let's not forget that. He's just been either injured or off elite level for three years now, so it's unlikely he'll produce anything significant. I think they must have known that risk, which is why it smacked a little of trying to right and old wrong.