Ahead of the debut season for MLS NEXT PRO, The Athletic’s Jeff Rueter broke down the league’s brand new rules and regulations that are starkly different from that of MLS.
The third-division league will be a mixture of MLS and independent teams (beginning with Rochester New York FC) so teams and players will be managed by a different system than the single-entity model of MLS. Gone are the in-league trades, TAM, GAM, and other MLS machinations that create unnecessary opacity to league operations. Teams can no longer poach prospects from other MLS NEXT PRO clubs by way of the SuperDraft either, but there is still room for clarification on how this applies to current college academy products.