Anyone who has ever booted up Football Manager and chosen a Major League Soccer team to take charge of will know just how complex and convoluted the league’s transfer and trade rules can be. While MLS has largely aligned itself with the traditional European norms of the sport, it uses a distinctly American system to decide which players go where.
This has made MLS something of an anomaly for 25 years. Even to this day, there is confusion over the centralization of transfers, discovery rights, TAM, GAM, draft picks and Designated Player slots.