Mls To Increase Tam And Homegrown Spending

[sbrylski]

Wait, did the league rewrite the TAM rule??? When it came out, it was very clear that TAM could only be used to buy down an existing DP. But now it reads as follows:

Targeted Allocation Money may be used in four ways:

• Clubs may use the funds to sign a new player provided his salary and acquisition costs are more than the maximum salary budget.
• Clubs may re-sign an existing player provided he is earning more than the maximum salary budget.
• Clubs may buy down the budget charge of an existing Designated Player (no longer making that player a DP) provided the club concurrently signs a new Designated Player at an investment equal to or greater than the player he is replacing.
• Clubs may trade their Targeted Allocation Money to another club.

http://pressbox.mlssoccer.com/content/roster-rules-and-regulations

It did NOT read that when TAM was initially announced. Wonder when it changed.

That change, plus the huge increase in TAM, is incredible. We could effectively have 5-6 DPs next year (Villa, Pirlo, Lampard, Mix bought down with general allocation money, and another player or two that split the $800k TAM.)

 

[sbrylski]

I wish. I think he will cost more than $1 million.

Ciman signed with Montreal for $400k. Teixeira could come in for significantly less than $1 million, but plus any pro-rated transfer fee.

 

[MagnusPax]

Ciman signed with Montreal for $400k. Teixeira could come in for significantly less than $1 million, but plus any pro-rated transfer fee.

The transfer fee might be the problem. If his fee is $2 million no TAM/GAM is going help us. Maybe Leige lets him go for free.

 

[sbrylski]

The transfer fee might be the problem. If his fee is $2 million no TAM/GAM is going help us. Maybe Leige lets him go for free.

Let's say $2 million transfer fee with $2 million salary over four years. That's $1 million per year amortized. We can sink all $800k into him each of the next two years so his cap hit is $200k each year. The TAM rule expires then, but I'm sure it will be extended or replaced by something equally as workable.

The bigger question is whether to lock up all our TAM in one player immediately.

EDIT: We could also try to trade for more TAM. Exciting times! Should be an interesting offseason.

 

[CCMore]

What do we have to trade for more TAM?

 

[JGarrettLieb]

Let's say $2 million transfer fee with $2 million salary over four years. That's $1 million per year amortized. We can sink all $800k into him each of the next two years so his cap hit is $200k each year. The TAM rule expires then, but I'm sure it will be extended or replaced by something equally as workable.

The bigger question is whether to lock up all our TAM in one player immediately.

That kind of player wouldn't work. Not in the soccer sense, in the financial sense.

The 450k-1mm player is a lot more available than players at the very heights of the sport. On the low end, its the starter/low grade star of a Liga MX team. On the higher end of the scale you're looking at starters, not stars, in the Brazilian Serie A. Well for 2015 at least.

To make my point about the commonality of players in this new price range, take a look at this average salary soccer chart from 2014.


My best guess is that all the MLS clubs are going to be looking at players who play in rows 7 through 16 for new talent to add. And because of our weird ass structure wrt transfers, we are going to want players coming off of their contracts on a free; or players who can be convinced to not take their offered contract extension and make a higher salary.

Sure there are a lot of players there, but that just means that it's more likely that there is a player of a type we want available on a free transfer.

To me leagues 7-16 mostly look like extremely well scouted farm leagues for the top 4 leagues in the world. Well extremely well scouted for an organization like CFG, other MLS teams might not have the 5-6 full time scouts that we have access to.

I was initially pissed the hell off about the whole TAM thing, but I didn't realize that MLS also changed the rules on how you could apply TAM. In my personnel opinion the TAM increase with rule change is a net positive for NYCFC.

Sidenote: I think we should be scouting for two players in the $600k per year range. Next year we are going to have $1.75mm in salary cap tied up in Villa, Lampard, Pirlo, and Diskerud, that amounts to something like 47% of the available salary cap spent on those guys. If we get two 600k players and buy them down to the $200k range it won't distort the funds available for the depth chart too much. In short we should be looking to turn people with Mena's salary hit into players of Mix's caliber.

 

[Ulrich]

How is TAM different from GAM (General Allocation Money)? I like that we have more money to spend but is it the right money we want to spend? Just give us 6 more DP spots Garber. You want tv rating and ad revenue, we'll give it to you.

I'm just giving editorial here, but TAM is *not* as good as GAM.

I believe TAM can only buy down a salary between DP-threshold and $1M (could be wrong with those numbers), but you still have to have at least ~$400K in CAP space. TAM also expires after 1 year of carry-over (use it or lose it)

GAM can be used for just about anything: transfer fee, buy down Cap number/increase Cap, etc. GAM never expires.

At least, that's how I understand it....

 

[Ulrich]

This is perfect, and in effect, I think this is better roster wise than a simple cap increase. There are so many good players, foreign and domestic, in the 500k-1m range that would fit incredibly well in MLS but are passed up because teams might as well buy a $5m player and get the ticket sales an publicity if it counts the same as a $1m player. Now, we can acquire more players who may not sell tickets and jerseys and draw international attention, but drastically improve the quality of play on the field!
This is also much better than adding an extra DP slot, TAM can allow 2, 3 or possibly even 4 quality players to be acquired to improve the roster. It's going to take a bunch of expertise to find the right players in that range, something CFG certainly does not specialize in. Hopefully Reyna and company are able to put the right pieces in place to improve this roster.

I just think it'd be easier to say each team can have:
(3) unlimited salary DP's
(4) DP's that make between $500K - $2M but the total of those 4 cannot exceed X-dollars. I'd be happy not having this stipulation (= x-dollars) on it, but w/o them MLS wouldn't have the need for a fancy spreadsheet formula.
(21) players that fit within whatever Cap number they choose - in essence, the cap is really only for the last 21 players, the first 7 abide by their own rules.

 

[Ulrich]

Wait, did the league rewrite the TAM rule??? When it came out, it was very clear that TAM could only be used to buy down an existing DP. But now it reads as follows:



It did NOT read that when TAM was initially announced. Wonder when it changed.

That change, plus the huge increase in TAM, is incredible. We could effectively have 5-6 DPs next year (Villa, Pirlo, Lampard, Mix bought down with general allocation money, and another player or two that split the $800k TAM.)

It changed because LA had dos Santos last year and he's now existing.

 

[sbrylski]

I'm just giving editorial here, but TAM is *not* as good as GAM.

I believe TAM can only buy down a salary between DP-threshold and $1M (could be wrong with those numbers), but you still have to have at least ~$400K in CAP space. TAM also expires after 1 year of carry-over (use it or lose it)

GAM can be used for just about anything: transfer fee, buy down Cap number/increase Cap, etc. GAM never expires.

At least, that's how I understand it....

TAM can actually buy a player earning over the DP threshold (which is $457,500 next year*) all the way down to $150,00. So in theory, a team could have the following players:

DP#1 - $5 million salary, $457,500 cap hit
DP#2 - $5 million, $457,500
DP#3 - $5 million, $457,500
TAM#1 - $550k, $150k
TAM#2 - $550k, $150k

That's a budget hit of just $1,672,500, less than 50% of the cap (45.7% to be exact, subject to the math below).

And, if the team has enough GAM, they can pay additional high value players (like we are with Mix).

This is big.

*Did anyone else notice that the mlssoccer.com press release may have given away this number early? Last year it was $436,250, but in the press release they say the maximum budget charge for a player is $457,500. If that was scaled proportionally to the cap increase, the cap would rise from $3,490,000 to $3,660,000, which is exactly as expected based on hints we've gotten in the past.

From here: http://www.mlssoccer.com/post/2015/...geted-allocation-money-homegrown-player-funds

 

[The Toe]

I'm just giving editorial here, but TAM is *not* as good as GAM.

I believe TAM can only buy down a salary between DP-threshold and $1M (could be wrong with those numbers), but you still have to have at least ~$400K in CAP space. TAM also expires after 1 year of carry-over (use it or lose it)

GAM can be used for just about anything: transfer fee, buy down Cap number/increase Cap, etc. GAM never expires.

At least, that's how I understand it....

This was my point a little further back. You still need to find the 450k worth of cap space (if you want to make the most of your TAM signings) which in the end, will mean more really low salaries on the roster and a huge gap between the top 5 and the rest

 

[franchise646]

This was my point a little further back. You still need to find the 450k worth of cap space (if you want to make the most of your TAM signings) which in the end, will mean more really low salaries on the roster and a huge gap between the top 5 and the rest

Yeah those are the players we got rid of the players make 200 300 and 400k. Except for Wingert

 

[FootyLovin]

This was my point a little further back. You still need to find the 450k worth of cap space (if you want to make the most of your TAM signings) which in the end, will mean more really low salaries on the roster and a huge gap between the top 5 and the rest

But, as has been pointed out, you can use TAM to buy down to 150k cap hit. You don't have to stop your TAM buy down when the cap hit is 450k. Bottom line is that it's more money to spend. So CFG, have at it.

 

[MagnusPax]

TAM can actually buy a player earning over the DP threshold (which is $457,500 next year*) all the way down to $150,00. So in theory, a team could have the following players:

DP#1 - $5 million salary, $457,500 cap hit
DP#2 - $5 million, $457,500
DP#3 - $5 million, $457,500
TAM#1 - $550k, $150k
TAM#2 - $550k, $150k

That's a budget hit of just $1,672,500, less than 50% of the cap (45.7% to be exact, subject to the math below).

And, if the team has enough GAM, they can pay additional high value players (like we are with Mix).

This is big.

*Did anyone else notice that the mlssoccer.com press release may have given away this number early? Last year it was $436,250, but in the press release they say the maximum budget charge for a player is $457,500. If that was scaled proportionally to the cap increase, the cap would rise from $3,490,000 to $3,660,000, which is exactly as expected based on hints we've gotten in the past.

From here: http://www.mlssoccer.com/post/2015/...geted-allocation-money-homegrown-player-funds

Yes I too found it odd that the DP number changed.

 

[EganSoccerWords]

Well we already have Mix making a money over the DP salary threshold, doesn't it make the most sense to use as much of it as possible on his salary (750k). We can then use the regular allocation money, on whoever's salary we want and still have 50k TAM leftover if we sign someone over the DP salary threshold.

 

[sbrylski]

Well we already have Mix making a money over the DP salary threshold, doesn't it make the most sense to use as much of it as possible on his salary (750k). We can then use the regular allocation money, on whoever's salary we want and still have 50k TAM leftover if we sign someone over the DP salary threshold.

I think we are assuming they budgeted enough GAM for Mix already, so the TAM is an increase over that, which is why it's "new" money.

 

[JGarrettLieb]

*Did anyone else notice that the mlssoccer.com press release may have given away this number early? Last year it was $436,250, but in the press release they say the maximum budget charge for a player is $457,500. If that was scaled proportionally to the cap increase, the cap would rise from $3,490,000 to $3,660,000, which is exactly as expected based on hints we've gotten in the past.

From here: http://www.mlssoccer.com/post/2015/...geted-allocation-money-homegrown-player-funds

Hints in the past? They flat out told us what it was going to be when they announced the new CBA.

The CBA states that they will increase 12% initially, to the $3,490,000 cap last year and then a 5% increase per year after that for five years.

3,490,000 * 1.05 = 3,664,500
436,250 * 1.05 = 458,620.50

So they rounded down a little bit, my point stands.

 

[sbrylski]

Hints in the past? They flat out told us what it was going to be when they announced the new CBA.

The CBA states that they will increase 12% initially, to the $3,490,000 cap last year and then a 5% increase per year after that for five years.

3,490,000 * 1.05 = 3,664,500
436,250 * 1.05 = 458,620.50

So they rounded down a little bit, my point stands.

Actually, the only concrete report said it would rise to $4.2 million by 2019. The actual schedule was estimated by a ton of reporters.

If it raises on a percentage basis each year from now on until $4.2 million, that would be a 4.7384% increase each year:

3,490,000 * 1.04738 = $3,655,356.20
436,250 * 1.04738 = $456,919.50

Rounding each of those numbers to 3 digits followed by zeros:

Cap: $3,660,000
DP: $457,000

I'm only somehow missing $500 from the DP threshold.

So yeah, we knew the ballpark, but the actual number for 2016 has yet to be confirmed. I'm probably a huge nerd for splitting hairs on this at 11:30p on a Wednesday, but whatever.

 

[FootyLovin]

I'm probably a huge nerd for splitting hairs on this at 11:30p on a Wednesday, but whatever.

Your nerddom is much appreciated.

 

[Gotham Gator]

What do we have to trade for more TAM?

That TAM is so hot right now. Serve me a steaming hot cup of TAM!