HOW MLS ROSTERS ARE BUILT

If Cincinnati is going to field an MLS team next year, they are going to need a roster of players, huh? Well, it turns out, MLS roster rules are a bit weird, kind of scary, and certainly confusing. There are tons of acronyms and designations that are very easy to lose track of.

That’s why I’m here to help.

This is going to be a series of short blogs that will help you understand how a roster is built, and as we go we’ll look at how that impacts FC Cincinnati. So let’s start with the bare basics.

ROSTER BASICS

MLS teams can have anywhere from 18 to 30 players. 18 is the minimum, 30 is the maximum.



The salary cap is currently $4,035,000 million per team in 2018, which means that is the most you can spend on your entire roster combined. All player salaries have to add to that number or less.

Pretty easy so far right? Minimum of 18 players, maximum of 30, and you can spend up to about $4,000,000 on the wages of your team. So far so good.

So let’s add just one layer of complexity to this: The Designated Player.

DESIGNATED PLAYERS

Designated players, or “DPs”, are the expensive players on the roster. And each team can have up to three designated players on their roster. So how do they work?