Those who closely follow Major League Soccer know that the league does not make transparency the highest priority.

The league’s salary cap has a number of convoluted and at times confusing rules. One example is the concept of allocation money.

MLS has two kinds of allocation money. There’s targeted allocation money (TAM), which has more restrictions, but is basically used to minimize the cap hit on players that would be designated players so they don’t take up one of a team’s three designated player slots. There’s also general allocation money (GAM), which has fewer restrictions, but is still used to lessen a player’s cap hit.

If you’re confused, that’s OK. That just means you’re paying attention.

This is relevant because of the two trades involving Sean Johnson this morning. The Fire’s longtime goalkeeper was traded this morning to Atlanta for general allocation money. The trade was agreed upon days ago, but couldn’t be made official until the offseason officially started the day after MLS Cup, which took place Saturday.

It was going to be a move for him to go to his hometown club in its expansion year. On the surface, this could have been a goodwill move by the Fire. Allow the Atlanta area native Johnson, who was the longest tenured player on the roster in 2016, to go home even if it meant getting only intangible assets in return for a popular player.

It didn’t play out that way once it was reported that Atlanta was lining up to sign American national team goalkeeper Brad Guzan. Suddenly, Johnson was unnecessary for Atlanta.

However, the trade with the Fire was agreed to days before it could be made official and still went through on Sunday even after Atlanta had Guzan in mind. When Atlanta flipped Johnson to New York City FC, which officially happened minutes later, it received both kinds of allocation money, targeted and general.

Without knowing the amount of allocation money that changed hands, the amount is never announced in trades like these, it appears on the surface that the Fire got less in return for the same player. Atlanta received two acronyms for Johnson after giving the Fire one acronym. In that way it appears that Atlanta basically day-traded Johnson to get more for him within minutes.

That may not be the case. The dollar amounts could be different, but MLSSoccer.com’s Andrew Wiebe dropped this:

Tough turn for Chicago as well. I'm told NYCFC had an offer for Sean John on the table for more than ATL ended up sending in initial deal. https://t.co/VZbZmBbfWG — Andrew Wiebe (@andrew_wiebe) December 11, 2016

Without knowing the numbers it’s impossible to say if the Fire took less compensation to send Johnson to his hometown team, in essence doing Johnson a favor only to see Atlanta find a replacement for Johnson, before he was even officially a member of the club, and flip him to another team immediately.

The Fire have lost a lot of good will thanks to back-to-back last place finishes so fans don’t require much evidence to wonder if this is just an example of getting outmaneuvered. The point is it might not be and we don’t know because there isn’t enough transparency in MLS. Instead of what could have been a goodwill gesture to a long-serving player, the optics are that the Fire may have allowed Atlanta to skim off the top for the pleasure of being the middleman in a trade the Fire could have just made to NYCFC directly.