Nashville SC general manager Mike Jacobs was on the call with a rival GM negotiating for an unnamed player when a surprising question was asked.



“Yeah, but you’re an expansion team so you can do $400,000, right?”



Jacobs had to laugh.



“That makes no sense,” he said. “It’s like saying a car is worth $30,000, but since the buyer is a millionaire he has to pay $50,000.”



Increased prices on the trade market are now the reality for MLS expansion clubs. The new MLS teams are given about $2.5 million in general allocation money to build their rosters, in addition to the blank slate of $1.2 million in targeted allocation money at their disposal. Every other MLS team knows they have empty rosters and a full cache of resources.



Jacobs hasn’t been able to escape the inflated market, though. He admitted that he paid what some say was a marked-up price of $650,000 in GAM for San Jose midfielder Anibal...