For the past four years, ESPN has conducted an anonymous survey of MLS players. There are always angles and headlines: this time around Giovani dos Santos was voted the most overrated player in the league by his peers. But in amongst the whimsy and trivia a more troublesome statement was served on how MLS is seen even by those on the league’s payroll.

Players were asked whether they truly understand how General Allocation Money (GAM) and Targeted Allocation Money (TAM) works. Only 50% answered that they do. That is likely reflective of the wider (lack of) understanding of the trade rules, too. In fact, so convoluted are the regulations they have become a source of comedy over the years, although some fans fail to see the funny side when their team is overlooked in the allocation order, sending a big name signing to a more illustrious, glamorous franchise. Look at how Clint Dempsey ended up at Seattle despite Portland apparently holding the rights to have the first shot at signing the US international. Fairly or not, the impression is that MLS sometimes makes up the rules as they go along.

It could be argued that MLS doesn’t do a good enough job of providing transparency on its own rules, that they have failed to sufficiently explain the process that results in the trading and signing of players. But one has sympathy for the corner they have forced themselves into. Even if they wanted to explain everything, how could they?

This isn’t the only thing that makes MLS a more convoluted pursuit than it needs to be. If you’ve ever played as an MLS team in Football Manager, you’ll have experienced how the league tends to tie itself up in knots over certain things. Not just GAM, TAM and trade rules, but international breaks that aren’t really international breaks, the timing of Concacaf Champions League games and, of course, the splitting of the season into the regular season and the playoffs, too.

So what can MLS do to untangle the web? Well, for starters, it could fully observe Fifa-recognised breaks. Last week, world soccer took a break for a round of international friendly fixtures, while MLS took a half-break of sorts, with six games played over the weekend. Some teams were without some of their best players. There were six players missing through international duty for Saturday evening’s game between the New York Red Bulls and Minnesota United. The LA Galaxy struggled for firepower against Vancouver 24 hours after Ola Kamara had netted a hat-trick for Norway. Playing league fixtures during Fifa-mandated international breaks compromises MLS’s integrity. It warps results and, ultimately, positions in the table.

Furthermore, it puts players in a difficult position, sometimes forcing them to choose between club and country. This could, theoretically, place doubt in the mind of any prospective signing of international class weighing up a move to MLS. Particularly with more teams now targeting young talent from South America, MLS clubs are put in a position where they have to allay fears that a move to the US or Canada will hinder their international ambitions.

Of course, it’s unlikely that MLS will ever adopt a winter calendar, and rightly so. Anyone who argues that MLS teams should play through Christmas and New Year rather than through the summer, like they do in Europe, has never been to Chicago or Toronto in January – and if they have, they never ventured outside. But a shuffling of the schedule to accommodate international breaks, real international breaks, would help.

Then there’s the Concacaf Champions League, which demands that MLS teams hit top form before they have even started their domestic season. This, of course, is something MLS has no control over, leaving American and Canadian sides at an unavoidable disadvantage against Mexican and Central American teams midway through their season. But it’s another example of how MLS hasn’t quite got all its houses in order yet. Something is out of sync. MLS teams might never truly prioritise the Champions League until the scheduling gives them a better chance. Lobbying of other leagues and associations might be required to solve this issue in the long term.

But the fact remains that MLS’s biggest problem in its complexity are the trade rules that see players bounce around the league without much understanding of how they are allowed to do so. While the salaries of every MLS player are published annually, there is a distinct lack of transparency over how those players sign their contracts. It’s a paradox. This isn’t to say that there is some grand conspiracy at work behind the scenes, but it certainly creates confusion where there need not be any. MLS’s distinctly American trade and transfer system could afford to get a little more European. A free market, albeit not entirely free, might be a good thing for the league at this point.

The situation has improved somewhat in recent years. The farce surrounding Frank Lampard’s move to New York City FC and his loan (if it was even a loan) to parent club Manchester City proved to be a watershed in fans’ intolerance over the lack of transfer transparency, with the league now making more of an effort to explain and elaborate on the process. And yet the fact they have to explain at all is a problem.

For over two decades, MLS has tried to strike a delicate balance between global soccer etiquette and North American sporting culture. That’s why games were once decided by shoot-out. It’s why there are play-offs. And trades. Some MLS teams are ‘football clubs,’ with others ‘soccer clubs.’ The league has always walked the line between one and the other, but with that comes extreme complexity. If the players themselves find certain aspects of MLS confusing, what chance do we have?