MLS in FM

Hola,

Over the years, I've always really wanted to get into an MLS save on FM as it's completely different to anything I've done before, or even know about FM in general! I'm thinking that I might do this soon.

I know there are some serious guides out there and a few saves by some of our regular posters that I might be able to track, but I wondered what your top tips would be for it in terms of; Squad Building, Budgets, Drafts and anything else that you think might be useful.

Thanks in advance!

This would be very useful as I also have yet to get my head around the MLS over the years

One of FMs great mysteries!

Good to see we al know nothing

Surely @Poe and @Uncle Sam could help us out?

Ha, I used to have a guide but to be honest, it would be a lot more in depth as FM has come very close to catching up with how the league works in real life.

To be honest, I don't quite follow it in real life either!

I would be willing to start a sort of question-and-answer session in this thread.

This sounds good to me, be good if we can get a few people involved!

1 - How do you tend to make up your squad? (i.e. number of each type of contract, balance of young players and old superstars)
2 - How do you identify the marquee player you want/need?

I'll start with #2, because it's the easier question. I choose my designated player (DP) based primarily on need, and then on quality of the players who I think I can get. For example, I play with one up top, so if I have two strong strikers, then I'm going to be less likely to sign a striker as a DP . DP's do count as a max salary against the wage cap, and in MLS you HAVE to be careful not to devote too much salary to one position. Personally, I try to have one DP defensive players, one DP midfielder, and then one DP at striker/winger. With that general framework, I find the best player that I can. The good news is that every year the staff presents a number of good DP options. In my last game I was able to sign guys like Lucas, Dani Alves, Alexsander Kolarov, etc.

As for #1, that's a pretty big question and it doesn't always have the same answer. Early in the game I'm trying to assemble young players. So I try to max-out the "reserve players" and and "off-budget players" categories. Minimum salary players are off-budget, and this is a great place to sign youngsters that you hope to develop into regular contributors.

I also try to get as many foreign players as possible. In MLS you can actually trade international player slots. I usually play with Houston Dynamo, who only begin with 8. One of my first missions is to acquire more international player slots because you can bring a lot of quality players.

As for the age of players, I personally seek young players with high potential. The best age that I've found to sign these guys is at around 20-24, depending on their position. By then you can look for attributes that even if they don't improve, you can know they will be able to contribute. Obviously the hope is that they develop into quality players. Any players over 27-29 I'm looking to move. These guys are going to start deteriorating and if they're on my squad then that means they aren't good enough to demand a contract I can't afford or for another club to want to make an offer for. I do make exceptions for Designated Players. These players I only keep for the length of one contract (maybe even less), so I know I only have them for 2-3 years. They're mercenaries that can hopefully get me over the hump. Not all DPs are worth their contract status, however, For example on starting the game Houston is weighted down by the DaMarcus Beasley contract. The 33-year old is occupying a DP slot that would easily be better filled by someone else.

One thing to keep in mind when building a squad is that you ALWAYS need to have replacements for your first team players. Because of the wage cap and maximum salary rules, the players who develop into stars are going to eventually demand higher salaries than you will be able to afford. That means when a club comes in with an offer that matches their value you should probably go ahead and take it, because it is very rare that you'll get any offers in the final year of a player's contract. If you haven't planned ahead and started developing a replacement, you'll be in a hole when you lose that player. This is partially why I also recommend heavy squad rotation. It helps keep players fresh, happy, aids their development, and it helps you identify players who are ready to contribute to the first team.

So why does MLS have all of these crazy squad rules? There really is no one simple answer, it's a combination of a number of things. I'll make a list here.

1. Avoid overspending - While there are a lot of reasons that the old NASL from the 70s-80s failed, one pretty big one was reckless spending by some club owners. While it made the league look legitimate to sign big name players like Pele and Beckenbauer, the truth is that the league wasn't making enough money to keep paying their salaries. If you think about it FM terms, there is no way that the San Jose Earthquakes could afford to pay Manchester City's wage bill. They would be bankrupt in two months probably.

2. Competitive balance - Another goal of the league is to keep as many fans tuned in as deep into the season as possible. (This is also why more than half of the league is able to qualify for the MLS Cup Playoffs). Going into any given Premier League season in England, you pretty much know which teams are going to be near the top. Obviously, there are exceptions such as Leicester City, but in MLS there is potential to be a Leicester City every season. As I'm typing this, the Chicago FIre sit on top of the MLS Supporter's Shield table (the trophy given to the team with the best regular season), whereas last year they were dead last. That's really not that surprising in MLS.

These goals were achieved by establishing MLS as a single-entity. Basically what this means is that the league is ONE organization with 22 franchises. The league itself owns ALL player contracts. This helps the league ensure financial responsibility. This is an important fact to remember when it comes to "Allocation Money" and the allocation process.

As time passed and the league slowly built a foundation and added owners, these owners wanted to start signing bigger name players to help grow their clubs and by extension the league. Enter David Beckham. MLS added "the Beckham rule" to allow clubs to sign one player with a contract that exceeded the maximum salary, which became called the Designated Player. Now every team is able to sign two Designated Players, with the option to buy a third from the league office. The player's contract counts as one maximum salary against the wage cap (In real life the club owners are responsible for paying the DP player wages that are over the cap, but you don't have to worry about that in FM).

I'll add more as I go, and maybe post some pics with examples.

That's a great start thank you @Uncle Sam!

I hadn't realised that your staff recommend DP's so that's a great one to start with that aspect. Some solid advice on rotation and bringing through replacements too, something that I tend to struggle with in most of my games as I'm a bit stubborn in trying to get a settled 11!

The 'International Slots' and caps etc are certainly where I've fallen before, so I am pleased to see you've picked up on them too.

Looking forward to learning more

Squad Evaluation

One way to look at your squad in MLS is to divide your players into two categories: (1) Senior and (2) Off-Budget. Senior players count against the Salary Cap, while Off-Budget players do not. What that basically means is that all of your Senior Roster players had better be contributors, or at least be players that you KNOW will contribute in the future. If you have dead weight Senior players then you are hurting the team because you only have so much salary cap money to go around ($3.65M per year at the beginning of the game).

Your Off-Budget players is where you have a little leeway. These guys are not eating up any salary cap space, nor are they being paid a great deal, so if you whiff on a player in this category then it won't hurt you too badly. You can have a maximum of 8 Off-Budget players. The contract types you can get here are "Senior Minimum Salary", "Reserve", or if you draft a "Generation Adidas" player in the MLS SuperDraft. Having a strong group of Off-Budget players helps to provide you with depth without hurting the salary cap.

You don't have to have 8 Off-Budget players, but by having a full complement you will also be able to have a full 28-man squad with 20 Senior players. If you have fewer than 8, then in order to have a full 28 you will have to have 21 or more senior players which will spread your salary cap money thinner.

"Generation Adidas" ???

So far this thread has me just smiling and nodding

Good question.

Real Life explanation: The Generation Adidas (GA) program was started to entice young, talented players to either leave college soccer early (before they graduate) or to skip it entirely. The benefit of college soccer is that players get scholarships and basically get a free education and a degree to help them in their future lives. Many players would rather get that then earn a low-MLS salary. USSF and MLS offer GA contracts to 12 players which guarantees them a much higher salary. If the player accepts, then they enter the MLS SuperDraft where they can be drafted by MLS clubs and will NOT count against the salary cap for the duration of their GA contract.

In FM, the GA players will sometimes not turn out to be any good. This is true in real life. For every Jozi Altidore or Maurice Edu, there are like five Jed Zayners. However, they don't count against the salary cap so they are worthy risks. GA contracts do eventually expire (I don't remember exactly, it's either after three years or when the player turns 23), at which point they became Senior players.

"In FM, the GA players will sometimes not turn out to be any good."

See, I always thought GA players were the best in class of the draft, and always tended to draft them when I can.

At the same time, I tend to stay away from building my squad through the draft, often trading picks away from players, international slots, or GAM for high wage players.

Some of them do turn out to be very good, national team quality. I often "take a risk" on GA players that my scouts rate highly because I can pay them whatever contract they demand without taking up a Senior slot and taking up salary cap space.

The draft is a bit of a hit-and-miss prospect. Every time that I think I've gotten the draft figured out, I end up with a dud. Basically, what I've found to be the best strategy to handle the draft is this:

First Round: I look for guys who can play right now. These are players whose attributes are at the level where they can step in to the first or second team immediately. I don't get cute and try to draft a position of need, I just take the best player available. If this means that I draft a striker when I already have 2-3 good ones on the roster in my single-striker tactic, then so be it. I'll either loan one of them out or look to trade for a player at a position of need. Exceptions: first of all goalkeeper. Unless it's a can't miss world class goalkeeper, I'm only drafting a goalkeeper in the first round if the ones that I have are absolute donkeys. I'll also draft a mega-high potential player with mediocre skills in the first round if available. If the scouts list a player as a 4-5 star guy, then I'm drafting him here no matter how good he is right now.

Second-Third Rounds: This is where I draft for potential. I forget about current ability and look at how my scouts rate their potential. Obviously, this means I'll end up jettisoning some of these guys, but I usually have at least one player drafted in the 2nd-3rd round end up being a first team player. Sometimes it can be hard to decide between 8-9 guys who are all rated the same potential. In that case, I do look at my younger players and try and determine where my greatest future need will be, and also look for GA players.

I'm already lost

Ha, are there any questions that you have specifically?

Not yet, I think the best way to learn will be load up the league and have a play then ask questions when I find something I don't understand!

Moneyball

So the word "moneyball" here in the United States refers to a strategy for assembling a professional sports squad using principles of fiscal responsibility and statistical analysis. It was made famous by Oakland Athletics baseball General Manager Billy Beane and his staff. Oakland does not have the financial resources of some of the bigger teams in Major League Baseball, and so Beane and his staff began using statistical analysis of players rather than talent scouting evaluation to find hidden bargains and avoid wasting money on players who, while boasted big numbers in statistics that are often glorified, do not produce the most important team statistic: wins. Beane made his team highly competitive despite a comparatively miniscule payroll.

So how does this work in MLS in Football Manager? Well a couple of years ago I read a book on the transfer market in real life football titled "Soccernomics", which was an attempt to apply the Moneyball strategy to football. The two sports are far too different for there to be an accurate clone, but there are some principles in the book that do translate. Here are the ones that I operate by:

Sell any player when another club offers you more than he is worth. In my most recent game with the Houston Dynamo, Erick Torres was tearing up the league in the first season. He had 16 goals in 13 league appearances. His value rose to $5.5M, and suddenly some German clubs started coming in with offers to purchase. At 23 years old, he was still relatively young, but was unlikely to develop a great deal. On one hand, the traditional logic would be that I'd be crazy to sell a 23 year old striker that leads the league in goals. However, Soccernomics logic dictates that if I pass on this offer, I may not get a better one. What if Torres stops developing altogether? What if he's injured? Or what if he flat out stops scoring?

There are a few reasons why selling players in MLS helps. First of all, more money in the account balance is good. It helps to improve facilities, it expands the transfer budget for purchasing players on the foreign market, and perhaps most importantly it adds to the Allocation Money. Allocation money, in reality, is play money. Think of it like the board game Monopoly. The League distributes allocation money like Monopoly dollars, and the teams spend it and collect it to try and improve their situation. Clubs within MLS can use this allocation money for domestic transfers, for example to swap for players, for draft picks, even international slots. One very helpful function that the allocation money can serve is to reduce the impact of player salaries against the salary cap.

Going back to my Erick Torres situation, I chose to sell Torres for an initial fee of $5.5M (although it will very likely rise to around $11M after incentives). This transaction brought my allocation from a meager $130K to $1.32M. While I don't need it yet this year, in the future I will possibly (if not probably) need to try and get my wages under the salary cap. Below is a screenshot of a box in Ricardo Clark's "Contract Info":

If I needed to reduce the impact of Clark's salary I would just have to slide that blue ball to the left which would make that $313,000 number go down. I could take his all the way down to zero and still have $1M of allocation money left.

So to conclude this section, selling players when clubs offers an amount more than their value it helps to keep the team salary down by removing that players' salary from the books, but also lets you buy down the salary of another player. Eventually it's going to become excessively expensive to resign a quality player when he comes in with an absurd contract demand. So the best thing to do is sell him before that happens. In my experience I rarely give a new contract to a player more than once. By the time that second contract is about to expire he's hit his prime and will only start deteriorating and meanwhile he is insisting on a contract well beyond his worth.

Adopting this transfer strategy requires you to practice another important Soccernomics principle: Replace your best players even before you sell them. I am always rotating my squad in order to discover and develop replacements for every member of my first team. It's great to sell a player for a large fee, but it's foolish to sell if you are just replacing the player with a donkey. In the case of Torres, I have Mauro Manotas who my scouts are very high on and who has a respectable 7 goals in 9 starts. His value right now is $1.2M, and that's sure to go up as he moves to the first team and starts banging in more.

This whole situation also confirms another Soccernomics principle: Center Forwards are overvalued. Because they score a lot of goals and provide a lot of assists, their value tends to be higher. I've found this to be true in FM. I always get more money for strikers than a player at another position with similar quality attributes.