Photo courtesy Philadelphia Union

In a podcast interview recorded between Wednesday, July 17 and Saturday, July 20, club digital reporter Sage Hurley interviewed Sporting Director Ernst Tanner who said another roster acquisition would be coming during the summer transfer window. (Click here and scroll to the second item to access the interview.)

Tanner qualified the information with caveats that the summer transfer window is not the time for large quantities of acquisition activity, and that players had to be moved out to create roster space on the salary budget charge — aka, senior — roster to accommodate it. He further warned roster rule changes were soon to be announced.

On July 18, MLS announced changes governing the six special players each club may choose to employ, the Designated Players and the U22 initiative ones. To summarize, a club may have up to three DPs and three U22s. Or it may choose two DPs, four U22s, and up to $2 million in additional General Allocation Money (GAM) from the league that must be used completely in that specific year. The club must re-choose its pathway at the beginning of every year. (Click here.)

Plans unfold

On Saturday, July 27, the Union announced the transfer of Richard Odada to Dundee United of the Scottish Premiership. The transfer opened a slot in the Union’s salary budget charge roster clearing the space Tanner said was needed.

Much earlier, on May 1, MLS published official roster profiles for each club.

The announcement stated the profiles were accurate only as of May 1 and subsequent roster moves would not be added. (Click here for the announcement and then click within it for the documents themselves.)

We have copied the information, laid it out differently, and updated it as of Saturday, August 3 at 2:00 p.m. Eastern. The chart below is unofficial but compiled based on our current knowledge. Superscript describes special roster categories. In the unavailable group at the bottom, strikethroughs means the player is permanently removed, officially. Those not struck through have a future status that is less certain. Two of the three off-roster players have required four-day, short-term emergency contracts to dress for regular season Union games.

As illustrated SBC charge player slot #20 is now open.

While Tanner’s mention of the roster rule changes was deliberate, whether it indirectly suggests that the acquisition might be a special player cannot be confirmed.  It is a possibility since the Union have two DPs (Gazdag and Uhre) and one U22 (Makhanya).

Choosing to have only two DPs and up to four U22s and gaining a pro-rated quantity of GAM for the rest of this year seems logical, especially given the unknown money involved in signing Cavan Sullivan. But that is unconfirmed speculation. We won’t know either Sullivan’s annualized base salary or his total compensation until sometime in early October when the Players Association publishes its fall salary guide. The extra GAM might have come in handy.